Soltic H8 Roundfacer
Review by JoshB
The Combat Armor Soltic H8 (Roundfacer) comes from the anime series Fang of the Sun Dougram (太陽の牙ダグラム Taiyō no Kiba Daguramu).
The story follows the action of the guerilla freedom fighters known as "The Fang of the Sun" who are in a war with the Earth Federation, who are ruling the colony Deployer with an iron fist. It’s kind of confusing.
In regards to the Roundfacer, it was the primary war machine in the Federations’ battle against the rebels. Soltic is actually the company that manufactured the H8, and they would later go on to make variants to fight the rebels on different terrain. “Roundfacer” is actually a nickname given to this model.
To me, the Dougram robots have always been good guys. My first exposure to them was the Robotech models by Revell, and only later in life did I find out about their heritage. I was dismayed to find out that the Soltic H8 was a mass-production model, that there were meant to be hundreds of them.
1/144 and 1/72 Soltic H8 Takara had the initial rights to manufacture merchandise based on the show. They produced three main scales of mecha – 1/48, 1/72 and 1/44. There was only one 1/48 made (of the Combat Armor Dougram) and three 1/72 scale toys. It was only in the 1/144 line that most of the mecha made it into toy form. The 1/144 scale toys are only about 3 inches tall and made almost entirely out of diecast. Despite their small size, they have a suprising amount of detail and articulation. Each toy features various bits of removable armor and weapons as well as a sticker sheet and catalogue. Packed in Styrofoam and encased in some of the most beautiful boxes ever, these toys are just wonderful.
The Soltic H8 comes with a gun, rocket launcher, and shoulder and arm armor. The toy has a sticker sheet, but I think it looks fine without stickers. The toy was actually meant to be painted up and detailed as a real model (as was the trend at the time).
These little 1/144 Dougram toys are vintage crack at it’s finest. You have no excuse not to get some.