'The Gundam Figures are Like the Partners I Spend My Life With'

I always figured kids outgrow their toys by the time they hit puberty and move on to more meaningful pursuits. Apparently this dude never quite outgrew childhood, so when mommy discarded his toys, he burned the house down.

Thirty-year-olds suddenly separated from their toys apparently take things pretty hard.

A Japanese man has admitted to burning down his family home after his mother threw away some of his favourite robot toys from the "Gundam" animation series.

Yoshifumi Takabe, aged 30 and living with his mother, said he had become suicidal after she dumped some of the robots, of which he had enough to fill 300 boxes stacked to the ceiling, the Sports Nippon said Wednesday.

The blaze on August 9 last year completely destroyed their two-storey wooden house in Kasai, Hyogo prefecture, but no one was injured.

"The Gundam figures are like the partners I spend my life with," he reportedly said after pleading guilty at western Kobe's District Court. "I wanted to die with them in a fire if they were to be thrown out."