What's Actually Inside Earnestcore Craft's Kishin Colada?

A quick note before we get into it: the Earnestcore Craft x Howling Star CZ-011B Kishin Colada Cenozoicera Blade A-Type hasn't officially shipped yet. Everything in this article is based on a preview kit, and production is already underway. We'll update this piece once the retail release lands, but the kit contents shouldn't change between now and then.

With that out of the way: this kit first appeared at Shanghai Wonder Festival in 2024, and now that preview units are out in the wild, we can finally answer the question everyone's been asking. What do you actually get when you open a box with 950+ parts, 11 LED modules, and a weapon system that makes the mech itself look like an accessory?

Earnestcore Craft and Howling Star

Earnestcore Craft (核诚治造) is a Chinese hobby manufacturer best known for their Robot Build designer toy line and collaboration work on the Rosado Project mecha musume kits. They make action figures, licensed Ma.K products, and increasingly ambitious original designs - but the Kishin Colada is their first full-scale snap-fit plastic model kit. Everything they've released before this was either a pre-assembled figure or a smaller-scale collab. This is them going all-in on a format typically dominated by Bandai and Kotobukiya.

Howling Star (哮星) is the developer behind Daiblos Core (交错战线), a Chinese mobile game with mecha designs that have built a serious following in the Chinese hobby community. The Kishin Colada - literally "Machine God Colada" - is one of the game's signature units, and this kit is its first physical product. Kotobukiya handles distribution for North America and Japan.

The Box

Since the official retail release hasn't shipped yet, we don't have final box dimensions or artwork to share. Preview units went out without printed packaging. We'll update this section once the production boxes are in hand.

What we do know: the box is thick. Forty-plus runners packed with cardboard dividers, a separate blister tray for the LED modules, and enough plastic to keep you busy for a while. Clear the kitchen table.

What's Inside

This is where the Colada stops being a normal kit. Forty runners. Over 950 parts. Five different materials (PS, ABS, polycarbonate for clear parts, polyamide for internals, and POM). And 11 pre-assembled LED modules.

The runners break down into a few distinct categories. Four pre-painted sheets - three sprayed in a low-saturation matte gold and a fourth with selective painting on specific areas. The gold paint quality is clean with sharp detail work. Clear parts come in two colors: transparent green for detail accents and light-pipe positions (including a standalone halo piece for the head), and transparent orange used exclusively for weapon effects. The green parts have a crystalline quality; the orange leans fluorescent.

The main armor runners come in blue and white with solid surface sharpness and a semi-matte finish on the blue. Gray runners handle internal structure with respectable surface detail despite the kit's lore hand-waving away the need for mechanical internals. Water flow marks on larger pieces are present but controlled.

Gates are a mixed bag. Some are hidden, some aren't. A few sit in visible spots that will need sanding if you want a clean finish. Not a dealbreaker, but worth knowing upfront.

The water slide decal sheet is entirely gold foil with hot-stamped markings - logos, insignia, and detail supplements that look sharp against the blue and darker armor panels. There's a full-color instruction manual with a per-section parts retrieval list - the kind popular in the Chinese build community where every part needed for a given assembly stage is listed out so you can cut everything from the runners upfront before you start building. Dramatically speeds up the process once you get used to it. The kit also includes a dedicated display stand with a metal center rod and click-adjustable angle - the same stand design Earnestcore used for their Rosado Project Starflower Lily.

The Colada also ships with its own assembly tools, which is unusual for any kit at any price point. A yellow magnetic wand handles three sizes of magnets - it picks them up, orients polarity per the manual's markings, and places them into their slots. There are also red plastic alignment jigs that act as temporary fixtures for gear-driven linkage assemblies: install the jig, build the gears around it, remove the jig. Backup sets of the breakaway snap pins are included too.

