I’ve never made a secret of my thing for lion kings. I like ’em round and big. And while Toynami’s brand new 9″ vinyl portrayal of Voltron is a lot svelter than Popy’s sumo wrestler-esque classic 10″ chunky combining Golion sofubi, it’s also an eighth of the price. At $25, this is a tempting treat indeed.
Max and Miriya, sittin’ in a tree…
In this month’s edition of the “USA Otackers,” our monthly column in Figure Oh (No. 140), Patrick Macias and I bust the case of the Macross “marriage set” wide open with a report on the crazed American fans who, like Fox Mulder in the X-Files, “want to believe.” (For those not in the know, the mythical marriage set supposedly contains both Takatoku 1/55 Max and Miriya Valkyries packaged in a single box. Although American collectors have claimed sightings for years, no evidence has ever turned up, and both Japanese toy scholars and industry insiders insist that it doesn’t exist.)
The article is all in Japanese, so you’ll have to rent a friend to translate if you’re language-impaired, but I am happy to report that piece apparently made a bigger splash than I thought. It came up during a totally unrelated conversation with “top men” from a Certain Japanese Toy Company That Shall Not Be Named last night. Absolutely no promises or guarantees of any kind made or implied. But how fitting would it be if the combined wishes of uncounted Macross-maniacs finally willed the damn thing into existence?
Cool! The new site design is up. I managed to violate every “best practice” we preach at iFactory (my day job) by hot swapping all the CSS, includes, Word Press themes, and Phorum templates on a live site without any kind of staging, validating or link checking. I’m certain ugly things will need to be fixed over the next few weeks so bear with us. Total update time: 6 hours.
Meanwhile, there’s a lot going on — really.
First off, please hold the dates of November 13 and 14th. We have a monster Brog coming for you on what promises to be a completely amazing gathering to close out this decade. Seriously: if you’re into Japanese toys of any type, you need to block this time and get ready to book a flight and nab a room. The ass-kicking Kimono Close-Out earlier this year will end up feeling like a tupperware party compared to what’s about to go down. Stay tuned.
In addition to The Event as I’ve come to think of it, a 10 year journey is coming to a close for me as a bunch of dominoes line up and prepare to fall. Check the /ramble in the coming days (I know I know. Updated once every 2 years…) for more announcements on product developments we’ve been slow roasting, and for more info on a new company that’s we’re launching.
That’s it for now. Peace!
Alen
[Discuss]
After oggling dozens of 1/3000 Takatoku SDF-1 auctions in the last few months, and seeing them all end up higher than what I was willing to pay (really, 12k yen for a beaten up incomplete 1/3000 SDF-1 that makes my Strike Valk look pristine in comparison? Er, no.), I gave up, and bought an obviously unloved 1/6300 SDF-1 instead (for, oh irony, 3,000 yen). It might be one of this year’s better decisions.
Sometimes I do things backwards and make weird decisions.
For most people, a 1st version Shogun Warrior Dragun is one of the first jumbos they buy. I mean, it’s the same as the Popy version at a fraction of the price and not hard to find. So why get the ugly one with the stupid lightning bolts on the legs?
Well, in my case, I happened upon a good deal for an original Popy Dragun and being me, I decided on the spot that when I eventually bought a Shogun Dragun, I wanted the lightning legs one. Sure, it’s stupid and ugly, but I thought it better to get the one the was the most unlike the Popy version, for the sake of variety.
Well, it took a surprisingly long time, but just today I finally got one in the mail. And now I have all 4 of the major known Dragun jumbos.
You are looking at them in chronological order. From left to right, Popy, Mattel, Nacoral and Famosa.
OK, so now let’s play “spot the differences”. Using my own specimens and what has long been on the Wildtoys Shogun Warriors page, here’s a rundown of the makeup of each toy, using the Popy toy as a “base”.
Popy
Mattel (1st version)
Mattel (2nd version)
Mattel (3rd version)
Mattel (4th version)
*These are things I just noticed today and haven’t seen documented elsewhere. So this change might have happened earlier. Notice that my Mattel is actually taller than the Popy!
Nacoral
Famosa
And naturally, they all have different boxes. So I’m unclear on that. Since I only own one Shogun Dragun, I am relying on John’s site for that information. And while his site says the Shoguns came with either 6 or 10 stars, the one I got today actually had 12 (4 each of blue, red and yellow). So I’m not sure what the deal is there.
And finally, on every single Dragun I have, the wheels attach differently. I don’t even know where to begin on that. And I’m sure I’m still forgetting things. But I’m sick of typing. Being an obsessive nerd is draining. Don’t try this at home!
Hello Guys, it’s time for my first “BROG”, so bear with me.
As some of you may or may not know, I’ve done quite a bit of Machinder restoration. I’ve also been playing with molding and all that for quite some time now as well. Since then I’ve always had in mind that I need to do some replica and push this a bit further.
2 Years ago I heard about a new technique for creating industrial prototypes (Stereolythography), and that this technique was usable for doing characters affordably. The technique consists of UV lazers tracing hundreds of layers in a liquid epoxy resin and the liquid solidifies where the lazers are tracing. Everything is computer generated and it uses 3d files. I know I don’t have Tom’s skills for sculping but I’m really familiar with 3d modeling and it seemed like something really
interesting to try one day.
Out of all the Jumbo Machinder Vilains, there are three that I’m just a big fan. Doublas M2, Garada K7 and Rokuron Q9. I was lucky enough to be able to grab the first one from a YJ auction. The second one I had to fight a bit to get. The Garada is one of Tom’s replicas and I’m realist when it comes to the fact that I’ll probably never own a real one, which is the case also for the Q9. You all know that this one is rare but it’s also very damn expensive. I had the opportunity to hold a real one in my hands not so long ago and from that point on I decided that I needed to make a replica myself.
