toyboxdx toy blog brog: is graceful art of daily expressing japanese toy  

I loves me a good gimmick, even if it’s on a dime store robo.

1977 rules baby! Grendizer (the tail end of the series, thank you Duban) for starters, which Gingaizer no doubt Nippon Animation’s answer to.. What is there to say about a standard sized vinyl? Two points of articulation and an AWESOME backer and header card! A very rare sight indeed. It pisses me that these are not more of these standard guys available. I have a very hard time believing that they were / are popular as the show sucked ass so bad….

The other two standard sofubi continue to elude me for now, but I will hopefully finish the trifecta of Granfighter, Spinlancer and Bullgator soon.

Reigning Looney in partnership with Fewture have released some modern representations here, but have yet to deliver.

Head over to the BBS and discuss HERE!

Nakajima Tekkaman Blade talker

I figured a thread about talking vinyl was overdue, I’ll start it off with a not-so-perfect but still respectable  Space Knight Tekkaman via Nakajima. Enjoy!

Spiderman and a giant japanese robot, what a cool combination.
The dream came true in the late 70ties when Toei produced a TV series
based on Marvel’s popular character.

Popy made lots of cool toys related to this series. Chogokins, plasic toys, Dolls, sofubis etc.

One of these toys is this Spider-Man & Leoparodon Set.
I bought it in the early 90ties in germany from a guy with a giant
Spiderman collection. This guy, Peter Bergner, is a real “toy-collecting-legend”
here in germany. I remember that I made a custom Popy box, for a Spidey figure
for him…holy shit, long time ago.

Spidey & Leoparodon are  made complete out of plastic.
Cheap toys, but they look great in the nice designed blister box.

Here are a few more detail shots of the accessories and the box art.

More fotos as usual in the BBS.

The postcard that came with the set is real funky.
Spider-Man on the fotos looks a bit…hmmm…strange…
maaan, his  lower  legs…a bit short?

Glorious.

You know you have become predictable when:

He: ” I have these Gaiking baby shoes so if we ever have kids”…
She: …”they can stare at them in the packaging”?

Today a double feature: A few sofubis and a single.

What has Columbia Records in common with Bullmark?
Not much, but Columbia also released a Rockbat vinyl…stereo sofubi.
When I saw this 7” on Yahoo a few months ago, I thought this
single is a MUST for a serious Rockbat collector ;-)

Funky sound for a funky TV series!
The single comes with a real nice fold-out cover.

Now having the soundtrack, playing with the sofubis makes even more fun.
Apropos sofubis…also got one of the 2 Bullmark carded sofubi-sets.
This is the 4 figures set. The other set is a bit cooler, because it contains 5 figures
and they are more detailed. But, I’m happy that I scored this one here!

…and now…premiere…I finally found out how to post thumbnails linked to bigger pictures. Yeah!  ;-)
Here are a few detail shots and scans of the fold-out cover of the single.

Thats it for today.

More fotos in the BBS.

I have for some time been trying to figure out if Angel, was associated with Bullmark. I have only seen two tins with the Angel logo alone, but no outward connection to the other company.

Until now.

Found on yet another tin, is a clear indication the direct connection between the two.

More to come.

I think the illustrations by N. Maemura really ROCKS!!! This card insert was for a Blazer sofubi. I knew I had to add it to my collection the moment I saw it.

This is the back side to the card insert above. Now, where do I find that retro looking base station?