I wake up this morning and everything is white.
No, didn’t take drugs…only the first snow had fallen here.
Time for a sofubi-winter-foto.
Mr.Condorman freeze his balls off.
Post your japanese-toys-in-snow-fotos in the BBS.
Originally released in 1968 by Hasbro, the line of “Kooky Spookys”, little (3″) glow in the dark finger puppet ghosts, was apparently re-released in Japan by Takara, re-titled “Glowing Phantom Spookies”. Who knew?
Here I have an example of the head of the household, Daddy Booregard (known in Japan as “Spooky Papa”, but clearly the ghost of Flava Flav) in a rare Japanese box.
40 years on and glowing strong!*
Since my assumption is that most on this site won’t care too much about owning these, if you happen to see them (Japanese OR US versions), let me know. ;)
*Best if sung to the tune of GBH’s “Race Against Time”.
(…okay, okay, I suck at titles).
After my recent minor debacle with the armored VF-25S, I figured it would be good for my psyche to review its vintage predecessor:
…because it is everything that the new armored packs aren’t.
I’m afraid I can’t show the box, because I got the thing loose (besides, I don’t like empty boxes while displaying things on my shelves). Because I don’t own a Takatoku VF-1S I will be using a 1J instead. Consider this a pictorial instruction guide for a toy that is well-known but somehow lacks exposure with regards to how well it is designed.
(more…)
Or Sausageraide…er, Sasuraiger, in this case.
(…I guess anyone who has never played the game A-Train will not get the title…)
Kemler!
After many years — and a fierce duel on the battleground of Morphy’s Auction House, where I was outbid by an order of magnitude by a mysterious woman with a fetish for fine diecast — I have finally gotten my hands on the King of the Diecast Beasts: Kemler! (Thanks again, Warren!) This elusive prey represents one of the few diecast monster toys made in the Seventies, and the only one to my knowledge not made by the kaiju-powerhouse of Bullmark/Ark.
Now here’s the interesting thing. When it arrived, I noticed that the spring-loaded disk launcher on the back didn’t work as advertised. “Open the wings to launch the disks!” shouts the box-copy. (Then again, it also claims “tilt the mouth open and it screams,” suggesting that whoever wrote the instructions was either mildly delusional or working on little sleep and much saké, or perhaps both.)
I opened the wings. Nothing launched. It didn’t even seem to have a trigger, though a gaping rectangular hole in Kemler’s side seemed to indicate that it had at one point. It took approximately two seconds of fiddling with the plate that holds the mechanism in place before it popped — perhaps “fell” is a better word — clean off, revealing an engineering effort so singularly pathetic only Marushin could have pulled it off.
Kemler’s vaunted disk-launching mechanism consists of a spring seemingly scaled down from a clothespin, actuated by a lever balanced on a tiny point, held in place by little more than slight pressure and wishful thinking. (Bear in mind that in an era when rival firms like Popy were executing intricately engineered works of transforming and combining toy-art, this was a company that resorted to magnets to hold questionable looking diecast figures together. Even Kemler, arguably Marushin’s masterwork, features loosey-goosey limbs tacked on with a design apparently inspired by “pin the tail on the Donkey.”) A few seconds of re-rigging and everything was back in place, barely… But mysteries remained.
Was this a defect? Was it damaged? Or do those adjectives better apply to the grown men (and the occasional woman) who spend insane sums of money to own bejeweled diecast lizards? I suspect few of us care to know the answer to the latter, but the former were quickly ascertained by a call on the chogo-phone to Uncle Warren, a.k.a. The Keeper Of All Those Crazy Toys You Wish You Owned.
Warren's Kemler's back.
Warren examined his two specimens and discovered that the back plates weren’t fixed in place on those, either. This in spite of a tiny hole on the upper right that would seem to accomodate a rivet, pin, or screw of some kind. But: “Mine doesn’t even have a screw socket,” reported Warren. “I think they must have painted over the hole at the factory.” Ah, Marushin.
Anyway, consider this my throwing out the “toy-signal” for assistance: any other Kemler owners out there willing to send pics or describe the condition of the back-launchers of their specimens? Post ’em in the BBS!
Soon I discovered this tin thing was true…
So there was only one thing that I could do
Was ding a ding dang my Kamen Rider ling long.
Using the same car as the Mach 5, only with super deformed Kamen rider as the driver. The best of all worlds in my opinion.
Aoshin did a few of these based on this car. The original and the Kamen 1 version being my all time favorites.
Wait you remember Aoshin? No?
http://toyboxdx.com/datafiles/data/aoshin/
This one has it all covered… Tin, vinyl and it is a foot longmissile firing toy.
In fact this toy will shoot you the bird… literally.
To top it off, a beautifully printed box (which is notoriously fragile)
And of course you need a soundtrack for your toy when you race it around the room.
Just got these 2 Popy Kyodain Vinyls.
Here’s my shoot-through-the-toy-lens-try.
Well, didn’t really work. No sharp fotos. Maybe the Popy lens isn’t high-end ;-)
But the vinyls are great.
cheers
Meet the heavyweight of my collection, weighing in at only 3.5 kg. That’s all.. It must be muscle weight as he’s totally buff:
I’m assuming, the sculpt is very similar to Marmit’s fierce super robot vinyl series much like the Maz and the Grendizer, aside from the screws of course:
Between the sheer heft and ALL the sharp edges, this thing is more a weapon than a toy. Honestly, it really doesn’t do much but sit there and look all menacing and cool, but that’s enough for me. Knowing is half the battle, and knowing I have an 8 pound 17 inch diecast sitting in front of me does wonders. I’ll have to pull out my Mazinger Z Dai Gokin (pictured in Super #1 Robot) and do a side by side at some point but it just seemed like to tall of a task tonight (har har). I’m willing to bet this piece is at least an inch or so taller.
This piece has really helped me understand the phrase “feel the love”. I would have loved to see Marmit do more in this line. A Dangard or Jeeg would have been phenomenal.
Thank you Marc Solondz and Dan Morphy auctions for this killer addition to my collection! Over and out.