The first step was the 3D model. With the help of an amazing 3d modeler, I was able to have a 3D file looking really good. I cleaned it up and adjusted it to match the real thing as much as possible.
I then searched to find a good company to build it in Stereolythography. Budgets where really high, like almost twice my budget. Then I came accross a Belgium Company called Materialise who turned out to be the European leader in this field. I received very good feedback from them, and they where ready to drop the price a lot to help me with building this project. They were really amazing and helpful.
The second step was the casting of the replica. The result and material where perfect.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go for the full finish look (cash is not falling from the sky at the moment..), so I had to do all the cleaning of the pieces and sanding to make everything smooth and perfect looking.
I received all the casted pieces a week before I was going on holiday, so I took them all with me to spend my holidays next to the swimming pool,under an umbrella, with my sand paper, cleaning a part each day. All the little rivets needed to be done after as it would have made the 3D file very heavy and it was easier to do them
after. Thanks to Dave, Tom and a lot of pictures from theirs, that became easy to do.
So, after a week under the sun, everything was clean and all the rivets where done.
Now, the third step was the painting. This step was really difficult as it’s almost impossible to know what’s the right color of each part based on pictures. I’ve collected a lot of pictures of several different specimens, and they all look different, depending on your camera setting and lights conditions, sometimes the heads look blue/green, sometimes
blue. So after collecting more pictures and with the help of Dave who took some extra pics for me, I had a better idea what color it should be. I decided to do it with spray paint, but here also, it’s impossible to know exactly what color will come out of the spray, internet references are not the same color as what’s on the spray itself and the color that comes out is always different. So , I did some quick tests and it turned out that most of them where ok. Ready for painting! This toke me more time than I was expecting. But finally with a lot of patience, masking tape, and good weather conditions, the paint job was finish.
One piece was missing and I decided that I will build it by hand, the connection between the two necks. So after assembling all the pieces together, I built this little piece like the little cherry you put on top of the cake.
At the end I’m really happy with the result and the experience was fascinating. It really gave me tons of ideas for the future. The company who did the casting have other techniques to duplicate a model after with a run like 25 pieces. I’ve ask for a quote to do like 25 Rokuron and it seems that it will cost something like 850 Euros for an
unpainted specimen and if I do 25 of them, less is of course more expensive and you have to add the time and material for the painting and assembly.
There’s also the copyright issue. For one single piece for personnal use, there’s no problem, but if I start selling copies I guess there could be an issue.. So I was thinking that maybe I can design my own Machinder and Vilains in the pure style of the old guys we all love. I can maybe get the price to drop down because the design will be more simple . But, it
will turn around 850 Euros for a finished specimen of a personnal desing. What to you guys think of this? Are you going to be interested in sometthing like this? At that price??
Alas, here is the Rokuron Q9 with my other Jumbo Machinders.
Here’s a credit list of all the people who helped me in creating this replica. I want to thank them a lot:
Nekrodave, Tom Franck and Erik Sjoen for their help and pictures.
Kazunori Saito for letting me play with his Q9.
Vincent Boutry for the 3D modeling.
Materialze for the sculpt.
Erik Sjoen for helping me put this Brog together.
And my girlfriend for her patience and understanding.
And thanks to all of you for your motivation even if I don’t get the time to contribute that often.
Cheers from Belgium!
Mike
PS: Wow that was long.. Sounds like I’ve won the NY Marathon or something like that hahahahaha…..yeah but I’m so happy that it’s finally finished.
Went to lunch with the Chairman, and I figured what better time to post my first brog than after receiving such a cool item from Erik.
Thank you man!
Everybody knows that Godbird is the word. So long as it’s a mini-sofubi, anyway. Soul of Chogokin Raideen, eat your over-engineered heart out. No working parts and two-piece construction? That’s QUALITY, gentlemen.
Happy birfday to me. Thanks Alen-One!
A multi-part review in which I continue raving about little known Virtual-On toys…
Sega’s Real Model series seems to be mostly known for the rather immobile anime character statues and Evangelion Evas that made up most of it. However, Sega also released a small number of mechs (“Virtuaroids”) from their “Cyber Troopers Virtual-On” robot fighting game. These are considerably more articulated than the other releases. Five different Virtuaroid models were released: Temjin, Viper II, Raiden, Fei-Yen, and Apharmd. In this review I will cover two of them: Temjin and Raiden (Real Models 05 and 08, respectively), and their P2 (Player 2) recolors released later on. I hope to review the rest of them later on (hence the ‘Pt. 1’ in the title).
(more…)
One of those tins that you always tell yourself you will get around to getting once the bigger names are out of the way. Like Jeeg’s tin incarnation, it does not always bring the amount of respect it should. I finally got around to locating one in the condition I was comfortable with. Even though not a terribly difficult piece to find, the majority of boxes are in worn condition at best.
The self described “Warrior of Justice†and noble leader of Akumaizer Three, Zabitan has a demonic look that makes me think Kaman Rider and DevilMan might have a hidden drunken night of passion together back in 75′.
Although one of the few Takatoku tins, the Zabitan zenmai pound for pound is as beautiful as any Bullmark counterpart. This is in part due to the remarkable hand spray painting on the head, in addition to a overall sophisticated and classic color palette.
A true hidden gem among the easier to find vintage tin walkers.
