It’s time for another other-side-of-the-world exclusive model build! Thanks again to Instagram’s @tomz961 for the incredible gift of sending me the three character models that are exclusive to Disneyland Shanghai. It’s been a while since I built Donald, and I promised to save Pluto for last, so I recently built Goofy. And yes, I did take the opportunity to offer to show someone my Goofiest Metal Earth model yet. I am a dad after all. Of course, I was a fan of bad jokes long before I became a dad.

Once again, I must say that these character models from China’s Disneyland turn out a lot better than the main two you can get in the US (Mickey and Minnie). They’re much better in execution and result, and are on par with, or better than, the Stitch model. Unfortunately, with the demise of the Legends line, I’m betting that we aren’t going to see any more of these, even though I think the style is a good fit for animated characters. I also really like the dynamic pose of Goofy here, and am equally impressed at the fact that it actually balances quite well. I was worried about that when I started the build, but it’s not a problem at all. And because I just couldn’t leave well enough alone, I had to go and add some curves to Goofy’s ears. They were just begging for it!









Unsurprisingly, this model is not really a difficult model. It’s mostly just a bunch of simple, straight folds. A nice, quick afternoon build. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have some parts that can be a little tricky, though. Because pretty much all Metal Earth models have a bit of a challenge to them. Would we even like them if they didn’t? However, these challenges in this model are pretty much restricted to one thing: aligning tabs and slots.

The first place you’ll encounter this is with the head. Much like Donald, the sides of the head actually end up with a bit of a curve to them once you’ve secured all the tabs, something that’s not really noted in the instructions (though these are a simplified style of instructions, there’s not even a parts diagram, as all the numbers are just etched into the back of each of the parts). Also, there is some frustration you might experience when attaching Goofy’s lower jaw (part 7) – the instructions have you secure the left side of goofy’s face (5) to the back of his head, and then attaching the lower jaw to the resulting assembly. There is a little call-out that says “connect these 2 tabs first” around this point, but I would actually advice connecting those two tabs (which, by the way, are the two tabs connecting the lower jaw to the back of his head) before starting to attach the left side of the head. It might make for a little bit of balancing act while lining up the slots, but it’s better than having to try to wedge the lower jaw into place between the two adjacent surfaces. That’s no fun. I know, because I didn’t look ahead here and had to do it that way.

The other fun comes with attaching the legs to the pelvic section. Well, actually, forming the legs in the first place is rather interesting They don’t really show the orientation of the parts, just a mostly-formed version of them with some arrows indicating where the tabs and slots go together. It took a little bit of spatial gymnastics to figure out how they end up that way. And even then, I had to take a moment to figure out the right orientation to attach the feet on the correct ends of the legs. Anyways, after that, attaching the leg to the body is complicated by the odd angles at which they meet the pelvic part. Goofy’s right leg went on without too much difficulty for me (took a little convincing, but not much). The left leg, on the other hand (or foot, I suppose)… well, that one took some brute force finagling to get attached. I had to basically secure one tab, then twist and cajole both the pelvic part and the leg into the correct alignment to get the other tab seated, and then quickly secure the tab with the third hand that’s growing out of my back. Just kidding. About the third arm.

Other than those few points, the rest of the build was smooth sailing. Granted, his head does wobbly a little bit, as it’s secured with two opposing tabs, but the wobble seems somewhat appropriate. Hee-hee. One other odd thing I want to point out is that the lower-jaw piece doesn’t seem to be skin-colored where it should be – It’s plain silver. The instructions seem to indicate that it should be colored, but even the photo of the model on the package shows the “silver” skin around the mouth. Weird, huh?

Goofy clocked in at around an hour of build time, which was completed in a single sitting. You can see the build video below. But before that, I want to say again, a great big thank you to @tomz961! I still can’t believe these rare gems are part of my collection, and it’s all thanks to you!