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

And now we come upon the third day of the adventure. After spending 2 days straight just toy shopping I could tell my friend was a bit tired of it so we took a break. The plan was to hang out with some of her peps later on that day, so what to do in the meantime? Hmmmm… Well, she did say she lived like 15 mins from the new location for the Bandai Museum….. Okay, plans set, lets head out! We arrived there early afternoon. It’s a HUUGE building, very pretty from the outside all glass walls. Out front there was an awesome statue with Kamen Rider, Go Ranger Red and another modern Red Ranger. This required the obligatory V pose of course.

Upon entering you’re met with the Gundam torso in the middle of the lobby. We paid our 1000 yen and went in. No idea if this is on permament display here or not but right there in the lobby they had a wooden prototype of what I assume was the planned, but never made, Unifive Combattler V.

It wasn’t labeled as such, but looking at the condition of it I’d assume it couldn’t be 20+ years old. In the cabinet with it was a popy Combattler V along with a picture of the old Bandai JM production facility.


Incase you haven’t picked up on it, this is going to be a massively photo heavy post. Not like that’s a bad thing…. So, wandering around you can’t help but notice that there seems to be ALOT of wasted space here. There’s an entire second floor here that doesn’t seem to have anything on display or being used. Oh well, the place is fairly new so I’m sure as time goes on they’ll have more setup there soon. Right now for whatever reason, they have an exhibit about Thomas Edison… umm.. ok then. Off to the side there was a small room dedicated to Gundam. They had a pretty nice display cabinet with Gunpla starting from the first kits all the way to the latest MG and PG kits that came out. Off to the side of that there’s a small cabinet showing the clover DX as well as the GA-100.

A clover toy, in the Bandai Museum you say? That seemed to be a common theme there, as you’ll see when we come to the main toy display room. The gundam room here was mostly dedicated to this huge replica of the white base, pretty impressive and very well detailed.

Cool stuff for sure, but that’s not what we came here for is it? Nope, I came here to hump on the cabinet housing the Garada K-7 Jumbo. At this point, the lack of signs or maps to show the layout of the place was causing me to fear that the rumors that the museum had been scaled back to the point that all the old popy peices were no longer on display was true. Luckily that’s not the case at all. I looked across the play area filled with kids playing Famicom and Super Famicom games into yet another room and broke out into a run after I saw the shoulder of a Ghuren ghost C3 JM villain that was ontop of a cabinet…. wait… they have a C3 just sitting out in the open? hmmm… that’s not a good sign now is it? As with the gundam display they main toy room here had non-popy pieces on display. some early american tin toys were found in the first display area as it were.

Mixed in with the tins you find a Godzilla Sofubi mold for whatever reason.

I will say they had an impressive selection of early tins here, I;m sure Fraser would be loosing it right about now after seeing this case.

Ok so there’s some tins, some American toys, I guess the point here was to show off the development of the industry as it were.

I guess they decided it was time to actually show some Bandai toys in the “Bandai Museum”.

Once again more pieces for Fraser to drool over.

I Will say for all the gripes, they did do a good job of dividing up the Kamen rider and Ultraman displays.

I walked onward, looking up, looking down, wide eyed, anticipating the fated, fabled meeting with the Mythical idol. Deep in the back of my mind I can hear the Indiana Jones theme song running. I round another corner and find myself in the primary Bot display. Looking upward I’m met with the first JM’s here. a couple kinda sad looking V3’s, though I will note the belts are in sweet condition.

And then…. I turn…. I gaze upwards once again…. my breath hitches…. the theme for Dawson’s Creek start’s playing from a faraway place…..

There it is….. siting there, gazing down from high above those eyes penetrating my very soul, gazing deep within myself…. I now know what it felt like to be a junior high school girl at an Elvis concert for the first time… I tear my eyes away and look to the right, to be met with more amazing rarities.

