Nendoroids: How The Series Became A Collector Favorite

Published on: August 2nd, 2024 by The HLJ Team

Why Should You Collect Nendoroids?

If you’ve been in the figure collecting space for any amount of time, especially if you’re a collector of figures based on Japanese media like anime or manga, the chances of you having already heard of the Nendoroid series are close to 100%. Created by the iconic Good Smile Company, this extensive range of collectable, customisable chibi figures offers a lot to both casual fans and more dedicated collectors alike. The Nendoroid brand has become synonymous with the concept of an affordable, chibi figure. But how did we get to this point? How did Nendoroid become the definitive figure brand for popular series to appear in?

There are, of course, various reasons for the Nendoroid series’ meteoric rise to the top. In this blog, we’ll discuss why Nendoroids are beloved amongst both fans and creators alike, and all the reasons why you might want to consider them for your own collection shelf.

A Storied History

This wasn’t always the case in the early days of the brand, but one of the primary reasons to collect Nendoroids is for the guaranteed quality that comes with it. One of the best things about the Nendoroid Series is that when you buy one of the figures, you’re buying a figure from a highly trusted and respected company - the Nendoroid brand has been around since 2006, and both Good Smile Company and Nendoroids have improved a lot over the intervening decades. When you get a Nendoroid, you’re getting a tried and tested series that comes from one of the most prolific figure producers in the industry.

With the Nendoroid series, Good Smile Company brings the full range of their experience to every new product produced!

An Endless Variety of Characters

Of course, one of the primary reasons for the Nendoroid series’ success has been their ability to create figures based on characters from an infinite number of iconic brands. If you’re a fan of literally anything, there’s certainly a Nendoroid out there for you.

For example, if you’re one of the many people on Earth who’s seen the highest grossing movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame, there’s like four different Nendoroids based on that movie. If you’re more of a fan of the immensely popular Sonic The Hedgehog, there’s a Nendoroid of him, too (plus his rival Shadow). How about Spamton from the indie classic Deltarune? How about Bruce Lee himself? Edward Scissorhands? When it comes to variety, there are few series as all-encompassing as the Nendoroid line.

Although the Nendoroid series largely began with characters from popular Japanese media, there’s no doubt that the last five years of the series have shown a large diversity for releases of characters across a wide array of genres and mediums. With regular polls allowing fans to submit their own ideas for characters and new Nendoroids being announced at a high speed, it’s now only a matter of time before the Nendoroid series makes a figure of your favorite. If you’ve got a niche favorite, there’s a good chance it’ll make it to the Nendoroid series eventually.

Customization & Part Swapping

One of the other key features of the Nendoroid series is the customisation factor. Thanks to consistent design elements and sizing, Nendoroids are wholly compatible with eachother, allowing you to swap all kinds of parts between figures to create entirely new ones. If you ever wanted to know what Miku would look like in Okita Souji’s outfit, you merely need to swap the heads of the two figures.

But beyond just part swapping and accessory sharing, the Nendoroid series has also accommodated this with releases in the Nendoroid More series. These additional parts allow you to put your Nendoroids in more generic costumes or add specifically themed accessories and backdrops to the scene. For example, the Nendoroid More face part cases, which allow you to put any Nendoroid faceplate into a fun ‘ghost cat’ or ‘kitsune’ costume. Alternatively, you could dress up any Nendoroid as a butler or maid with these Nendoroid More body parts, which are compatible with any Nendoroid head.

These additional optional parts and innate compatibility that the series offers allows fans and collectors to create completely unique displays and even completely original characters. This functionality is one of the many reasons the Nendoroid series has continued to grow in popularity.

Consistency

When it comes to collecting figures, any dedicated collector can appreciate having a selection of figures from the same series and same scale that look excellent when displayed together. The Nendoroid series embodies the concept of having a consistent collection of figures with designs that utilize the same chibi style, size and similar elements.

This allows you to display even characters from completely different series and mediums together and it doesn’t look weird. On one of my shelves at home, Sam Porter Bridges from Death Stranding stands side by side with Master Chief from Halo - and it looks great!

In addition, improvements to the Nendoroid design and production formula that have come naturally with the evolution of the series have been carried through to reissues of earlier characters. Characters like Death Note’s L, Steins;Gate’s Kurisu and even Hatsune Miku all received figures in the early years of the Nendoroid series and have since received updated remakes - it’s this ongoing commitment that makes the series well worth investing in!

Designs That Fit The Characters

Despite the commitment to consistency, the Nendoroid series doesn’t try to force characters into the series in a way that will drastically alter their core design, or force features when it doesn’t make sense. Take the iconic Ultraman from the movie Shin Ultraman, for example - with a unique but unchanging face, alternate face plates wouldn’t make sense. So to make up for the missing face plates and add in similar value, a unique glow-up eyes feature is added that makes way more sense for the character.

Similarly, other non-human characters are given the appropriate scale and design style with unique molded elements. As another example, considered the various different Kirby Nendoroids that have appeared in series - Instead of molding Kirby’s tiny limbs with standard Nendoroid articulation, his entire body has magnets inside it, allowing his limbs to appear at angle of his spherical body, just like in the games.

With a hugely talented design team, the Nendoroid series always manages to capture the essence of the character without compromising on important details. Important expressions are captured in the signature Nendoroid style, vital accessories are rarely left out and everything just ‘fits’ right!

When adapting popular characters into action figures, it’s very easy to get key details wrong, which is what makes Nendoroids all the more impressive in this way. When a new Nendoroid of one of my favorite characters gets announced, there’s no reason to be afraid of the design not working.

For all of these reasons and more, Nendoroid remains one of the most popular brands in figure collection today, and one well worth checking out if you haven’t before If you’re looking for upcoming or currently available Nendoroids, we’ve got you covered here at hlj.com!