Police in Akihabara have arrested a man to swap Gunpla from the box, causing customers to mistakenly purchase the hobby kit. Hobbyland will no longer allow customers to open the box before purchase and if you want to check inside, you must do so with an employee at the cash register [Thanks, ryokutya2089!]
On Hobbyland’s Twitter, it showed two boxes of Gunpla. An HG Force Impulse box contained an RX-93 v Entry Level Gundam. Meanwhile, an RX-78-2 box contained an Aerial. According to the description of the events from Hobbyland, the culprit swapped the Impulse, Aerial, RX-78-2, and an RX-93 v Entry Level. This was to buy a more expensive Gunpla for a thousand yen cheaper. Security cameras caught the culprit responsible, and Hobbyland gave him until 8pm August 13, 2024 to contact them, otherwise they will call the police.
The perpetrator arrived at Hobbyland Akiba on August 14, 2024 at 11:00 AM. The manager of Hobbyland was doing a TV interview at that time. The program director asked the man if he was the perpetrator and he admitted to his crime, saying that he knew it was wrong and that it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. You could say that he was driven by impulse. A Yahoo notes shows the culprit creating the Gunpla but feeling so guilty that he throws everything away, including the instructions and the box.
When the manager told the culprit that they would call the police, the culprit begged the manager not to. The manager told him that one of the customers who bought the swapped Gunpla was a foreigner and was probably no longer in Japan. This could cause the store to lose potential business, as the foreigner might post about having the wrong Gunpla in the box. However, the culprit still tried to convince the manager not to call the police, saying that it would ruin his life and he could be fired. But the manager told him that he had given the culprit a chance and the culprit had wasted it. The culprit claimed that he lived far away from the store and took the first train in the morning to get there. The manager eventually asked the police to come and take the culprit away.
In other Gunpla news, here are some of the kits coming out in Q4 2024Hopefully when you buy them, what’s on the box is what’s inside.