The initial shock was subsiding, I stabbed myself with a pen a couple times to convince myself this wasn’t a dream. I started to notice something…. The guys who setup this Museum were complete idiots. Here we have some of the most amazing, rare, valuble toys known to the hobby sitting out, in the open. No security cameras I could see, no glass, standing right over hot lights on the cabinet. Meh, that can wait for later, for now, it’s time to be star struck.

Considering how poorly the Garada was “protected”, I started having odd, impure, slightly criminal thoughts….

I mean it was just standing there… nothing to hold it down to the top of the cabinet save for some Fun-Tak on the bottom of one foot… seriously, I have pics to prove it.


*sigh* No, I couldn’t do it… Not only would I be creating an international incident, but I’d be depriving the rest of you guys the opportunity to see the Garada. Soo yeah, you’re WELCOME. I went ahead and asked the guys working there if it would be ok to take a picture holding the garada, I mean not like it was in a cabinet that needed to be opened or tied down, all I had to do was reach up, grab it, smile and put it back. No dice, they said I couldn’t touch anything, meanwhile I looked to see other people there grabbing at other items on display. I am going to kick myself for a long time for that one… These guys weren’t around, and I’m sure they wouldn’t care, no signs anywhere saying don’t touch…The worst they could have done if they caught me holding it was go to ask me to put it back…. Oh well, I’ll just have to tide myself over with a tentative touch.

Ok enough with the Garada. I tore myself away from him yet again to check out the rest of the displays. They did have a really impressive selection of chogokins on display, though it was kind of funny to see how they have a TON of non-popy/bandai pieces on display here.



It’s an awesome place, putting aside the issues with the way in which the items were displayed and wtf they were thinking when they picked what was to go into glass and what was to just stand out in the open on top of the cabinets. In some deep recess of my mind I can understand the JM’s not all being under glass, they do have a limited amount of space here to display stuff. but still… why is the only known prototype for the Goggle V just sitting out?


The only bright side to this is that the lack of glass does allow for better non-glare pics to be taken of this amazing one of a kind piece.

Looking at it this thing is pretty rough, but you can see where they were going with it… it would have made for an awesome JM.

From the rear you can clearly see how this was made using the torso from a Godmarz, not just the upper arms and fists.

While all this was going on my buddy went off to another area to look at the Sailor Moon toys they had on display… I went to find her to take some pics for me and I was horrified to see how ALL the Sailor Moon stuff was under glass….mean while a $20k JM villian was sitting out… *ahem* sorry, can’t seem to understand why that keeps popping up in my mind.

After this pic was taken my friend looked at the Daiku Maryu and thought for a moment. Finally she pointed right at the DM and said “Hey, I remember we had one of these in the store room at the second hand shop I used to work at.”……….!!!!!!!!………. I’ll touch upon this later but I think y’all can imagine where we eventually ended up going later on this day. Forgive me for the somewhat random, more than usual rambling nature of this post guys, but this was a very very very jumbled time, my mind was on total over drive, everywhere I looked I was seeing pieces that until then I’d only seen in pics, and even stuff I never thought I’d ever see in person EVER.

When I met up with Matt Alt a couple days after this I was showing him the pics I took on my camera over diner. he was going through the Bandai museum pics when he came to this one here.

“I told those guys at Bandai that they had an SG-01 or 2 sitting around somewhere, why the hell did they have to pay $2000 to ship mine over from the states?” LOL.

I feel sorry for that poor Voltes V, but again it’s in about the same condition as mine, heh.

Niiiiiice popy KR 1 henshin belt. You don’t really see these boxed pop up like ever, and when they do, they’re almost always going for some $erious coin.

I couldn’t help but be struck by this pic here…. Poor Robocon, he looks soo sad and lonely standing there by his lonesome with only D-17 to keep him company. At this point I’d been wandering for over an hour, taking shot after shot of the displays and individual pieces they had out. A truly impressive collection. But all things must come to an end as they say. On my way out I decided to take some pics of the bottoms of the Villain’s feet. See if you can pick out the interesting bit in the pics here.

