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

ＵＦＯ戦士ダイアポロン

“You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda.”

So true. One of the greatest & successful slogans in motor-history.

…ups, Bullmark did it again. A robot that could transform into a motorbike
is riding a motorbike. Strange, but kinda cool.

Maybe Zaboga ran out of fuel, or he had a well-paid sponsoring contract
with Honda? Who knows. It was pretty trendy to ride a Honda four in
the 70ties and Zaboga was a freakin’ cool guy. But this time he’s not riding
a big 750 four…he’s riding a little Trail ST70 aka Dax. Holy shit!

I have a few “Zaboga bike toys” now, but this one is the coolest.
When it popped up as a direct-buy on ebay, I only needed 4 seconds of thinking
if I “need” it or not. Responsible for my fast decision was the box-art and
the fact that I love bots on bikes.

Lets start with the box.

The box-art is fantastic and also very surreal.
Zaboga crusing around on his little Honda, meets his alter ego,
transformed into a bike. Must be disturbing for him.

Here’s the toy.

The Zaboga figure is vinyl and most parts of the bike are made out
of plastic. The whole toy is really well made, with lots of nice details.
Front wheel fork is solid metal, also the handle bar. It also has a
friction drive action feature.

Here are some more detail shots of the toy.
Click on them to enlarge.

Here you could see Zaboga on his little Honda Trail together with
a few other Bullmark Zaboga bikes.

That was my easter-bike-brog. Hope you liked it.
Now I have to find a Bullmark big sofubi Zaboga in “bikemode”
and the big plastic Honda 750 four with Zaboga…still enough stuff
out there to collect ;-)

More fotos as usual in the BBS.

I did something crazy on this 1st April!
My toys got the chance seeing the sun for 10 minutes.
Probably the value of my collection had been decreased for several hundred bucks…who cares ;-)

edit/ I even touched my toys without gloves

Brog No.4 in a row. My new personal record ;-)

It’s time for my first serious Rockbat Brog this year.
I bought a very special toy last year, that I want to show you today!

Not only the toy is very special, also the way it was packed when it arrived in germany.

Well protected in finest japanese Tupperware. Nice!

My first thought when I opened the box and looked at the toy.
“Rockbat looked much bigger on the auctions fotos on yahoo!”
Second thought: “Did I really paid so much for THAT! I must be crazy!!”

No, this wasn’t an “under the radar auction”. A few other crazy idiots really wanted this little sucker.
At the end I won it and I better don’t talk about the price.

Mint in bag. No cool artwork, not painted, nothing. That’s how a holy grail should look like.

Attention>Rockbat-NERD-Mode>activated>
This piece really is unique in my eyes. In all the years I collect Rockbat related
toys and scan Yahoo and ebay regular, I never seen this toy before.
>Rockbat-NERD-Mode>deactivated
Most likely this toy isn’t special at all. Maybe it’s such a cheap shit that nobody
wants to list it on yahoo, because it’s impossible to sell it. Who knows…

Again I destroyd the C-10-holiness of a toy. I opened the bag and removed the staples.
Shit…what have I done! Now I have to find another mint specimen in bag.

Rockbat has a Bullmark copyright marking on his forehead and a Cisco marking
on the back of his head. I couldn’t find out anything about Cisco. If anybody has informations
about Cisco, please let me know.

Rockbat is ready for some skydiving!

Here you could see the little blue guy with some sofubi brothers.

That’s it! I think everything is said about this awesome vintage collectible.
If another Rockbat will ever pop up on Yahoo, I’m pretty sure the price will
be astronomical…with the help of this Brog ;-)

More fotos in the BBS.

It happened last year. I scanned as usual Tekkaman auctions on Yahoo Japan
and…BANG…there was this strange looking Tekkaman vinyl.
Never seen this guy before, or after this auction again. Nobody bid und him,
so far I remember. No wonder. He looked horrible on the auction fotos.
Well, don’t mean his general styling. He looked super dirty.

