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Pachi robo!!

Spotted on Yahoo Auctions ages ago, this is an all-original vintage mini vinyl. It’s not internationally known, but it’s known to rock the microphone.

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

Bullmark Diapolon Mekamachines and Zinclon diecasts.

yeah , it was in the one store you didnt get to go to thor .

I’ve always loved the mechanical designs of Leiji Matsumoto. The ships he came up with were just fantastic, futuristic but still holding onto design elements of a bygone era.

My Favorite ship he designed was the Arcadia, specifically the Blue Arcadia seen in the Harlock TV series and Manga. Now you need to think back to a time before Aoshima and Taito were on the scene releasing high quality fantastic representations of this great ship.

I spent months going through different contacts trying to track down one of the pla models that were made back in the 70’s by Takara and/or Bandai. One day after I’d all but given up I got an e-mail from a well known vintage model kit dealer located in NJ saying that he’d just acquired a “rare” Takara kit of the Arcadia for the “low low” price of $120…. Like I said it was an obsession… I sent the money order out and waited a week.

What Came was a tiny, poorly made model, devoid of any realistic details or proportions in a box with kick ass graphics and an original price tag that listed the original selling price at a WHOPPING 78 yen.

I never assembled the kit cause I considered it more of a collectible than something to mess with, though I did take resin casts and built up a couple ones for my own amusement and sold some crude repros to some buddies of mine. And of course right after this whole ordeal I managed to find one of the Blue Arcadias that Jesnet made which was bigger better detailed and pre-painted for about $60…..*sigh* the lengths we go through for our obsessions. To this day I still hunt down new and interesting representations of the arcadia, the latest being this gem of a sofubi made by Takatoku.

And the journey continues.

For anyone who ever wondered what the lever on Irutan’s back revealed.

You know it is love, when your heart skips a beat, as you stare at the glow of the auction screen. Going out to dinner this month seems like less of a priority , and eating instant ramen becomes a standby pastime. When the objective part of your brain fights back, and tells you it is a fucked up toy, while your geek gets all hot a bothered by its camp factor. Yeah the arms are short and gimpy. Yeah the thing is small, and yeah the wheels in the chest seem like a good idea, but don’t translate to the most fun toy in the world.

With a wink and a sigh, the love of the funk will wash away the power of the practical demons that try to whisper in your ear. Screw reality, screw practicality, I want super deformed soulfulness, gimp arms and all.
Riding the high from my last Kamen Rider tin discovery, prompts a scanning the net for more of the same.

In the special Tin edition of Figure Oh, I see three Kamen tins. The famed( and coveted) Bullmark battery op, the elusive Angel version 1 walker, and this guy. This particular toy interested me simply because unlike the others it had an almost kid-like proportion. I picture elves making this toy.

The only other tin that I know of with this function is a piece that might have predated it by a few years..most likey the late 60’s. I am not sure of the size of this HORIKAWA FLYING ROBOT, but they appear to share the same concept.

This Kamen is made by Bullmark and appears to be made around the same time as the battery op, predating both Angel tins.
This is by far the smallest tin walker I have ever seen. Shocking is a word that comes to mind, when it arrived in the mail. Expecting it to be in the standard 9-10 inches, it seemed dwarfed at the 6-6.5 or so inches it clocks in at. It feels akin to the Super Robot mini Marmit tins of a few years back. This however almost adds to its charm, as its size gives it a fragility and presence that is gemlike.

It mainly functions by reving the wheels on the chest off the floor and placing it on its legs. The motion of the wheels activates the walking mechanism, which moves the toy forward. As another option, the toys arms can be repositioned, and placed flat on his belly, pushing along the floor while making the classic “badadadadadadadada” whine. This of course is his “flying” position… though I don’t recall Kamen ever flying.

It is pure and unadulterated toy. It has no slickness, nor modernity. The function is awkward at best and the construction though solid, feels minature and vulnerable.

That is what makes it work. It pretends to be nothing more than what it is… a childs plaything.

Super robot sofubi love..