I have talking about the numerous problems of the Perfect Grade Strike Freedom but I forgot one last one its stickers.

With all the technology Bandai put into the wings for its spring-loaded dragoons with their aggravating hair-trigger they really skimped on the detail and color separation of them. Instead of molding the small surface areas of gold on the dragoons and the wings alternatively we get a large sheet of gold stickers. This is pretty heinous for a PG especially one as expensive as this one, and considering the gold has a dot like pattern many people just end up using it as it wouldn’t be feasible to get the same effect with paint.

When I told my client this I gave him 3 options to either use the stickers, mask and paint the areas, or use 3rd party metal decals for it. After showing him the metal decals he opted for them but boy was I not aware what I was getting into.

You see the problem is the 3rd party aspect of all this. The decals look nice but first they weren’t cut to size AT ALL, secondly they really weren’t designed to wrap around the areas they were made for, and finally the adhesive just wasn’t any good. This resulted in a time-consuming and at times a messy application of them.

I started with the black parts and not only was I blindsided by the lack of good fit but I basically had to experiment with out how much to trim from each one, and keep in mind there are no extras. I also had to further cut away at them when I realized the rigid decals wouldn’t wrap around edges. Finally after all this fumbling around I started to notice that the decals were slowly peeling off. At first I thought this was because of me handling them so much or because the areas they are going on have surface detail that aren’t allowing them to get a good grasp on, but even with completely tweezer placed pieces on detail-less surfaces this continued to happen. So I super glued each decal one by one as they peeled and except for a few the super glue application was invisible.

The dragoons on the other hand are a bit of a mixed bag. I was prepared beforehand for trimming so I quickly was able to asses how much I needed to cut and glue but unlike the wings the dragoons have a large gold section, and the decals used for that area are far more fragile and have far larger stippling holes then any of the others making the use of glue not an option. They are quite laborious to apply and tend to separate easily, resulting in me having to place them in segments. Which for the most part worked fine except for one piece.

I discussed various solutions with my client and he thought getting another sheet of decals to replace this and any other spotty areas was for the best. Until that comes here are the rest of them.