The "Oath" Armament System

Here's where it gets ridiculous. The Colada's main body stands about 160mm tall - roughly between an HG and MG in physical size. Compact. Manageable. Then you strap on the "Oath" Armament System (誓约武装架构) and the thing balloons to 350mm tall and 500mm long with effects attached. The body becomes the least visually prominent part of the finished display.

The Oath system is a modular external weapon frame that connects to the Colada's back via a key-shaped docking mechanism. The central spine is topped with an angel figure and a halo. Branching outward from there: shoulder boosters with deployable fins, a pair of giant mechanical claw arms with articulated fingers and palm cannons, missile pods with individually opening doors (red missiles inside, color-separated), six spike blades on bendable wire cables with burst-effect tips, three guerrilla javelins, a light blade composite shield with a full-length LED strip, a 260mm core lance that expands into a full ceremonial weapon array, and two Composite Greatswords that can be wielded individually, combined into a cross formation, or mounted into the claw's palm cannon port.

The whole thing switches between two combat modes. Assault mode mounts the greatswords centrally and adds effect parts to both shields, pushing total length to 500mm. Melee mode attaches the javelins to the leg thrusters and slides the head enclosure forward to encase the Colada's head like a helmet, with the crown LED illuminating down through the head's transparent parts. There's also a "detach" configuration using a three-joint articulated arm that lets the body extend outward from the weapon frame for more dynamic posing.

All 11 LED units come pre-assembled. You don't wire anything. Each one activates through a mechanical trigger built into the kit - flip open a panel, slide a claw forward, press a cross-shaped button on the lance. The shoulder booster deployment is the standout: pull the rear section and all the vanes fan open simultaneously while the LEDs light up orange in front and blue in back. Battery covers use magnetic panels for easy replacement, and the kit includes a red replacement fuel canister for builders who don't have batteries on hand yet.

Speaking of batteries: they're not included. You'll want to have CR425 stick-type and CR1632 button-type batteries ready before you start.

Plastic Quality

The Colada uses a softer plastic than what you might expect. It doesn't feel brittle, but it doesn't feel rigid either - there's flex to it. That softness actually works in the kit's favor for joint durability (ball joints hold up well under repeated posing), but it means you want to handle thinner parts with care. No breakages reported across hours of handling and mode-switching, but be deliberate rather than forceful.

The matte and semi-matte surface finishes across the white, blue, and gray runners give the assembled kit a cohesive look without painting. Color consistency between runners is good, and the pre-painted gold parts integrate cleanly. For a straight build with decals and no paint, the Colada presents well.

One honest note: the hip joint peg is a known tight spot. Grip at the base when rotating the legs, not at the foot or calf. Sanding or a light coat of vaseline on tight-fitting pegs is the standard fix.

What This Kit Is (And Who It's For)

The Kishin Colada packs 40+ runners, 950+ parts, 11 pre-assembled LED modules, and a weapon system that transforms a 160mm mech into a 500mm display piece. Build time is roughly 6 to 8 hours for experienced modelers, or a full weekend at a relaxed pace. It's a non-scale kit that sits physically between HG and MG size but punches well above both in content volume and play value.

This is a kit for builders who've done a few MGs and want something that doesn't exist in the standard catalog. Between the screws, breakaway pins, magnetic installation, and alignment jigs, the assembly process cycles through four distinct operation types rather than the standard clip-and-repeat rhythm - it looks far more intimidating than it actually is. The LED integration is the most accessible we've seen in a snap-fit kit (no wiring, no soldering, just mechanical switches), and the sheer variety of weapons and configurations means you'll be rearranging this thing for weeks after finishing it. Pure beginners should probably get a few builds under their belt first, but if you've got experience and want to see what Chinese manufacturers are doing when they throw everything at the wall, the Colada is a strong argument that quite a lot of it sticks.

We'll be updating this article once the retail release ships with final box details and any changes between the preview and production units. In the meantime, you can find the Kishin Colada in our third-party mecha collection, and the Earnestcore Craft x Howling Star Kishin Colada is available for preorder now.