Overview
Ichigeki Sacchu!! Hoi-Hoi-san was a comedy manga by Kunihiko Tanaka that was released in 2003 and ran until 2004. Set in a far future where insects have become immune to pesticides, Japan was forced to create small robots, including the titular HoiHoi-san, heavily armed with various weapons to kill insects; these robots were also treated as dolls, dressed in costumes and given non-weapon accessories. The franchise was mildly successful, spawning a ten minute OVA, a PlayStation 2 game, and even a spinoff, HoiHoi-san Legacy, that is still ongoing to this day.
Kotobukiya released kits of the series in 2009, starting with HoiHoi-san herself, before going on to release kits of the series sporadically throughout the early 2010s; this would be prior to their massive success with Phantasy Star Online 2 kits and long before their double whammy of Frame Arms Girl and Megami Device. The kits received a small resurgence in 2021 when sets under the HoiHoi-san Legacy label were produced, with the newest kit, Usagear, being released in mid-2025 and a re-release of HoiHoi-san’s Heavy Battle variant released in November 2025.
Construction and Engineering
A lot of the early HoiHoi-san kits have plastic and build quality expected of Kotobukiya in the late 00s; don’t come into them expecting similar quality to even the earliest Frame Arms Girl or Megami Device kits, but they’re still reasonably good and decent quality for the time – even second-hand kits from that period hold up reasonably well. The later kits come with the advantage of being made with 2020s technology and quality assurance, ensuring a good build experience that won’t take up a ton of time.
The engineering of the kits is very simple, but then it doesn’t need to be anything else. They’re very easy to pose, flexible for being super-deformed model kits, and fairly robust for molds and designs that predate most modern girlpla. Overall, for kits and molds that are possibly older than some of the audience reading this guide, they do the job just fine. If we did have to fault Kotobukiya on anything, it would be the need to add paint to color correct parts of the kits; however, this is not as pronounced or as common with these kits as a lot of their other kits from the period such as their Phantasy Star kits.
Aesthetics:
HoiHoi-san kits are definitely not made for the usual market of girlpla modelers; they’re completely lacking in sex appeal, super-deformed, very comedic and unserious in appearance. Their closest comparison from more modern times are the Isekai Techo no Ryoko kits with a similar appearance, and their closest contemporary are the PangYa and ToHeart2 Plafia kits from PM Office A. However, if small bug-killing robot maids are your thing, HoiHoi-san is right up your alley, and there’s a certain appeal to just how gremlin-like the kits are. Certainly, they stand out on a shelf populated with scantily-clad cyborg women and women in form-fitting spandex.
Of course, if you are one of the rare Westerners that has actually consumed HoiHoi-san in its original media, you will probably enjoy this toyline.
Ease of Acquisition:
HoiHoi-san is fairly common on the secondhand market, usually commanding prices around £15-40 ($20-53) depending on the kit and its age. The newer kits produced under the Legacy label will usually command somewhere around ¥4800 (£22/$29) and have the advantage of being regularly produced, being kits made in the 2020s. However, getting them in stores outside of Japan is the hard part – most places that have HoiHoi-san kits will generally be Japanese storefronts, as the franchise barely exists outside of Japan.
Personal Verdict?
A very quirky set of model kits, HoiHoi-san kits do show their age as pre-2015 girlpla, but with a unique aesthetic, ease of construction and generally being of decent quality, you can’t go wrong with having at least one. If nothing else, they look really funny next to more human-proportioned kits. If you are somehow one of the few individuals to have actually read or consumed any of the HoiHoi-san media, more power to you and you’ll definitely like these ones.
Personal Recommendations:
We liked Combat-san quite a fair bit, but honestly HoiHoi-san herself is the highlight of the line in all her variants, so if you’re looking to have at least one on the shelf, we recommend her or Combat-san.
Official Site: https://www.kotobukiya.co.jp/en/title/hoihoi-san-legacy/
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