The Gundam Base Pop-Up World Tour 2025 has been touring the world this year to celebrate 45 years of Gunpla! For those that don’t know, Gundam Base is a chain of Gundam stores from Bandai that operate in a couple of locations across Japan with a couple of other stores across Asia. Being flagship stores, they tend to stock some rather awesome looking limited editions, along with a whole stack of regular Gunpla kits. Up until now though, people wanting to get their hands on these kits have had to either travel to Japan or get them imported, which can prove to be a little expensive. So with that in mind, I was rather excited to learn that as part of the Pop-up World Tour, Bandai would be opening a store in Camden Market, London, in the UK. Open from 5th September 2025 to the 31st March 2026 this store would finally give people in the UK the chance to pick up these kits and pick up some other limited edition goodies! I was also excited to finally be able to pick up some Gundam Assemble kits too…

Excitement peaked however when Bandai asked if we’d like to come along to check out the Gundam Base for a hobby session the day before the store happened! Needless to say, I booked my train tickets on the spot!

So, last Thursday I hopped on the train and made the journey down to London to check things out! I’m quite lucky that I live in Crewe which has really good rail connections, so the trip down was pretty painless – but I know for some other people the fact the store is based in London could make things a little expensive and difficult to get there – I kinda wish they had done maybe 3 months in London followed by 3 months in Manchester to split the tour across the UK to give as many as people possible the opportunity to visit, but if you are able to get to London then the location is pretty easy to get to.

Located in the Stables Market (Provender Building, Unit 20, 100–101 Stables Market, Chalk Farm Road, London, NW1 8AH) next door to the Bandai Cross Store (which itself is well worth an explore if you’re an anime fan – there’s some great JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure stuff on show at the moment) its about a 20 min walk from Euston Station, or just hop on the Northern Line north one stop to get off at Camden and a short walk to take in the sights of Camden Market. There’s lots of nerd shops, places to eat and things to do there, so if you are on the fence about going to the Gundam Base then you’re going to have lots of other things to do too!

Myself and some other creators had been invited down to explore the store ahead of opening, build some of the exclusive Gundam Base kits and check out the Gundam Card game, and I had such a good time catching up with some folks I hadn’t seen for ages and nerding out over the shop!

The store isn’t massive, but it was absolutely jam packed with Gunpla kits and a full range of the new card game too. There was also hobby tools, action bases and accessories too, making it a one stop shop for all your Gundam needs! I know the first couple of days have been super busy with the queue snaking around Camden Market – I expect this to get a little quieter after the excitement of the launch, but go expecting a bit of a wait if you’re wanting to go over the next few weeks. Bandai shared on their social media that in order to make sure that no one goes home empty handed that stock is currently limited to a couple of kits per person and just one limited edition – hopefully this changes at some point, and while the store seemed very well stocked for the launch, the sheer number of people visiting over this weekend needed something in place to make sure everyone can get some goodies. This store is in place for 6 months so I expect them to have regular restocks as well as changes in the kits they stock – just make sure you get there early if you have your heart set on something in particular.

I suspect the store will be a little crowded this soon after the grand opening, but I suspect they will be filtering the number of people in the store at once to make sure you can have a proper look around. Again, I think things may calm down a little once it’s been open a while, but given that a lot of these kits are very hard to get hold of in the UK I think it’s always going to be a popular location.

The staff seemed confident on stock levels, so I think the current restrictions are just to try and control things a little and stop them all ending up on eBay for silly money while giving everyone a fair shot at getting what they want.

There’s also a really cool “big” RX-78 in Gundam Base colours at the back of the store that stands as big as me – This looks awesome in person, and is well worth having a nosy at if you’re there! What’s nice about this store too is the fact there’s assembled versions of all the kits in the cabinets above the shelves – so if you want to be able to see what the kits will look like before you buy them then you are covered. A few are in different locations to the boxes, but most are there!

There was a lot of kits here, and the team from Bandai said that the plan was for them to rotate the exclusives over the course of the run of the pop up – if you take a close look at some of the cabinets you can see some of the kits that presumably will be coming to the Gundam Base over the next few months, making it worthwhile for multiple visits.

While it had a large range of Gundam kits, most of the non-limited items can be found in most other hobby stores – what you really want to come here for however are the exclusive kits, and some of them are very nice! I was tempted by the MG RX-78 mk3 in Titanium Finish as it looked gorgeous on the shelf, but for me the standout kit was the RG v Gundam in Titanium Finish – it’s impressively large for an RG kit and it is stunning in the Titanium finish (I’m currently working on building it, and then there will be an unboxing and review video coming to the website and YouTube very soon!