Lenz-Ari

The sad little headless Q-9

And then we have the C3… notice anything odd here? Yeah that’s right… the only JM villain there that was tied down in any way shape or form was the C3… what’s odd is that this one was about 2 feet higher up than the Garada, you’d need a ladder to get at it. and not to knock the C3, it is still a rare as hell piece, probably the 3rd hardest to find villain… but still, if you’re gonna take the time to tie this one down, why not do it to them all? I just shook my head and walked off… well… not before I took more pics of the garada heh.

That’s the exact angle I’d see if I ever had a garada standing on the shelf in the toy room… *sigh* someday….someday…..

On the way out I took a pic standing next to the gundam torso. I looked for signs but I guess they don’t offer the chance to get the picture sitting in the cockpit anymore like they did at the old museum… Oh well. I took the opportunity to take a couple more shots of the Combattler V prototype before I said my farewells to this place.


Well it was a great time and I was kinda sad to leave, but I got to see everything there I wanted to see. Once again my friend was a great sport putting up with the geek-ness. After we were done hanging with her buddies that day we went over to her old work place to ask about the Daiku Maryu. Part of me was hoping it was there, if not to buy then to at least see it, another part of me was hoping it was gone already, as I didn’t want to spend the rest of the trip eating instant ramen and McD’s. We got there and talked with the guy who was in charge of the toy section of the second hand shop. Not to shoot myself in the foot here, but I will say there was an awesome selection of stuff here, a definite untapped resource for toys that I’m sure you guys will all be checking out when you go over there next. Anyway, turns out the Daiku Maryu had been sold off a few weeks before I had gotten there for about $800 and as I was told, it was in pretty bad, incomplete condition… Oh well. They did pull out some other JM’s that wre in the back store room, a Combattler V, a Mattel Daimos with odd custom stickers and a Boxed Gaiking.

The gaiking had me scratching my head a bit. But in the end I walked away as the jumbo itself wasn’t in the greatest condition (smelled like an ashtry bleh) and the box was pretty beat/faded. though I did see an original price tag on the box which made me laugh my ass off.

As with the first 2 days that had already gone past this was also an awesome day. The weather had been very nice, making the drive to and from the Museum very pleasent, it’s located in the middle of nowhere which is nice when it comes to having good scenery to check out. In addition I got to see, as well as touch the garada among other amazing pieces. I hope you guys enjoyed the wild insane ramblings here. I can say that these are a small choice selection of the pictures I took at the museum, drop me a line if there’s anything else you guys might want to see, if I have it I’ll send a copy. Ok then, that ends part 3 of the adventures in Nippon. Coming up next time kids, Umm, Where’s my Passport. Part 4: Fun times at Godzilla Ya, Nakano and Spam Tempura with a side of Alt!

Dr. Aizawa’s robot room in the early 70s, Nagoya toy Museum photo.

The late Dr. Aizawa Zirou (1903-1996), the first director of the Children’s Institute for Cultural Activities, friend of Sony founder Masaru Ibuka, and Osamu Tezuka.
Both he and Tezaka formed the Children’s Institute for Cultural Activities Foundation in 1927. They collectively strove to improve the lives of children via the catalyst of scientific toys.

This prompted Dr. Aizawa to create 800 humanoid robot toys!

Some of Dr. Aizawa’s own creations have been restored and displayed at various museums over the past few years, following their rediscovery after a long slumber in storage.

May 21st, the sun rises in Utsunomiya Japan. A weary traveler awakens, his body restored after a good nights sleep, ready to stride out into this strange new land in search of more Sofubi, Gokin and hopefully, Polyethylene goodness. Today was the day a certain fellow from SF had managed to secure me an audience with the great Ishida-san of Kaikodo. The trains were as such though that me and my friend decided it would be better to head back to Tokyo, hit Jyarinco and then stop off at Kaikodo as it was on the same train line we’d need to get back.

