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

I’ve been all wicky in the wacky woo for sofubi minis lately. These came in the mail today:

Man, I love Getta III. But I love him even more with a huge-assed head.

This is a vintage Bandai kit, roughly six inches tall, found assembled and painted at SuperFest earlier today, and given to me by Jim Maitland. (Thanks again!) It is an amazing, one-of-a-kind piece of art. Sure, the kit’s mass produced — but the paint job isn’t!

The thing I like best about stuff like this? The decisiveness of it. Modern portrayals of old characters follow the designs of the characters on-screen down to the pencil-scratch. Old ones? Not so much. Designers had to make brutal design choices to get around manufacturing limitations of the day. The shortsighted might describe the inevitable compromises needed to bring off an insane a transformation asGetta Robo’s in three dimensions as a “sacrifice.” I call it “style.” These guys weren’t the sorts of people to let a little realism get in the way of making a kick-ass toy. Forget the stuff on the TV screen for a second and LOOK AT THIS THING. Tell me it isn’t insanely great in its own hydrocephalic way. Okay, so the “transformation” consists of “removing the head.” Sue them.

There’s something about the crazily top-heavy design that captures the weight and power of the robot even better than the already great The Chogokin version does. And don’t get me started on the hard-boiled, old-school box art! Who needs a photograph of the product when you can have an oil painting of Getta III about to drive his righteous fist into the side of a supertanker instead?

Thanks to Sjoen, I now need to find “α” and “γ” to go with my “β”! It’s all Greek to me.

Seriously, anyone got the others in the series? Please? Anyone? *sob* ANYONE? I’ll take ’em loose. I’m not proud.

(This dude sure seems to have the Albegas goods…)