Clearly Clover
If you’re a shut-in, permanently strapped to a chair in front of your computer, or just don’t have much of a life, chances are you may have read the chronicle of my decades-long quest for the not-so-greatest Gundam toys ever created. (Remember? Rumble last year? Remember? Hello?)
For the rest of you, my name is Matt, and I have a problem. The problem is that I can’t stop spending my hard-earned money on cheap-ass plastic Gundam toys sold by Clover in the late 1970s. I can’t explain why I find myself driven to spend hard-earned money on such appallingly cheap, inch-high renditions of otherwise popular characters, but I think it has to do with the jolly, candy-like translucent shell covering their nougat-y, robotic insides. That and all the drugs. And that I was spanked too much as a toddler.
Or something. Let us not dwell on the sordid psychodrama playing out on the twisted landscape of this collector’s psyche, but instead revel in the fact that I have reached that mountaintop, have found that plasticy grail, have made the power of ten into one: BEHOLD THE (slighly chewed) CLOVER MECHANIC BEST TEN MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM SET! The power of plastic complels you!
As sets of Gundam goodies go, it’s pretty comprehensive. You’ve got a Gundam, natch. And Zakus both new and old. But that’s not all — you also get a pleasingly flesh-colored GM! And the underwater brothas, Gogg and Z’gok. Not to mention Gyan, Gouf, Char’s Dom, and a portly smurf-blue rendition of Gelgoog. Who said they never make toys of the minor guys?
There isn’t much to say here that I haven’t already said poorly before, but let me say this: only the Japanese would go to such lengths on the packaging for such an unrelentlingly low-class series of toys. I spent hours going over photoshop settings before realizing that no, it wasn’t the pictures, but the very toys themselves that were blurry. Go figure.
I don’t mean to sound down on the poor little guys. In fact, I was absolutely ecstatic to stumble across the set — although not particularly so about the bidding war that erupted across the shoulder of Yahoo Auctions, my yen lost like tears in rain. Yes, I’ve bought toys you people wouldn’t believe. But you know what? It was all worth it.
Anyway, that’s done. Now to collect all of Clover’s translucent Ideon toys…!