Off we went, and for whatever reason, it was decided we were going to ride bikes to the train station….. Now is a good time to mention I hadn’t ridden in over 10 years… I think you can fill in the blanks yourself here..So ok, after a train ride that lasted a little over an hour we arrived at Ueno station. Both being hungry, we headed out to get something quick to chow down before getting on the Tokyo metro subway for Machiya and then Jyarinco. first thing we hit up was a McDonald’s. Ohhh hell yeah. Why is that soo special you ask? Well, in Japan, they still serve the mythical fried apple pies.

We sat down and after making a quiet toast to JoshB and CDX I skipped the meal and headed right for desert… and Gentlemen, it was yum to the max.

The subway ride was uneventful, though I did see some awesome character warning signs, forgot to take pics I’m afraid though. The map in Tokyo underground came in real handy here, the streets were a bit twisty and it took a few wrong turns but we finally arrived at shop #2, Jyarinco.

Luckily for my sanity this shop was muuuuuuuch better layed out and organized than Senshutei.

After the initial greetings with the owner, I started to look around.

One thing I noticed was that this shop seemed to be very Sofubi heavy compared to the others I’d been to this trip, not a bad thing, I had a few sofu pieces I was gunning for.

I whipped out my wish list pics and we went though them together, the first thing that came out was a Mecha Machine Blazer. the price was a bit high for a loose one, at 25k. I kept looking. I saw a complete set of those carded Harlock vinyls hanging next to a Blue Noah set I’d never seen, though the card was damaged on the Harlock set.

Cool stuff for sure. I showed him pics of my collection, just so he knew I wasn’t a casual tourist looking for go-bots or transformers. while he checked those I noticed a ZZ-8 JM accessory fist castle on top of one of the gokin cases, the box was beat but it was complete. Ikura desuka? He thought for a moment and said 5,000 yen… fantastic! onto the counter it went. he handed back the pics eyes wide eyed and we went into the gokin cases. I snagged the Astro Mu tank from there along with an Ark King Joe and a couple 1/144 Blockheads, 2 different paint schemes. There wasn’t a key for the tank so I wasn’t able to test it out, but it was cheap so it was worth the risk. we went back to the counter and added everything up. He was being a bit inflexible when it came to the final price. I was about to put back the Blazer cause it was high to begin with and I figured I would find another one later.

I took one last look in the vinyl case and saw a killer Dougram mini sofubi along with a Popy clear Barom 1 in good shape (until now I never realized these were soo small, but you can’t put a price on the awesome internal details on these guys). I went to pay for them and saw the blazer sitting there. I guess I made a sad puppy dog sorta face cause he offered to slash 5,000 yen off the price on it. I said what the hell and went for it, granted the price was still high, but I really wanted one of these and didn’t want to risk not being able to find another one. Before we left I took a quick tourist shot with him and we headed out.

It was still a bit early so on the way to Kaikodo my friend suggested we check out Harajuku. it was cool, got to see some interesting things that’s for sure.


Ummmm…. ok….. Now THERE’S a character that Matt should have put into Hello Please! After a bit of wandering in Harajuku we hopped the next train bound for Okegawa for what I knew would be the most mind blowing shop of the day, Kaikodo! We got there and found the place pretty easily. The sun was starting to set and we were both kinda tired from wandering most of the day but as soon as I saw that sign the lust started to flow anew.

Awesome

After a couple of obligatory tourist V pose shots I entered. Whoa…. Sjoen told me this was a HUGE, KILLER shop but I was still flabbergasted.

The greetings were made and I asked about taking pics. At the time Ishida-san was out of the shop, I still showed the employees there pics of the collection and wish list. What got me was how the gal working there knew all the toys I was looking for, amazed at the shot of the magnemo groizer x, and shocked at the toy room shots. At this point my friend Satomi became an official “Toy Widow”. She opted to wait outside as the shop was a bit on the hot/stuffy side. Myself and an employee walked across the store to one of the gokin cases that had the major dx box sets and the like.

