I am so thrilled to be able to build this model. This Minion model is an Exclusive model from Universal Studios Japan, and manufactured by Tenyo Metallic Nano, which is a sister-company to Metal Earth’s Fascinations. Unfortunately, I’m not as rich as my collection of models seems to indicate – I tend to get most of my models on eBay, or through contests held by Fascinations (though I’m abstaining from that from now on). As such, I was not planning on purchasing many of these Tenyo models, due to the shipping costs and limited availability in the USA. However, a fellow builder and I ended up with some duplicate models in our build queues, and an exchange was made (whereby I think I got the better end of the deal, without a doubt).

It’s very possible that this will not be an Exclusive to just Tenyo or Universal Studios Japan for long, what with Universal starting to do exclusives in their US parks with Metal Earth. Nevertheless, here is Bob, in all his glory, and even with his little buddy, Teddy! The yellow and blue denim really pop, and the iconic eyes as glasses are right there, staring you in the face. He’s just adorable! No way to get around that. I love it!

















On top of all that, it’s actually a lot easier than it looks, as long as you are comfortable with domes and curves. And really, the domes are large enough that they are not as formidable as they seem. I was able to build this model in just over an hour, and that’s with my obsessive regard towards curves. Honestly, I was only troubled by two sections in this build, one of which was entirely my own fault.

First off, I tried to go a little too advanced on the dome that tops the head on this model. Whenever I do domes, I try to round out the base of the dome to a circle. However, with this model, that’s not a good idea. It’s designed to have flat sides, and if you round it, you end up with too much overlap, and it just won’t go together correctly. I ended up having to undo all the rounding I had done, and still didn’t get it quite right (it’s rather hard to un-curve metal).

But the real struggle was dealing with the eyes / goggles. Once again, it’s the struggle of inserting a flat surface inside a curved surface, and the tabs that make it near impossible. Both eyes are inset inside the goggle rims, and attached by two tabs. Unfortunately, this is not made easy by either including longer slots or angled tabs, and it’s a tight space to work in on top of that. But with a bit of tweaking, namely using pliers to angle the tabs, it was a bit easier. Hopefully the video segment below can help explain what I mean by that.

I still ended up with the flat eyes tilted at an angle inside the goggles, unfortunately, but it was easier to close up that way. However, you would be well advised to straighten the eye itself before closing the cylinder, a it becomes rather tight and resistant to adjustment after closing. And finally, you have to wrap the goggles around the head. The instructions suggest connecting the goggles together in the front first, and then wrapping it around to the back and closing that tab last. I did it the other way so that the back tab was folded on the inside, but that made joining the goggle lenses on the front a bit more challenging, I think.

Finally, the standard link to the YouTube Video of my build. This time, being so short, it’s just one video, rather than a playlist. I decided to try something a little different with a black background, and somehow missed the banding that still managed to sneak into it, along with some odd saturation jumps. Sorry about that. I also got out of frame a number of times when I was trying to get a close look at things. Again, sorry.