This is the Kotobukiya Highend Master Model Fang Tiger from Zoids Wild!
For some context: Tomy/Hasbro is the regular manufacturer for "regular" Zoids kits. Which, since they are for little children, are very easy to put together and also motorized. All the pre-Wild lines only walked forward (and also were very loud). They also required you to cut parts off the frames, which is kind of a lot to ask for for little kids (but I had a lot of fun with!)
Zoids is a weird IP since a lot of Americans my age are familiar with it because of the anime on Toonami, but almost all of the models and a high percentage of the anime never made it here. It's also litterally impossible to legally get the older shows anymore. Even though there was no more anime or manga, they kept making kits for older (Japanese) fans.
At some point, Kotobukiya got the rights to make the Highend Master Model line. There's something like 60 different models, and many have lots of variations (different colored plastic, different accessories, additional decals etc). And here is some deep Chase lore but I started getting into them when I was uber-unemployed and needed something to look forward to. But it was hard to justify buying these $60-$200 models when I had no job. Especially when it felt a lot like I was kinda spinning my gears in the past instead of moving ahead.
Then Tomy said oooo we got a big Zoids announcement. Aren't you excited. And it was something to actually look forward to! And it was essentially an entire reboot of the franchise. New anime, new manga, new merch, and an entirely new type of Zoids. These were smaller kits that were designed to be easy for kids to put together. But! They each had this gimmick called the "wild blast" which was a weapon that would "unlock" and automatically trigger as it walked.
The anime wasn't the uhhhhhhh greatest, I'll admit, but the models were a lot of fun and something to always look forward to. The Wild Liger is the MC's Zoid, and the Fang Tiger is the mentor character's. The MC's Zoid is always a liger, and the sabertooth was the villain's/rivals.
I am definitely annoyed by Koto (and Tomy tbh) pretending that Zoids Genesis doesn't exist, since the Zoids in that generation are really different but also really cool. Like a moose and a peacock. They have started making kits from Wild, and this one has been sitting on my to-do pile for Awhile. And, even though the "skeleton" of the Fang Tiger is exactly the same as the Wild Liger's, it's been so long since I built the liger that I didn't remember any of it lol. It was a fun and enjoyable build.
So what you see in pics 2 and 3 is the "wild blast." There's this blue fire effect on their eye when they do that and it matches their pilot but I really don't care about the humans in the Zoids lol. The final pic is where it's on my shelf right now, along with the HMM Wild Liger and two of the Tomy "villain" Zoids from Wild: the Gilraptor and the Death Rex. The latter is the big bad's and it was the model to get for Christmas the year it came out. They're both custom painted they're not supposed to be those colors lol. The Gilraptor is supposed to be Red Eyes Black Dragon themed lol












