What is a garage kit?

A garage kit (often shortened to GK) is a small-batch, usually resin, hand-cast model kit made by independent sculptors or tiny studios, generally with the approval of the IP owner (this is indicated by a license sticker on the box). They often require:

• trimming & sanding

• gluing parts

• filling gaps with putty

• priming

• hand-painting

Because they’re limited and artisanal, they’re massively beloved by hobbyists — and Samurai Pizza Cats / Kyattou Ninden Teyandee has had an amazing history with them.

🧵 A Brief History of KNT Garage Kits

🐾 1990–1991: The B-Club Resin Boom

B-Club (a Bandai subdivision) produced the earliest known KNT garage kits. These tend to be:

• cast in cream or tan resin

• unpainted

• extremely 90s in sculpting style

• very rare today

🐾 Late 1990s–2000s: The Doujin Kit Era

Small circles began creating their own event-exclusive kits, especially for Wonder Festival. These kits are usually:

• more stylized

• more polished

• released once and never again

Because these kits were sold for one day only at events like Wonder Festival, entire sculpts disappeared into private collections. Tracking them down is half archaeology, half witchcraft.

🐾 2010s: A Quiet Period (Almost no new KNT kits)

This was the merch drought. Kits from this decade are rare because:

• manufacturing costs rose

• KNT was dormant

• garage kit circles focused on modern anime

🐾 2020s: A Revival Thanks to the Collectors’ Renaissance.

This is when fans start finding and restoring older GKs. Also:

• reprints pop up

• more people share photos

• interest resurges

• companies begin planning new kits again

Collectors have breathed new life into old resin — restoring, repainting, and documenting garage kits that were nearly lost to time.

With today’s tech, access to things like 3D printers have made it easier than ever to get great printable figures that you can prep, paint and assemble. Many artists have shared their models, both for free and for a fee, on sites like Cults3D, CreativityCloud, CGTrader, Yeggi, and many others.

Today’s spotlight: the Omitsu B-Club garage kit from the early 1990s.

B-Club was Bandai’s line of garage/resin kits, designed for hardcore hobbyists who enjoyed building and painting figures from scratch. Unlike mass-produced toys, these came as unpainted resin parts with instructions — making them both a challenge and a rare collectible today.

• B-Club was a hobby / modeling “house magazine” and subdivision of Bandai focused on garage kits, resin cast parts, and enthusiast modeling content.

• It launched in November 1985 and ran until 1998, printing a total 148 issues.

• In its early years, B-Club emphasized scratch builds, conversions, dioramas, reader submissions, and new resin kits (often as upgrades or add-ons to existing Bandai/plastic kits).

• Over time, it broadened into general anime, manga features, and promotional content, as modeling became more niche.

• B-Club also operated a physical B-Club Shop in Shibuya (opened circa 1989), which served as a retail and event space for garage kits and Bandai hobby merch until it closed in the late ’90s.

• After ceasing publication, many of its staff and spirit continued into Dengeki Hobby and Bandai’s newer hobby divisions.

This particular kit features Omitsu, the sweet and slightly ditzy tea-shop owner. She’s not a character who typically gets merchandise — which makes this kit especially unique among Samurai Pizza Cats collectibles.

A lot of other Tatsunoko-sanctioned garage kits have been made by artists over the years, but they’re hard to find. Only a handful of kits (B-club or otherwise) were made for the series, but Omitsu’s stands out because of how little official merchandise she’s ever received.