Man Taken Into Custody for Swapping Gunpla at Hobby Store

Police in Akihabara have taken a man into custody for swapping out Gunpla from boxes, causing customers to purchase the wrong hobby kits. Hobbyland will no longer allow customers to open up boxes prior to purchasing and if you want to check the insides, you must do so with a staff member at the till. [Thanks, ryokutya2089!]

On Hobbyland’s Twitter, it showed two boxes of Gunpla. An HG Force Impulse box contains an Entry Grade RX-93 v Gundam. Meanwhile, an RX-78-2 box contains an Aerial. According to a description of events from Hobbyland, the culprit had swapped around the Impulse, Aerial, RX-78-2, and an Entry Grade RX-93 v. This was to buy a more expensive Gunpla for a thousand yen cheaper. The security cameras had captured the culprit responsible and Hobbyland gave him until 8 PM of August 13, 2024 to contact them, or else they would call the police.

The culprit ended up going to Hobbyland Akiba on August 14, 2024 at 11:00 AM. Hobbyland’s manager had been conducting a TV interview at the time. The director of the show asked the man if he was the culprit and he admitted his crime, stating that he knew it was wrong and that it was a spur of the moment decision. You could say that he’d been driven by impulse. A transcript on Yahoo shows that the culprit made the Gunpla but felt so guilty that he tossed everything—including the instructions and box—away.

When the manager told the culprit that they’d be going to the cops, the culprit begged the manager not to. The manager told him that one of the customers who purchased a swapped Gunpla was a foreigner and was probably not in Japan anymore. It may cost the store potential business, as the foreigner might make posts about the wrong Gunpla being in the box. Still, the culprit tried to convince the manager not to call the cops, saying that it would ruin his life and his job might fire him. But the manager told him he already gave the culprit a chance and the culprit squandered it. The culprit claimed he lived far away from the store and took the first train in the morning to get there. In the end, the manager had the police come and take the culprit away.

In other Gunpla news, here are some kits that’ll come out in Q4 2024. Hopefully, when you purchase them, what’s on the box will be what’s inside.