Police in Akihabara arrested a man for swapping Gunpla from boxes, causing customers to buy the wrong Hobbyland kits. Hobbyland no longer allows customers to open boxes before purchasing, and if you want to check the contents, you must do so with a staff member at the checkout. (Thanks, ryokutya2089!)

Two boxes of Gunpla were seen on Hobbyland’s Twitter. An HG Force Impulse box contains an Entry Grade RX-93 v Gundam. An RX-78-2 box, on the other hand, contains an Aerial. According to a description of the events from Hobbyland, the perpetrator had mixed up Impulse, Aerial, RX-78-2, and an Entry Grade RX-93 v. This was done in order to buy a more expensive Gunpla a thousand yen cheaper. The security cameras had captured the perpetrator responsible, and Hobbyland gave him until 8:00 p.m. on August 13, 2024 to report to them, otherwise they would call the police.

The perpetrator eventually went to Hobbyland Akiba at 11:00 am on August 14, 2024. The manager of Hobbyland had been doing a television interview at the time. The show’s director asked the man if he was the perpetrator, and he admitted his crime, stating that he knew it was wrong and that it was a spontaneous decision. You could say he was impulsively driven. A transcript on Yahoo shows that the perpetrator built the Gunpla, but felt so guilty that he threw everything – including the instructions and the box – away.

When the manager told the perpetrator that they would go to the police, the perpetrator begged the manager not to. The manager told him that one of the customers who bought a swapped Gunpla was a foreigner and was probably no longer in Japan. This could cost the store potential business as the foreigner could potentially post about the wrong Gunpla being in the box. Despite this, the perpetrator tried to convince the manager not to call the police, saying it would ruin his life and possibly get him fired from his job. But the manager told him he had already given the perpetrator a chance and the perpetrator had wasted it. The perpetrator claimed that he lived far away from the store and took the first train there in the morning. In the end, the manager had the police come and take the perpetrator away.

In other Gunpla news, here are some kits coming out in Q4 2024. Hopefully when you buy them, what it says on the box is what’s inside.