RE100Universal Century

MS-08TX/S Efreet Schneid

A knife-throwing Zeon oddball that trades polish for personality, and wins me over on personality alone.

MechaGrade Score

3.7/5

Efreet Schneid · 1/100 · 2016

GradeRE100

Scale1/100

Released2016

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

I like this kit more than its spec sheet suggests I should.

The Efreet Schneid is not the most articulate or the most refined thing in the RE/100 line, but it is one of the most characterful, and once you get all fourteen heat darts locked onto the body it looks like nothing else in your cabinet. This is a design-first kit, not an engineering showcase, and I judged it on those terms.

Best for: Universal Century collectors and Zeon loyalists who want a gimmick weapon loadout and don't mind a slightly stiff torso

The full review

What it is

The Efreet Schneid is Bandai's RE/100 take on Fred Reber's knife-covered Zeon ground suit from Gundam Unicorn, and the first thing that hits you out of the box is the sheer number of heat darts. Fourteen of them ring the shoulders, the left forearm, and the rear skirt, and clipping each one into its little peg mount is genuinely fun in a way most kits don't manage. RE/100 keeps the no-inner-frame, molded-color philosophy of a beefed-up High Grade, so color separation on the maroon and grey Zeon shell is strong without much painting needed. It builds fast, it builds cleanly, and it rewards you with a silhouette you won't see on any other shelf.

The catch

Articulation is the honest weak point here. The head sits on a double ball joint but the rear fins keep it from looking up much, and the cable linking the front cod piece to the backpack is a stiff polycap-style strap that yanks the torso back to neutral, choking out waist rotation and any real ab crunch. Shoulder movement is fine but not dramatic. The heat darts, for all the fun of placing them, are held by simple friction pegs and will pop loose during posing, especially the forearm set, so a lot of builders end up gluing a few down. None of this ruins the kit, but it does mean this is a suit you pose once and display rather than one you keep repositioning.

Who it's for

This is an easy recommendation for anyone building out a One Year War or Laplace Incident Zeon shelf, or anyone who just wants a mobile suit that looks fundamentally different from another Zaku or Gouf variant. The heat dart gimmick and the lore behind Fred Reber inheriting Doug Schneid's machine give it more personality than most 1/100 kits at this price point. Skip it if articulation and posability are your main criteria, there are better-engineered RE/100 releases for that. But as a display piece with a real story attached to it, the Efreet Schneid earns its spot.

The build story

What the build is actually like, and the engineering worth knowing about.

Assembly moves quickly by RE/100 standards, gate placement is sensible and cleanup is minimal, and the molded maroon and grey plastic means the Zeon color scheme reads correctly straight off the runners with only small panel-line accents needed to finish it off.

The standout here is the sheer parts choreography of the heat dart loadout, fourteen individually mounted daggers that transform the default silhouette, plus the shoulder joint's ability to swivel and pull out enough for a cross-arm pose. Torso articulation is the compromise, the cod-to-backpack cable pulls the waist back to center and there's no deep ab crunch, so most of the posing fun comes from the arms, shoulders, and that dagger array rather than a dynamic full-body stance.

Lore & trivia

01The Efreet Schneid is named for Doug Schneid, a Zeon ace pilot and head of the Marchosias Corps MS Team, and was later inherited and renamed in his honor by Fred Reber.
02Fred Reber equipped the suit with fourteen heat darts because he had a habit of throwing beam daggers while piloting the RX-78XX Gundam Pixy during the One Year War.
03In Gundam Unicorn, the Efreet Schneid was deployed during the Laplace Incident to support the Kirks Corps and was last seen defeating an RMS-179 GM II Semi-Striker in close combat.
04RE/100 (Reborn-One Hundred) kits use molded plastic in place of traditional rubber polycaps, aiming for sturdier joints than older 1/100 releases while sitting below MG in detail and price.