Everybody knows that Godbird is the word. So long as it’s a mini-sofubi, anyway. Soul of Chogokin Raideen, eat your over-engineered heart out. No working parts and two-piece construction? That’s QUALITY, gentlemen.
Happy birfday to me. Thanks Alen-One!
Sometimes…sometimes you just come across stuff that is so mindblowingly insane, deranged, and fanwanky that you just have to have it. A toy so marvelous, a figure so crack-tastic, something that makes you wonder just how much, and possibly more importantly, exactly which drugs its designer has been smoking, injecting, or actually breathing ever since his or her conception by mommy and daddy.
Ladies (if there any here) and gentlemen, I bring you Fei-Yen the Tiger.
Fei-Yen the Tiger
Now first a little intro on the Fei-Yen mecha series:
Fei-Yen is a female mech from Virtual-On. Originally based on the Magical Girl genre, dual pigtail Tsundere type to be precise, she quickly evolves into a Maid in the later games. More crazily, her later designs include fanservice such as panty shots and various bust sizes. Makes you wonder what Hajime Katoki, the Virtual On character designer, (of Gundam fame) was smoking, eh?
Fei-Yen the Tiger is how he could, and did, make this mindfuckery worse (or better, depending on your point of view)…let’s have a look.
The packaging is deliciously striped in the proper colors, and it suggests her to people 14 years or older:
This. The figure has all the proper attributes:
Color scheme: check.
Tail: check.
Ears: Will do.
A near-perfect catgirl. The MOE fans will appreciate.
She comes with three optional hands and includes a heart-shaped base, upon which she can be stood:
Or kneeled:
Rowr!
Or put in whatever pose you fancy:
All hail Sofubi monsters and their mecha catgirl girlfriends!
Be aware that these toys are notoriously fragile. I bought mine unbroken, but it broke in transit, despite being packed well:
Ouch!
Nothing some super glue can’t fix. The PVC parts are also somewhat sticky, as if the chemical used to make them flexible is oozing out.
Sadly no diecast, and the waist joint is asymetric.
I must simply praise Hajime Katoki for designing a character (and Kaiyodo/XEBEC Toys for releasing it) that seems to be 120% fanwank…
I love this show. I love this show on LSD.. Bullmark mini sofubi goodness:
Kure Kure Takora (クレクレタコラ?, unofficial translation: “Gimme Gimme Octopus”) is a tokusatsu children’s comedy show from Japan. Produced by Toho Company Ltd., the show aired on Fuji TV and its subsidiaries from October 1, 1973 to September 27, 1974 with a total of 260 episodes. Kure Kure Takora—the main character of the show—wants everything he sees and says “Kure! Kure! (I want it! I want it!)” all the time. Each episode was absurd, strange, violent, surreal, indescribable, and ran exactly 2 minutes and 41 seconds.
Meet Gosura. You’ve probably never heard of him before. That’s because he doesn’t hail from any particular show. He’s all-original — or, well, he’s just original enough not to invite a lawsuit. He’s giant by soft vinyl standards — a good 12″ tall. He’s called Gosura (“Because the heads look like Gomora‘s,” laughed Marusan president Eiji Kaminaga when I asked him about it the other day.) A gift from Jim Maitland, it turns out I’ve met this kaiju before. Way before.
More than a decade ago, I first spotted this toy on the kitchen table of a certain New Jersey rare and vintage toy dealer. It was scuffed and damaged, but I still knew I’d never be able to purchase it from without mortgaging my soul. Some time after that, it was purchased by Jim, who apparently DID mortgage his soul and decided to try restoring it to its former glory. He hired a pal to repair the cracked horns on the noses, and enlisted the help of former Club Daikaiju head honcho Jim Cirronella to retouch the paint job. At some point during this long process, Roger Harkavy dropped by and checked things out. And then it went back to Jim Maitland, who by this point had acquired another, mint specimen. And some time after that, it flew back to Tokyo with Jim, who gave it to me based on nothing more than my having expressed wanting the toy in an idle chat years previously. Tokyo to New Jersey to Oregon to New Jersey to Oregon and back to Tokyo, four decades after it first popped out of the molds. What a tangled web we weave.
Back in the late Sixties/early Seventies, Marusan started making original kaiju characters for sale along with the regular licensed stuff. A lot of them were an homage to existing characters. Like King Gojira here (not to be confused with, y’know, another famous monster that has a similar name.) Others were totally original creations. There are three scales: the usual standard size, then this Giant size, which Gosura is in, and finally a SUPER Giant size, which is a little bit larger still. All of them are totally funky, bubbly, cheap-ass, hand-sculpted, gloriously old-school sofubi. And the more I handle them, the more they seem like long-forgotten pieces of folk art than toys.
Thanks again Jim!
I’ve been all wicky in the wacky woo for sofubi minis lately. These came in the mail today:
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.
The fucking streets of KichijÅji rocked hard tonight. Heavy weights rockin’ the Iseya izakaya and faux piss alley were in full effect. If you didn’t know any better, Koji was taking Maz out for a drunken spin around the neighborhood. That’s how hard well roll. The best part about it is we don’t even have to try. LOUD drunk white assholes are known to do this, and in our case do it incredibly well. Anyway….
After an unsuccessful trip to “Cosmo Knight Alpha” in Ekoda, and 4 train transfers later, the call was made and the plan was put into play. Alt sent out an underwater sonic transmission that brought he, Maitland and myself into contact with the James Bond 007 of Japanese robot collecting (otherwise known as “cohiba” or “slimemolds”) in my favorite low brow, punk rock neighborhood in Tokyo.. Kichijoji! A place where you can smoke hooka on the street with Devilman and drink from deaths flask with wealthy old men perversely pretending to be homeless.. It just so happens Alt actually lives here, so that explains alot.
So, here we find our hero getting blasted… This is what the famous author ofSuper #1 Robot, Hello Please! and Yokai Attack! (found here: Alt’s scribe) does all day while he takes your hard earned otaku cash..
Look at me manhandle this little bitch..
His majesties trademark.. The expensive and infectious Cohiba Cuban cigar. This speaks volumes.
So, as we come to the end of this post you might be thinking to yourself, where the hell is the “toy” content? Well, sonny, the shit that crossed the lips tonight of your aforementioned otaku heroes will be talked about for years to come, believe me. Unfortunately we’re just in the process of carving the stone tablets, so hold your horses.
Stay tuned for more info on this pivotal meeting of the minds, I mean “rinds” soon..
To make it legit, I share with you the RAREST sofubi super robot find of all time. Compliments of Masa Yoda, I give you 7 inch Poseidon, patchi super robot sofubi, unknown year…
Sjoen
