Big Blue Fun
Ok everybody, here goes my third rumble! As per request of Inwards, I decided to do a rumble on the amazing and fantastic Giant Gorg Jumbo Machinder !!!
Yeah….amazing and fantastic…that is if I was trippin on brown acid or something….. seriously though, this guy has his good points and his bad points, I’ll go over those in a bit but for now lets just look at the jumbo itself.
Giant Gorg was made by Takara In 1980. It is based upon the Nippon Sunrise giant robot Giant Gorg. It stands approximately 63 cm tall. Articulation is limited to the head and arms (to sum it up, the posebility of a rock). Unlike most other jumbos, the feet aren’t weighted, making this a guy you want to have propped up against something. In addition to that, it doesn’t possess the familiar “rollerskate wheels” (a good thing for mecha purists, a bad one for old-school lovers).
The stance is quiet yet dynamic, which is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it makes Gorg look cool and different from other jumbos, a curse in that it makes it hard to display this guy along with them (kind of like the problems you find when displaying the jumbo megazords or the animal jumbos like “Dol,” “Ryu Sei Oh,” or the “Daiku Maryu”)
It shoots…..nothing. You’d think a company that could pull off the Jumbo Jeeg would do better. The color is quite different from the other Jumbo Machinders and makes it really stand out in a line-up, whether it’s in back or up front. The paint job on the head is quiet breathtaking I– that gold against the deep, almost midnight blue is quite a good look.
After that, though, the details pretty much stop. There are some gold stickers around the neck and on the shoulders, and a pair of orange stickers on the chest, but other than that this thing is fairly devoid of any other color than blue (let me clarify that — there ARE other stickers on the legs and such, but they’re practically the same hue as the jumbo itself, making them hard to see from a distance).
In terms of molded detail this thing is pretty well loaded down, giving it a nice “real type” look.
Ok, so your thinking “Hey Jerilock, what your saying is that this thing has no articulation, it’s all one color, and doesn’t shoot anything, so why the heck should we try to pick one up??” I’m getting to that, just hold up a second!!
The one saving grace of Giant Gorg is also its only “feature.” Its eyes light up!! That’s right, pop the cap off it’s head, drop in a AA battery and with a simple twist, the s eyes turn into two burning orbs piercing the darkness with their brightness… And since the plastic of the head is fairly “thin”the rest of the head also glows a bit (think glow worm).
A note: I’ve discovered that if you twist the knob on the head just right you can also get the eyes to blink…something that made it quite annoying when trying to get a shot of the eyes for this rumble!
Moving onto the box, this thing is HUGE. It’s significantly wider and taller than the regular Popy jumbo boxes, making it hard to display with other boxes.
I hesitated to pick up this guy for a while, but finally decided to get one off Yahoo Japan Auctions. I’d heard good and bad things about it, but I found you can’t judge a book by what others say about it. Personally I like him. He has a charm that just grows on you the more you look at him (and I should probably note he was the first boxed Jumbo I ever got).
If you’re looking for cheap polyethylene thrills or an oversized, dim flashlight I’d say this guy is perfect for you. And if you enjoy Giant Gorg, he’s a piece you can’t miss out on. And being the kind of jumbo it is, if you collect them, he really is kind of like a basic necessity for any line up. Hope you enjoyed this review!
-Jerilock
