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

Another new cell in the Gaiking arsenal.

In the spirit of Matt’s amazing and wonderful work of art, I was inspired to add my little creation from about 2 years ago.

The concept I drew was for a shoe company mascot. While working as a freelance design director in Hong Kong, we had a client who wanted to create a memorable icon for their new children’s footwear line. WIRA means “Hero” in Malaysian. In my deranged biased mind, what better represented this than a chubby waddling robot?

So after creating the concept and most of the shoes ( picture Asics Tigers meets Accupuncture cupsole skate shoes.) , we had the fun task of creating some of the Point of Purchase displays. The iconic image of Mazinga Z’s and Tetsuwan atom’s cross section placed itself firmly in mind, and soon we found a manufacturer/modeling company who could make it out of the materials we wanted, complete with light up eye.

Meet WIRA!

Love him.
Like Gamera, he is the friend of children everywhere.

We eventually also made a non transparent free standing version PVC “machinder”.

A 3d animated commercial was also made in house. I had a whole family of Wira’s ready to go.

This was one of the most gratifying projects I had the pleasure of executing. It was one of the first times that I got to be a kid again and incorporate it into my day job. Making one’s own toys, as many of us can attest is indeed the best drug on earth.

Pretty much a vinyl clone of the Popy SG-01 in size & sculpt. You don’t see these very often, even less with the jet-pack — which is fastened to the body by a string!

This odd vinyl is owned by quite a few of us, so I figured I’d give him some love with shots of both lenticular angles.

I have recently been picking up a few Gaiking cells here and there. This one in particular makes me smile every time I look at it. I am a sucker for Bazolar’s dumb angry face.

The arrival of a Danguard zenmai a week ago made me reflective.

I know your dad didn’t love you. I am sorry for that. Even your stoic emotionless face betrays your sadness Danny boy.

Maybe he was ashamed and never wanted to admit you were his creation. You were jealous of his other children who were more popular at school than you.

Sometimes the other super robots maybe made fun of your manchild lips.
Even Raideen smirked at them behind your back.

And it took me a while to understand why we saw you so late in the anime…How many training sessions did we have to go through? Why did we have to suffer through Patti’s terrible accent?
I was admitingly disapointed when your Force five day rolled around on Monday. Even Spackateers was more exciting in a car crash kind of way. I mean we all knew Captain Mask ( Captain Dan) was Windstar’s (Takuma Ichimonji) dad pretty early on, and what was up with his trumpet solos on the bridge at susnet at ends of episodes?

But eventually as I got older and more sentimental, like an abused spouse, I decided to remember your good points years after our relationship ended. I wear rose colored glasses now. I warmed up to you. And as time went on, I began to see your appeal.

Even your lips did not seem so disagreeable.

(*Dan Kobayashi actually designed Danguard, but Matsumoto was the creator of the series.)

Sanjeev recently dug up this pic from an old BBS post. Hobby Project’s Kanzen Hentaro’s masterpiece Gekiganger 3 diecasts from Nadesico circa 1998. Feel the love..

Nodders are lame. Unless, they are decades-old Japanese super robots. Then they pretty much rule. From Nakajima, enjoy.

Sofubi kit from Kotobukiya: