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

“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.

“Please ask mommy or daddy for help with assembly.” And don’t forget to ask for help filling out the loan application to pay the thing off. Paper insert included with the Popy Jumbo Machinder Daikumaryu.

I admit it. I’m koo-koo for soft vinyl robots. Not just any robots: they’ve got to be “real” robot characters from the Eighties. Why? Because nobody else cares, and I’ve taken it upon myself, like Mother Theresa, to give these leprous bastard children the cardboard box under my stairs they so richly deserve. And this is your lucky day, because you get to meet the undisputed king of my collection: the Clover “Treker (sic) Beagle Treker Cruser (sic) The Main Machine of ‘The Gorilla’ (sic)” Srungle. Sick. Intended for mental ages of five or lesser, it is an impressionist, shroomy portrayal of a robot that looks like an ambulatory coffee maker at the best of times. Let the Srung times roll with a trip back to the old Srungle datafile.