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September 18, 2009

[WTF?] Marine…derr!

Filed under: Stoopid,Toy Love — Sanjeev @ 3:24 pm

Y’know what I love about this hobby? It’s all the little mysteries one encounters… For some of us, the thrill of discovering something new is just as meaningful as the thrill of the hunt!

This micro enigma of mine all started coming together in the past week or so. It all began with thomas posting a very cool Japanese website with tons of pics of obscure toys. And since I’ve always been fascinated by underwater stuff, the special submarine mecha section was particularly killer!

Anyway, let me back up for a sec…see, this didn’t really begin with thomas’ post…

When I was a wee Bostonian in the early 80’s, fully immersed in Shogun Warrior and Force Five glory, I came across some super robot pencil-toppers at my grade-school’s “Field Day” one year. I had Grandizer and Star Poseidon. At least, those were the names I knew them as back then! They were, of course, Grendizer and Getter Poseidon. Anyway, I loved them to death and ever since getting back into toy collecting as an adult, I’ve always sought these little pencil adorning fuckers.

I’ve seen modern repops of these, often “painted” with a messy splash of color…but they just weren’t the same. See, the ones I had way back then were very dense, stiff PVC. The molding was super-clear, crisp, and clean. There were no paint apps whatsoever–just solid color. Heh…I remember my Grandizer was dark blue and my Poseidon was puke-green…

Anyway, a few months back, Nekrodave (fully aware of this little obsession of mine) pointed me out a couple eBay auctions for big lots of these modern pencil-toppers. I said, “fuck it”, and snatched ’em all up. Of course, they had my beloved Grandizer…but no Poseidon. :(

Eh well…the search continues.

These things are far more crude than their vintage counterparts. I’ve seen them in UFO catcher machines here and there…but had passed on them every time until now. The PVC is super-soft…almost keshigomu consistency. The molding is much mushier, with a lot of the detail softened out. But, hey, a big ass pile of ’em are still fun, right??

Among them are six individual sculpts in many different colors. Five of the sculpts are well-known robots: Grendy, Robo Kress from Machine Blasters, Mekanda Robo–looking rather odd without his antennae, Granzel from Kyodain, and Danguard Ace.

The thing is…who/what the fuck was that sixth sculpt!? I’d never seen this robot before:

Zero recollection of this robot from my youth–in pencil-topper form or otherwise–but I have seen him among these modern mushy pencil-toppers before. But I guess I’d just never bothered to investigate further…

Until now.

Now, back to the present…and thomas’ post.

Bored one day at work, I rummaged through the website he posted, noting cool things here and there…when I encountered this! No shit? Well, now we’re onto something! Nekrodave helped translate a bit and very shortly thereafter, we had a name, “Marinder“…and a Y!J search was underway!

The demand on these clearly isn’t very high, and despite a few boxed specimens being listed at 4k, I scored a MIB one for 1100 yen.

So, now, we certainly have more info on this guy than when we started…but does anyone know if there was a show/movie for this robot? A comic? I’m guessing he’s licensed and that there’s got to be some media for him. Afterall, each of the other pencil-toppers is a licensed character…and these two Marinder toys are SO different, I can’t imagine them NOT being legit.

If you have any info on Marinder or leads on more pencil-toppers, please post!

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