Some great stuff and the prices weren’t all that crazy either. I picked out a clover DX Walker Garrier. I wandered a bit more, finding myself in front of one of the vinyl cases.

I picked out a few cool items there, mini sofubi Blazer, Mekanda, Xabungle enemy bot and a Godamu. the Blazer and Mekanda were unmarked, this would lead to some interesting stuff later on. we went around the corner to another vinyl case, this one stuffed with Mid size and larger pieces.

I made my selection and we moved on, it was kinda cool having the shop worker there along side me, keys in hand, ready to open any and every case I wanted to dig around and grab at stuff. Here I should also mention that Kaikodo was probably the most smartly laid out of any of the shops I went to. You’d have one case of mini sofubi, another with mid size and up, then you’d have one case with Macross and Orguss stuff, another with Takemi/Bullmark gokin, etc. all of it separated out by genus and phylum as it were. It made things a lot easier when it came to hunting stuff down, you can tell Ishida-san cares about this stuff by how everything was neat and well displayed, like this was his personal collection.

More selections were made, one of which was a Meisaku Q-taro that at first glance appeared to be only 5,000 yen… wtf?!?! that’s cheap as hell! And here, this is a lesson kids, make sure you read a price sticker very carefully. Turns out it was 85,000, for whatever reason they had it written as 80k and then 5,000, this I didn’t find out till we were adding it all up. By now I had been digging wide eyed for a while, grabbing some killer stuff. I looked at my watch and saw it had been a while and Satomi was still waiting outside. I made a final sweep and asked them to let me open boxes, examine the pieces and ring everything up. As the tabulations were made they discovered some of the vinyls I’d selected didn’t have prices. Both employees called Ishida-san to get the information from him, one would be running the numbers while the other talked to him and vice versa. It dragged out for a looong while, I didn’t get the specifics but there was a problem with the math when they tried to add in the discount Ishida had authorized over the phone I guess. After the 3rd phone call Ishida decided he wanted to see what the fuck was going on and meet the strange Gaijin who was buying such a massive pile of higher end gokins and vinyl. Luckily he was at his office around the corner and was there within 10-15 mins. We exchanged greetings and I showed him the collection pics and the tabulations began anew. By this point Satomi had come back inside the store to see what was going on. At this point there were 2 different notepads and a calculator working to get the numbers right. When it came out to roughly 180,000 I figured something had to be put back. when I looked at the scribblings I saw that the Q-Taro was 85k (d’oh), that had to go cause I only had 65k on me at the time. Also returned was a loose incomplete DX Ideon at 9k. Ugh, it was still WAAYYYYY over what I could possibly spend. Ishida seemed to notice my confusion and sad/worried expression so he asked me how much I had on me. I pulled out my wallet and, being careful to show I was completely emptying the contents of it, I showed him the 65k I was carrying. Without batting an eye he said OK and had his guys ring it all up…… I was shocked… he had basically taken nearly 20k right off the top like it was nothing. I thanked him like a thousand times, becoming somewhat emotional about everything while his guys carefully wrapped everything in bubble wrap and plastic. Before we left a group shot was taken, a massive dumb-ass grin plastered on my face.

This was a truly amazing, even magical, stop off.

