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

I’ve always loved the mechanical designs of Leiji Matsumoto. The ships he came up with were just fantastic, futuristic but still holding onto design elements of a bygone era.

My Favorite ship he designed was the Arcadia, specifically the Blue Arcadia seen in the Harlock TV series and Manga. Now you need to think back to a time before Aoshima and Taito were on the scene releasing high quality fantastic representations of this great ship.

I spent months going through different contacts trying to track down one of the pla models that were made back in the 70’s by Takara and/or Bandai. One day after I’d all but given up I got an e-mail from a well known vintage model kit dealer located in NJ saying that he’d just acquired a “rare” Takara kit of the Arcadia for the “low low” price of $120…. Like I said it was an obsession… I sent the money order out and waited a week.

What Came was a tiny, poorly made model, devoid of any realistic details or proportions in a box with kick ass graphics and an original price tag that listed the original selling price at a WHOPPING 78 yen.

I never assembled the kit cause I considered it more of a collectible than something to mess with, though I did take resin casts and built up a couple ones for my own amusement and sold some crude repros to some buddies of mine. And of course right after this whole ordeal I managed to find one of the Blue Arcadias that Jesnet made which was bigger better detailed and pre-painted for about $60…..*sigh* the lengths we go through for our obsessions. To this day I still hunt down new and interesting representations of the arcadia, the latest being this gem of a sofubi made by Takatoku.

And the journey continues.

You know it is love, when your heart skips a beat, as you stare at the glow of the auction screen. Going out to dinner this month seems like less of a priority , and eating instant ramen becomes a standby pastime. When the objective part of your brain fights back, and tells you it is a fucked up toy, while your geek gets all hot a bothered by its camp factor. Yeah the arms are short and gimpy. Yeah the thing is small, and yeah the wheels in the chest seem like a good idea, but don’t translate to the most fun toy in the world.

With a wink and a sigh, the love of the funk will wash away the power of the practical demons that try to whisper in your ear. Screw reality, screw practicality, I want super deformed soulfulness, gimp arms and all.
Riding the high from my last Kamen Rider tin discovery, prompts a scanning the net for more of the same.

In the special Tin edition of Figure Oh, I see three Kamen tins. The famed( and coveted) Bullmark battery op, the elusive Angel version 1 walker, and this guy. This particular toy interested me simply because unlike the others it had an almost kid-like proportion. I picture elves making this toy.

The only other tin that I know of with this function is a piece that might have predated it by a few years..most likey the late 60’s. I am not sure of the size of this HORIKAWA FLYING ROBOT, but they appear to share the same concept.

This Kamen is made by Bullmark and appears to be made around the same time as the battery op, predating both Angel tins.
This is by far the smallest tin walker I have ever seen. Shocking is a word that comes to mind, when it arrived in the mail. Expecting it to be in the standard 9-10 inches, it seemed dwarfed at the 6-6.5 or so inches it clocks in at. It feels akin to the Super Robot mini Marmit tins of a few years back. This however almost adds to its charm, as its size gives it a fragility and presence that is gemlike.

It mainly functions by reving the wheels on the chest off the floor and placing it on its legs. The motion of the wheels activates the walking mechanism, which moves the toy forward. As another option, the toys arms can be repositioned, and placed flat on his belly, pushing along the floor while making the classic “badadadadadadadada” whine. This of course is his “flying” position… though I don’t recall Kamen ever flying.

It is pure and unadulterated toy. It has no slickness, nor modernity. The function is awkward at best and the construction though solid, feels minature and vulnerable.

That is what makes it work. It pretends to be nothing more than what it is… a childs plaything.

Super robot sofubi love..

Gordo Prust had probably no idea it would come to this.

I don’t collect vinyl. I am an infant in that niche, and leave it to the heavy hitters. Its just too overwhelming. But these talkers bitch slap me into submission every time I see one. As with MFVs they seem to be the drug of choice at the moment. Maybe it is the ethenyl, or maybe it is the funk. I for one ( As Uncle Al once said) need “just one fix”. But what a fix it is.

OK, OK.. I know I’ve thrown the hype on these guys before. AND, I know they get a bad wrap, but I fucking love this store. Every time without fail I score big here. Keep in mind, the internet has killed it. It’s killed the experience of going to a store and laying your hands on the god given funk made in the land of the rising sun destined to rest its smoked filled vinyl body in your gaijin hands.. The run on sentence lives. And so does Koenji’s finest, Gojira Ya mother fuckers!

If you ever find yourself in Koenji then you need to make the pilgrimage.

Godzilla Ya (Gojira-Ya)
3-67-1 Koenji, Suginami-ku
(phone) 03-3336-3178

www.plala.or.jp/godzillaya

Hours: 2pm – 9pm, closed Wed.

Jim casing the bar. Did I mention they have a bar?!:

The stairs:

All the way up:

Entry:

Inside:

Kozaki-san in the house:

ENJOY..

Check out:

Jim Maitland, Mike Johnson and that infamous Brian Flynn guy bolting after a night of maddening scores..

Repaints? Maybe… If you collect diecast than who the fuck cares right?? Ha! Check this place next time you’re in Tokyo.

A little added bonus;

Minister Alt and I from a candid vid from 2008 (notice the stock looks almost the same a year earlier). You can almost catch Hillsy and Mark G hiding in the background if you pay attention:

“Patch” (from the Japanese “pachi,” a.k.a. “pachimono” (パチもの), literally “fake”) toys are just what the name implies. It refers to basically any kind of bootleg, but these days is most enthusiastically applied to soft vinyl kaiju figures: some modern homages or parodies, some vintage knock-offs, and others totally original characters with suspiciously familiar-sounding monikers, named to lure confused parents into buying the wrong toy (shades of “Kore Ja Nai Robo.”) They’ve gotten so popular that there’s even an annual “Pachimono Kaiju Summit” of collectors in Tokyo.

