I bet you're seeing red.
It's AC 193 in the Gundam Wing era during the battles between earth and its colonies which soon became a war against the Organization of Zodiac (OZ). During the battles, the protagonist, Heero Yuy, is captured by OZ to test the Mercurius, a prototype ground/space defensive mobile suit. Equipped with dark grey planet defensers and crash shield, the Mercurius is capable of blocking a shot from Gundam Wing Zero's buster rifle.
Being part of Bandai's standard 1/144 scale Gundam models, the Mercurius is small, relatively cheap, and not very detailed. It was never made in the larger 1/100 scale. It wasn't featured much in the Gundam Wing show but it was piloted by the main character of the show and it looks a whole lot better than the many OZ drones. Once again, for my review, I applied most of the decals but didn't do any painting and no glue.
Front of box:
Right of box:
Left of box:
Front:
As plain and boring looking as it is, 1/144 Mercurius is mostly color accurate to the anime - all red.
Right:
It would've been nice if that beam coming out of the shield was made of clear translucent plastic. The shoulders aren't colored pink.
Left:
The huge leg pieces restrict the leg movements to less than 45 degrees forward and back. The legs can't spread much wider than the photo either.
Back:
Unlike the anime, the planet defensers are attached to Mercurius' back
The shields are moveable:
Each shield offers 45 degree angle of movement for the next shield. The shields come with one attached to the backpack and 2 sets of 2-discs connected.
The shield engaged:
The shields always lie in a 2D plane as there is no ball joints between the shield connectors.
Unpainted Heero Yuy:
Heero with Mercurius:
Heero is totally out of scale with Mercurius. He's probably 1/36 scale.
Gundam Wing Zero Custom with Mercurius:
Gundam Wing Zero Custom looks a lot better than Mercurius straight out of the box but that's because a hero mecha should always look better than a prototype.
Mercurius 1/144 is a very small toy which goes well with other Gundam models as every Gundam mecha has been released in a 1/144 scale. It also plays well with the much more expensive MSIA line of Gundam toys. A lot of details are lost at this small scale and painting at this scale can be a challenge. But this scale are very straight forward to put together so you'll be done one of these within an hour. Mercurius looks very plain without weathering and additional paint apps. Mercurius is just a minor mecha in Gundam Wing so unless you're a completionist or just want a neat adversary mecha, I would skip over Mercurius.
A novel shield system keeps this otherwise boring mecha design in my collection
Eric Toy Score: 2 out of 5
Publisher: Bandai
Year: 2000
Price: $10.99 (approx)
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