Ishida-san and his guys working there were awesome, knowledgeable, clearly as into this as you or I, kind and courteous, putting up with my odd questions and requests without even a glimmer of annoyance. After the funds were exchanged we headed to the door, all 3 of them came out with me for a rather drawn out sweet farewell, waving and saying to be sure to come back and see them again as me and my dead tired partner for the day headed off to the station to return back to Utsunomiya. It was this time I remembered how we had to somehow ride bikes back with bags of gokin and sofubi goodness in hand once we returned…. you can imagine how that went I’m sure O_o. besides that last min. snag the day worked out perfectly, I managed to check off a bunch of wish list items, saw awesomely cool non-toy related sights, got to meet and hang out with some amazing, kind and cool folks and to top it all off, ATE A MOTHERFUCKING DEEP FRIED APPLE PIE, WOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *ahem*.. ummm… yeah…. Soooo here’s the score card again as it were.
Jyarinco: ZZ-8, 1/144 Blockhead x2, Mecha Machine Blazer, Sofubi clear Barom 1 and mini dougram, Ark King Joe, Astro Mu tank. Kaikodo: Mini sofubi Mekanda, Blazer, Godamu, Xabungle enemy, MFV Pegas, DX Walker Garrier, Grip Rockbat, Grip Pegas tank, 1/40 Orguss, 1/40 Nikick, M Lover Mea, Bullmark Z-gokin Blazer…. Well not much else to say here folks. Hope you enjoyed another long winded rambling old man style tale of my strange adventures over there. Stay tuned for “Umm, Where’s My Passport Part 3: Tales from the Bandai Museum, Yeah, Fun-Tak should hold that down juuuust fine.”

Months of saving, weeks of planning (or, bugging the old timers at tbdx for advice and tips if you will). It all came down to this; my first trek over the western pond to the promised land for sight seeing, wandering, shopping and other assorted fun. I was lucky enough to hook up a free place to stay with a friend, meaning more toy funds. Only catch, they live in Utsunomoya, about 1 1/2 hours north of tokyo by train. Eh, it’ll be worth it in the end. OK, soooo… all was set, extra suitcases: check! Tokyo Underground: check! Pics of wish list items: check!

What else? Oh yeah, passport: check!

The flight over was good. I flew continental, I’d recommend them to anyone. The food was good, staff was pleasant and every seat had a built in entertainment screen with games, movies, music and a decent selection of tv shows, really helped the 13 hours pass by quick. Despite my best efforts though, I was unable to sleep the entire time. By the time the plane touched down in Narita I had been roughly 36 hours without sleep, totally wired on caffeine and adrenalin.

Customs was a breeze. Reason for your visit? “Tourism, shopping and the like”. Prior to my arrival I had gone ahead and gotten a JR east pass through JTB. I can’t stress this enough, if you’re going over there and plan on taking the trains a lot GET ONE OF THESE. I added it up and the thing was more or less completely paid for after the first 3 days there. I hopped onto the Shinkansen and was off for Omiya station with a stopover in Tokyo. Why Omiya you say? Well, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m kinda insane. I had decided that the first stop upon my arrival would be the king cluster-fuck insanity that is the Senshutei shop, across the street from the east exit of the Omiya JR station. I arrived, stuffed my suitcases in a 400 yen coin locker and met up with my friend/soon to be new toy widow, Satomi. After the meetings were completed we made our way to my first shopping destination.

Looks pretty nice from the outside right?

Nice case, some pretty cool looking pieces, and they’re on sale too! awesome! Ok, deep breath, calm down, time to go in and dig through the cluster-fuck-age that is this place….

