November 2, 2001 CURRENT RUMBLE Further Arkestrations.... (with apologies to Sun Ra) Corey 11.02.01 "Ark!" this hairy angel sings, "Check these funky diecast things!" Okay, okay. I'll lay off the lyrical for the time being. It seems as if the Ark diecasts are really being rediscovered here on the virtual pages of the Rumble and, while I usually avoid fads, my own recent acquisitions cry out for exposure. I've long sought the Ark Baltan -being a fan of Ultrakaiju and diecast, who wouldn't?- but the others, quite honestly, always left me cold. You've seen the pictures: These toys colors and forms go beyond quaint and interesting, seeming, instead, to crash headlong into the realms of gaudy funk, and perplexing ugliness. Who'd want them on a shelf? Ugh! So it was as an afterthought that I went ahead and bought the Black King piece when it was offered at a very reasonable, package-deal price with the Baltan. Imagine my surprise when I got them and discovered that I preferred Black King to Baltan! The lesson: You simply cannot trust pictures to judge these. No matter how well composed or lit, 2 dimensions cannot translate the wonderful look and feel of these toys. That being said I was also a little afraid of my newest vintage pieces. I was obviously not the first owner. They had no excess damage but a beautiful patina of loving wear, but the plastic of the many joints and pieces seems a bit brittle. Thus, they radiate a fragility and museum worthiness whose combination renders this collector loath to manhandle them. Yet they DEMAND it. And therein lies the reason for this Rumble: The Ark toys greatest gimmick, over and above their famous and unnecessarily powerful missiles, is their Lego-like ability to mix and match parts both with the extra bits they come with as well as the others from their series! I carefully mimicked a few of the wacky designs on the back of Baltan and Black King's boxes but they seemed rather tame to me. So I did a couple of my own. The first intentionally utilized all but one piece from the two toys -I had to see the excess. Then I messed about, discovering a combination for those of you who HATE the kaiju aspect of these toys. Because of my fear of further damaging these toys, I stopped short of further combinations for the time being, but I did enough to know that I NEED the rest of this series!  RUMBLE INDEX  |  CURRENT RUMBLE