Gundam Promo Tour Gearing Up

Online trade magazine KidScreen has posted extensive details of Bandai’s upcoming Mobile Suit Gundam Invasion Tour. In a move that some Gundam fans may find entertaining and others find degrading, Bandai will bring tour a 52-foot long Gundam tour vehicle at TRU and Wal-Mart stores, extreme sports events, comic and anime conventions in 25 markets from March through September. The goal is to increase awareness of the Gundam name and franchise including targeting a “cool-by-association” audience of “boarders, bladers and bikers.”

The tour truck will be made up to resemble a space station MS factory. Monitors along the walls and at kiosks will play clips of Gundam episodes and battle scenes, while visitors may browse information about both Gundam Timelines. Playstation 2s equipped with Gundam games will be available to play outside the “Factory.”

Bandai’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Bill Beebe, claims that seminars on model building will be one of the tour’s biggest draws. Similar to Pokemon trainer badge collecting, participants will be able to earn up to 23 medals for Gundam model kit assembly, indicating rank and skill level for each grade of model-building ability. “You spend a week putting one of these models together,” Beebe says, “and now you have a pin showing you have achieved that rank… like Boy Scout badges.”

The tour will sell tour-exclusive Gundam apparel and model paint colors, and the first 7,000 participants at each stop will receive a free Gundam Battlefield Card featuring a mobile suit against a local landmark. The Battlefield Cards will allow receipients access to special sections of the Gundamofficial.com website that award limited-edition Gundam prizes and allow Bandai marketing executives a method of tracking consumer response and participation in the publicity tour.