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

4 weeks countdown.
We have a nice tradition here in germany.
4 weeks before x-mas we make a wishlist for the Weihnachtsmann (Santa Claus).
If you had been nice and helped a few old ladies over the street the last year,
all the wishes come true. Thats easy!
Here’s my wishlist. Nothing special, only a few plastic robots from the 70ties.
No problem for the Weihnachtsmann I hope ;-)

Any cash left after Morphy’s and you still have wishes for x-mas?
With wishes I don’t mean world freedom, health, saving the rainforest and such a shit.
I mean japanese robots!
Make a wishlist in the BBS section.

U-Combine Shogun Combatra Deluxe Set. One of my holy grails becomes reality.
It all begun with the Shogun Warriors. They infected my brain with the japanese robot virus
more then 30 years ago. If I knew as a kid that there is a Shogun Combatra Deluxe Set
existing…but I didn’t, no Combatra in germany. So I had been a happy kid without Combatra.
Why Combatra with only one “t”? Bad translation by Mattel?

Ok, back to Combatra. A few years ago I realized that there is a Shogun Combatra Deluxe Set
and the U-Combine set with 5 individual boxes. But I needed some years to get my Combatra.
A few weeks ago “my” set pops up on ebay. Looked not to bad on the pictures. Nearly complete &
nice condition and comes with the box. I think the most important thing of this great robot is
the box…the wonderful, some say crappy, shogun box. Here are some impressions…

The Box is made of simply cardboard only the front is printed full color, back is only 1 color blue.
But its huge. You see it compared with the rodan box etc. Well, nearly forget this,  the box is the
most expensive part of combatra deluxe set ;-)
Most of you guys own such a Combattra PA-78-82, or had one in your hands sometime.
For me its my “first time”. I’m impressed how big Combattra is in reality.
Here are some detail shots of the 5 vehicles that could be combined to Combattra.

After you combined Battle Jet, Battle Clasher, Battle Tank, Battle Marine and Battle Craft
you get the biggest metal Shogun Warrior ever. Mr.Combattra. As the box says:
“Combine ’em  to make a robot 1 foot tall!”

Great robot design from any angle.

To tell my “how-I-come-to-my-Combatra-story” to the end. As I mentioned he pops up on ebay.
I was high-bidder 2 times, but didn’t met the reserve. I wasn’t sure how much Combatra is worth for me,
I looks that I didn’t love ($) him enough. But I had a third chance. Because reserve wasn’t met 2 times,
the seller (a nice guy from California) wanted to sell Combatra as “direct buy”  or  “make a offer”.
It looks that my offer was better than the offer of another guy…

That was, again, a little foto lovestory. Sorry I waste so much webspace for
a “simple” Combatra….Combattra.
I always get very emotional when I got a new bot ;-)

More stuff in the BBS section.

…a key chain??

I’m not sure what this “thing” really is. Maybe somebody could
translate the text on the header card. Its made by Bullmark.

I’m not sure, but this piece is a must-have for every serious Rockbat collector
and Bullmark completist  ;-)

Any ideas?

There are many robots. But there is only one Blazer.
Ok, not one Blazer…

Hope I get the Bullmark Big Blazer one time.
Uups, forgot one Blazer on the foto…sorry Blazer————————————–vv

Do I have a problem?

;-)

Have a nice weekend guys

Bullmark mathematics: BP-24 + BP-25 + BP-23 = one of the coolest bots ever!

This is an old picture I took before I had captured the entire set of the Pets. I was digging through the bucket and cleaning up some pics and stumbled across this one. Figured I would share it even though it’s not the whole crew in this shot. I still dig on this picture for some reason. I think it’s the “Don’t fuck with us!” attitude these figures seem to emit. Enjoy!

Goranger teamwork!!

Y’know what I love about this hobby? It’s all the little mysteries one encounters… For some of us, the thrill of discovering something new is just as meaningful as the thrill of the hunt!

This micro enigma of mine all started coming together in the past week or so. It all began with thomas posting a very cool Japanese website with tons of pics of obscure toys. And since I’ve always been fascinated by underwater stuff, the special submarine mecha section was particularly killer!

Anyway, let me back up for a sec…see, this didn’t really begin with thomas’ post…

When I was a wee Bostonian in the early 80’s, fully immersed in Shogun Warrior and Force Five glory, I came across some super robot pencil-toppers at my grade-school’s “Field Day” one year. I had Grandizer and Star Poseidon. At least, those were the names I knew them as back then! They were, of course, Grendizer and Getter Poseidon. Anyway, I loved them to death and ever since getting back into toy collecting as an adult, I’ve always sought these little pencil adorning fuckers.

I’ve seen modern repops of these, often “painted” with a messy splash of color…but they just weren’t the same. See, the ones I had way back then were very dense, stiff PVC. The molding was super-clear, crisp, and clean. There were no paint apps whatsoever–just solid color. Heh…I remember my Grandizer was dark blue and my Poseidon was puke-green…

Anyway, a few months back, Nekrodave (fully aware of this little obsession of mine) pointed me out a couple eBay auctions for big lots of these modern pencil-toppers. I said, “fuck it”, and snatched ’em all up. Of course, they had my beloved Grandizer…but no Poseidon. :(

Eh well…the search continues.

These things are far more crude than their vintage counterparts. I’ve seen them in UFO catcher machines here and there…but had passed on them every time until now. The PVC is super-soft…almost keshigomu consistency. The molding is much mushier, with a lot of the detail softened out. But, hey, a big ass pile of ’em are still fun, right??

Among them are six individual sculpts in many different colors. Five of the sculpts are well-known robots: Grendy, Robo Kress from Machine Blasters, Mekanda Robo–looking rather odd without his antennae, Granzel from Kyodain, and Danguard Ace.

The thing is…who/what the fuck was that sixth sculpt!? I’d never seen this robot before:

Zero recollection of this robot from my youth–in pencil-topper form or otherwise–but I have seen him among these modern mushy pencil-toppers before. But I guess I’d just never bothered to investigate further…

Until now.

Now, back to the present…and thomas’ post.

Bored one day at work, I rummaged through the website he posted, noting cool things here and there…when I encountered this! No shit? Well, now we’re onto something! Nekrodave helped translate a bit and very shortly thereafter, we had a name, “Marinder“…and a Y!J search was underway!

The demand on these clearly isn’t very high, and despite a few boxed specimens being listed at 4k, I scored a MIB one for 1100 yen.

So, now, we certainly have more info on this guy than when we started…but does anyone know if there was a show/movie for this robot? A comic? I’m guessing he’s licensed and that there’s got to be some media for him. Afterall, each of the other pencil-toppers is a licensed character…and these two Marinder toys are SO different, I can’t imagine them NOT being legit.

If you have any info on Marinder or leads on more pencil-toppers, please post!