Behind the SD Gundam Mk-II Card from Comic BomBom, 1990

SD Gundam Mk-II Playing Card from Comic BomBom, February 1990

The item is a single playing card — the Jack of Diamonds — enclosed with the February 1990 issue of Comic BomBom, a children’s manga and hobby magazine published by Kodansha. It appears to have been part of a complete playing card deck distributed with that issue, though the precise format of that distribution is not fully confirmed. The card depicts SD Gundam Mk-II in the Super Deformed style: the iconic mobile suit rendered in the big-headed, two-to-three-head-tall chibi format that defined a generation of Gundam character goods.

Gundam Mk-II and Its Place in the Zeta Gundam Story

The Gundam Mk-II (RX-178) debuted in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, the 1985 TV anime directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino. In the story, the machine was originally developed by the Titans — a hardline faction within the Earth Federation — before being captured and operated by the anti-Federation resistance group AEUG. The white, blue, red, and yellow color scheme shown on this card is the AEUG configuration, which became the version most widely reproduced in merchandise and the one most fans associate with the design.

By 1990, the Mk-II had already established itself as one of the most recognizable mobile suits in the Universal Century timeline. The broader Gundam franchise had just come off the 1988 theatrical release of Char’s Counterattack and was building toward Gundam F91 in 1991 — a period of sustained visibility for the series across Japanese pop culture. For a magazine aimed at children with a strong interest in Gundam, featuring the Mk-II on a playing card was a natural choice.

SD Gundam and the Comic BomBom Partnership

SD Gundam — “SD” standing for Super Deformed — originated as a Bandai capsule toy line in the mid-1980s, reimagining Gundam mobile suits in a compact, cartoonish format. The line expanded rapidly into Bandai’s BB Senshi plastic model kits, original manga series, and OVA short films. By the late 1980s, SD Gundam was a significant cultural phenomenon alongside the main franchise, not a footnote to it.

Comic BomBom was among SD Gundam’s closest media partners throughout this period. The magazine serialized original SD Gundam stories — including the SD Gundam Gaiden / Knight Gundam series — and Gundam content was central to its identity. Enclosing an SD Gundam Mk-II playing card with the February 1990 issue was entirely consistent with that relationship, and with the illustrated “pointing pose” style common to promotional and bonus goods of the era.

How Furoku Items Become Collectibles Decades Later

In Japan, children’s and hobby magazines have long supplemented their content with furoku — free bonus items enclosed with each issue. These ranged from sticker sheets and paper crafts to mini model kits and printed playing cards. For Comic BomBom readers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, furoku were a genuine part of the magazine’s appeal and a real purchase incentive.

Because furoku were distributed only through retail magazine sales — bookshops and convenience stores across Japan — there was no secondary supply channel and no reprint run. A reader who lost the card in 1990 had no way to replace it, and since the item moved through no official international channel, it remained entirely within Japan’s domestic market at the time. More than 35 years on, printed goods from children’s publications of that era carry the natural fragility of material produced at scale for a young audience, without any expectation of long-term preservation. That material reality is part of what makes surviving furoku from this period an object of interest for collectors drawn to Zeta Gundam, to the SD aesthetic, or to the specific tradition of the Japanese magazine bonus item.