So what exclusives did they have and how much are they? Here’s a list of the exclusives they currently stock along with the prices.

RG 1/144 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED RX-78-2 GUNDAM Ver.2.0 [THE GUNDAM BASE COLOR] – £40
MG 1/100 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED WING GUNDAM ZERO EW Ver.Ka ［RECIRCULATION COLOR/NEON PINK］ – £60

MG 1/100 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED GUNDAM ASTRAY RED FRAME [RECIRCULATION COLOR/NEON PINK] – £50

ENTRY GRADE 1/144 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED RX-78-2 GUNDAM [THE GUNDAM BASE COLOR] – £10
HG 1/144 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED UNICORN GUNDAM (LUMINOUS CRYSTAL BODY) – £35
HG 1/144 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED GUNDAM TR-6 [WONDWORT][CLEAR COLOR] – £25

HG 1/144 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED GUNDAM CALIBARN [CLEAR COLOR] – £25
HG 1/144 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED RX-78-2 GUNDAM [BEYOND GLOBAL] [THE GUNDAM BASE COLOR] – £28
HG 1/144 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED PETIT’GGUY [THE GUNDAM BASE COLOR] – £6

MG 1/100 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED FREEDOM GUNDAM Ver.2.0[SILVER COATING] – £100
MG 1/100 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED VICTORY TWO ASSAULT BUSTER GUNDAM Ver.Ka [TITANIUM FINISH] – £175
MG 1/100 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED RX-78-2 GUNDAM Ver.3.0 [TITANIUM FINISH] – £100

RG 1/144 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED WING GUNDAM ZERO EW ［CLEAR COLOR］ – £35
RG 1/144 THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED νGUNDAM [TITANIUM FINISH]- £100
THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED HARO [THE GUNDAM BASE COLOR] – £8

MGSD THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED FREEDOM GUNDAM [CLEAR COLOR] – £50
SD GUNDAM CROSS SILHOUETTE THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED RX-78-2 GUNDAM(CROSS SILHOUETTE FRAME Ver.) [THE GUNDAM BASE COLOR] – £12
SD GUNDAM CROSS SILHOUETTE THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED RX-78-2 GUNDAM [CLEAR COLOR] – £10

THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED ACTION BASE 2 ［BLUE］ – £8
THE GUNDAM BASE LIMITED ACTION BASE 7 [MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM SEED FREEDOM IMAGE CLEAR COLOR] – £12

If you do pick up any kits in the store, Bandai are also handing out some freebies too! they have a Gundam Card game promo card included free with any purchase, a Pin Badge if you spend £30+ (These are really nice, and they are planning on having 7 over the run of the store, with a special prize if you collect them all!) and a nice canvas bag if you spend over £50 – this is a huge bag and was really useful for getting my haul home on the train afterwards!

We were kindly gifted some kits by Bandai at the event, and over the course of the day I built the Gundam Base Haro and the Entry Grade RX-78. I’d not built any of the more easier grade Gunpla kits before, and I have to say I was very impressed with these for wallet friendly purchases, especially the RX-78. This is an iconic kit, and you can get it in the blue Gundam Base scheme across a range of grades and finishes, which is nice.

They also had good stock of the Gundam Card game too, including the Assemble boxes including the first sneak peak at miniatures for the Assemble game. We’ll be diving into a few review and painting up these kits very soon!

By the end of the day we all had full bags of Gunpla goodies and were excited to see what the future holds for the pop-up. Most of the people I chatted to hoped that this would eventually be a permanent location and if popular hopefully expands to other locations too – I do feel a northern location would do great, as the journey can be a little difficult for some.

I really enjoyed my day out here, and would love to come back when they refresh the range to pick up some more goodies. I love the limited editions, and being able to pick them up in the UK is brilliant rather than having to pay silly money on eBay for them! I felt they had a good assortment on standard kits, though there’s a couple of other stores nearby that you can probably pick these up for a little cheaper from – it’s the limited kits that really appeals to me for this shop!

It’s exciting to see how popular Gunpla is getting in the UK, and to have a flagship store, if only for a short spell is a sign of just how big it is getting. Stay tuned to the site and our YouTube channel for some more Gunpla videos very soon – and if you would like to support the site then why not pick up your Gundam goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

Massive thanks to Bandai Namco for inviting us down, we had an amazing thanks!

Published by Matt Crowther

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