When he arrived a few weeks later I could say. YES, he was super dirty!
Looked that he spent the last 20 years in an oil spill. Poor oily, slimy, stinking bastard.
But after a few hours of intensive cleaning he looked pretty nice.
And again: Shit preserves condition.

Here’s the man! He stands 9,45 inches (24 cm) tall, completely vinyl and he could
move his arms & upper part of his body.

He don’t look that bad. Maybe his arms are a “bit” deformed.
But if you photograph him from below, his arms look “ok” ;-)

It seems that my Tekkaman had some serious fights during his long toy life.
His fists are pretty worn and he also lost the tip of one of his “horns”.

Ok…his arms look strange. Non-stop-biceps-posing-style.

Posing with the Nakajima standard size sofubi and the big Talker.

He has no markings on his feet or somewhere else. Poor little no-name bastard!
Lets be generous and give him a cool name: Tekkaman BPKO sofubi

If you know his parents —> BBS

“I need this!” was my first thought, when the auction popped up on Yahoo.
I didn’t had a clue what’s the story was about this “autograph” and I still
have no clue today. Never seen one before.

A few more people wanted to win the auction, but at the end I succeed ;-)
I had to wait a few weeks, till this great addition to my Astekaizer (or is it Aztecaser)
collection arrived in germany.

Backside with cool compilation of japanese tokusatsu-super-stars.
So there must be more autoraph cards out there?!

The “autograph”on the front side isn’t printed on the card.
It’s a “real” hand written autograph. But what does the autograph say and who signed it?
Maybe Miki Shimamura (島村美輝), wo played Shun Takahane/Aztecaser (鷹羽俊/アステカイザー),
has written it and this is the fictive autograph of Astekaizer. Just an theory.

Lots of questions. Maybe someone has an answer.

So guys. I need answers!
If you know something about these mysterious autograph cards. Please tell me.

—–> BBS

Today my little Mr. Kamikaze story.
Not really an exciting story, but a good example how to turn crap into gold.

As usual, the story starts with a Yahoo Japan auction.
Object of desire was a Nakajima sandard size Mr. Kamikaze sofubi from
the Tiger Mask series. The figure looked bad on the auction fotos.
Dirty, lots of paint rubs and the color of his head and body also looked suspicious.

Here are the original auction fotos.

But even Mr. Kamikaze was looking pretty fucked-up, I thought he has
some “potential”. His face, specially his nose looked pretty good on
the fotos. Often the noses of these sofubis are in bad condition.

Perfect for a restoration project!
Didn’t have a “bid battle” on this guy and won him for a good price.

One week ago he arrived with lots of other stuff rom Japan and I was
a bit shocked when I hold him in my hands for the first time.

I only have this foto of my “first contact” with Mr. Kamikaze.
Something was wrong with him…his entire upper part of the body and both arms
had been repainted with a “flesh-colored” paint. Also his mask been repainted
with white color. Holy crap, this is not the original paint!
At first sight it looked impossible to restore him. Thats the reason why I didn’t took
some detail “before fotos”.

Let’s get rid of the shitty paint, no matter what happens!  No risk, no fun.
This was my job for the next few days.

With tons of Q-Tips soaked with brush cleaner, sandpaper, car paint polish/cleaner,
a super sharp scalpel and lots of patience I really got rid of the paint, without destroying
the figure.

Under the lacquer layer the figure was in perfect condition. It seems that the repaint
protected this figure the last few decades.
Tricky was cleaning the head from the white paint (see fotos). I needed a few hours to do that.
Almost like a surgeon I had to rub down the paint without ruining the orginal paintwork.
Disassemble and reassemble the head, body and arms I did with the “hot water method”.
I think this is the best way to get the vinyl flexible. Using a hair dryer is too dangerous.

“Operation” Mr. Kamikaze was a full success. At the end he really looks great.

Now Mr. Kamikaze is ready to rumble again!

Is Mr. Kamikaze ready to kick some asses?

More in the BBS.