Above: a vintage vinyl kaiju by Miura Toy, discovered by Jim Maitland at a shop here in Neo-Tokyo, one of only two the obscurer-than-obscure manufacturer is known to have released. Any resemblance to more famous kaiju characters is purely… intentional.

Right now, the some of the most sought-after vintage pachi-kaiju toys are probably those made by an equally minor maker called “I.K.B.” (“Imagawa Kyodai Bussan,” or “Imagawa Brothers Products”), which in the early Seventies made a super-groovy series of pachimono Hedorah toys (1, 2, 3) that inspired a popular series of homages by the “designer vinyl” manufacturer Gargamel.

Ladies (ha!) and gentlemen (double ha!), may I have a moment of silence to commemorate a momentous occasion? I have finally completed my collection of “standard sized” Takatoku vinyls of Bryger, Baxinger, and Sasuraiger. Let us bust out the parachute pants in appreciation for that most Eighties of anime series, the J9 shows. All zipped up? “Fat laces” laced? “Members Only” jackets on? Hair gelled and Rubik’s Cubes greased? Great. Here we go.

Bryger (1981, front ‘n center) was the first J9 show, a super low-budget SF ripoff of — I mean, homage to — the wildly popular Lupin III. Apparently forgetting that he lived in early Eighties Japan, the director originally proposed making the show without any robots in it at all. I imagine that wildly creative idea persisted for roughly fifteen seconds into the first conversation with sponsor Takatoku. Anyway, “J9” is the name of a team that features prominently throughout all three shows in the series. The screenwriter, Yu Yamamoto, supposedly named it after a 1980 Sony SL-J9 Betamax deck he wanted but couldn’t afford. It was a trememdous hit that spawned two sequels. The show, I mean. Not the Betamax. That didn’t spawn any sequels at all.

And lo, Bryger begat Baxinger (1982, back left), which was a sci-fi anime re-telling of the famous story of the Shinsen-gumi, a 19th century group of lawmen that you’ve never heard of but is legendary in Japan. How they managed to squeeze the twenty-strong Shinsen-gumi crew into five tiny vehicles, we’ll probably never know. It’s set six hundred years after the first series, in a terrifyingly far-flung future where really ugly motorcycles can fly. And magically grow in size. And combine into giant robots.

And yea, Baxinger begat Sasuraiger (1983, back right), which is in turn set two centuries beyond its predecessor, and is loosely based on Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.” It stars a handsome ne’er-do-well who lives aboard a gasoline-powered (!) steam train / spaceship / giant robot that races across the galaxy. Why build a robot that transforms into a train in space? Hmm. In any event, know this: “Sasuraiger” is about as punny of a name ever to be coined in Japanese, coming from the word “sasurai” (“to wander.”) It’s like…”The Wanderizer.” “Wan-dorr!” “Wan-derrr?” Whatever. You bought the ticket, you ride the damn train.

Oh yeah: here’s a little parting shot.

The Astekaiser tin from Yonezawa has always been one of my favorites. It is completely unapologetic in its garish colors and design. The 1970’s Japanese hero perfectly encapsulated. Total personification of “da funk”. Astekaiser is the big boss with the oversized pinky ring, among a worthy gang of characters . I think it is his “Big Wheel on crack” bike however that sets him at another level, in which even the likes of the beloved Kamen Rider, seems tame in comparison.

How can you not want to ride that thing out of a Karaoke bar at 3am smashed on Calpis Sours ?

Got my CM’s Corporation ‘Mecha Action Series’ Brocken Labor (TV ver.) today. Having reviewed the previous M.A.S. AV-0 Peacemaker, i knew the easily dislodged cloth-covered joints would be a problem, but thankfully, the generally excellent sculpt and accessories made up for a lot. I’ll just let the pictures tell the story:

Brocken is much larger than the other law-enforcement labors. Here, it is set up with the optional ‘GSG-9’ armor parts.

Front view with a very recognizable ‘up-sized’ H&K MP-5 submachinegun.

From the back, you can make out the ‘heavy duty’ handles and waist mounted smoke dischargers.

Close up of mil-spec backpack.

Shoulder markings.

‘Fritz’ style helmet.

Exposed camera lens. The orb can be rotated.

Waist armor has clear orange parts for the ‘lights’.

On the back, however, the lights are just painted on. I like the Izubuchi trademark ‘7-dots’ on the side armor plate.

Equipped with B.F.G. ‘MG-42’ equivalent weapon. Unfortunately, the supplied ‘power hose’ was too short to connect the end of the gun with the waist port. I will probably replace it with a after-market hobby part.

Simple but effective details on the solid-molded gun. You need to attach the fix-folded bipod and the side-swivel handle.

Pretty ‘Jin-Roh’ if you let your imagination roam.

The weapons are a bit smaller than similar 1/6 scale versions… at least they weren’t totally ‘copy n paste’.

Here’s the ‘normal’ version in an encounter with Ohta’s No. 2 Ingram.

Hard to match up to Brocken’s sheer brawn…

Ohta takes a left to the head… and gets MAD.

A deftly applied stunstick whacks off the Brocken’s visor (and the operator’s smile)…

Coup de grace, Ohta style.

THE END.

For close to 8,000 yen, this toy poseable figure is not meant for the casual Patlabor fan. Even discounted, the terrible joints would make for a lousy play experience. Make no mistake: THE JOINTS WILL GET DISLODGED INSIDE THE CLOTH COVERS. But if you’re handy with plamo skills, and not afraid to rescue an otherwise stunning display piece, then the Brocken is simply brilliant.

Alt, blowing a load. Stay tuned, more very, very soon..