Yeah…. this might not have been such a good idea… coming here with a pounding headache, brain flipped 12 hours around, blurred vision. My nose was filled with the sweet musk of moldy 30 year old cardboard, polyethylene, pvc and gokin. everywhere I look there’s more toys, layer upon layer, without any sort of rhyme or reason. There’s a pile of ZZ and XX jumbo fists sitting next to some sailor moon stuff. Wtf? I take a moment and remind myself that this is exactly what I came here for. Sitting in front of a computer 7000 miles away looking at blurry pics on yahoojp, or hanging with a bunch of dudes in a backyard eating bacon burgers can never EVER compare to this sensation. Afer a few deep breaths I started talking with the owner, showing him pics of wish list items, babbling in my usually ok Japanese, now totally incomprehensible due to extreme stress and exhaustion. Hurray Satomi came to the rescue and started acting as an interpreter, giving me the occasional odd glance when he’d start in with toy lingo. I ask about jumbo fists. He tells me he has some in the back in great condition that he can get if I want to see them. Sure why not? So he ushers us outside while he digs….
we were out there for about 25 mins. That alone can give you an idea how crazy this shop is, if it takes the owner nearly 1/2 an hour to find stuff in his own place. while outside I was lucky enough to spy this killer Yonezawa wind up vinyl of a Kamen Rider spider kaijin that shoots sparks out of it’s mouth ( damn, they don’t make toys like they used to).
The door opened and we went back in. I checked out the fists, they were in great shape and the price wasn’t too bad. I grabbed a ZZ-7, ZZ-5 and an XX-2. I looked around a bit more and took some pics, but they really can’t properly convey the true madness of this shop.



By this point I was nearly falling over, the caffeine was long gone, and the adrenalin was running thin. I decided it was time to even up and say my farewells with the owner (sorry never did catch his name).

I will note that he was amazed when I showed him my copy of Super #1 Robot. He asked me where he could find his own copy, saying how they don’t have any books like that in Japan and he “needed to get a copy for himself”. This was a great shop, maybe not the smartest choice for a first stop, but I managed to survive which is something. You might have figured it from seeing ths shop, but the owner really is a nut, he spent a good while scrubbing on a Kamen rider Stronger henshin belt I was looking at (hadn’t even agreed to buy it yet!) went so far as to open it up and grease the gears and check it out when it wouldn’t power on. Great service, and he gave me a super sweet discount as well as this killer inflatable mazinger z as a gift! awesome times. After we were done I took my booty and we grabbed a bowl of Ramen at this little dive around the corner. A good first day for sure. So here’s the score card for this day as it were: Zenmai Mekanda Robo, XX-2, ZZ-5, ZZ-7, Orguss vinyl triple case, KR stronger DX henshin belt, Yonezawa spark shooting Kaijin, Inflatable Mazinger Z. Hope y’all enjoyed part 1, sorry if I rambled but that’s my writing style, get used to it :-p. Coming soon, Part 2. Sofubi Lust in Jyarinco, Gokin Humping in Kaikodo.

Jason’s epic tale of love, loss, toys and deep fried apple pie. Coming soon…

Cute missile firing vinyls? Huh???

Zenderman (ゼンダマン Zendaman) is a Japanese anime television series which first aired from February 3, 1979 to January 26, 1980 on every Saturday from 6:30 pm to 7:00 pm with a total of 52 episodes. It is the third show in the sequence of “Time Bokan Series” produced by Tatsunoko Productions. It was preceded by “Yatterman” and succeeded by “Otasukeman”. Gotta love wikipedia, right? Now that we’ve got the history out of the way..

*It is believed that Bullmark and Takatoku worked in a partnership at one point to manufacture and distribute TTs missile firing vinyl line, much like Bullmark did with Sanzen, Onzen and others.

So a massive box arrives from Japan. I assume there has to be a dozen or so items in there. But then it occurs to me it is just one. One very important one. One I lost sleep over to ensure it arrived unscathed.

Welcome to my brain. A perfect dominion for obsessive “c10” disorder.

The girl, ammused, with iphone in hand, quietly documents my unpacking frenzy. Two pounds of bubble wrap later, Gekko is scanned and approved.

Check it out in its spontaneous oldskool low res glory.

Perhaps tonight I will sleep like a baby… well, until the next shipment anyway.

Stay tuned boys and girls for an exclusive run down of ALL the ins and outs of this long awaited JUMBO MACHINDER love affair.. The joints? The box? The inner box? The wheels? The stickahs? The head and much, much more. The power of the force is strong with this one, I feel it. Coming soon to a Japanese toy BROG near you. And now back to our regularly scheduled programing.

E