There may be some surprise as to the selection of Hobby Project's Boss Borott as diecast toy of the year. At between $300 - $500, this piece was simply out of reach for many collectors. Not to mention the fact that he's such a dorky-looking character (though many would agree that's the whole point of his charm.)

The short list of candidates also included, in no particular order, the Nostalgic Heroes Kikaider/Hakaider; the Banpresto/Popy GA-100 Mobile Suit Gundam; the Bandai Soul of Chogokin Great Mazinger (Mazinger Z was, in fact, released in 1997) Bandai's Gingaio, and Takara's Koutetsu Jeeg re-issue. What pushed Boss Borott over the edge?

In a word, vision. As mentioned above, Boss Borott is hardly the "coolest" diecast piece ever made. He was only initally released in ridiculously small numbers (fifty pieces, to be exact) at the January 1998 Jaf-Con, before getting a larger production-run. He's far from the most intricately designed or well-engineered piece, either. In fact, he has a tendency to take a tumble from time to time (the result of trying to support a tubby diecast body with tiny magnets and spindly plastic legs.) His brown coloration, while cute, isn't particularly alluring either.

The amazing thing about Boss is the fact that a tiny company with little previous diecast experience set out to produce a piece that they thought should have been made in the first place -- and they actually pulled it off. While toy afficionados have had many a boozy, late-night discussion over "the toys that coulda' been," there's perhaps no other single well-known character that came as close to being a production model before being dropped as Boss Borott. Popy had even assigned Boss a GA-series number -- GA-53 in the Meisaku Series -- before deciding to drop it for (presumably) financial considerations. (GA-53 was later re-assigned to the woefully-underappreciated "Gan Gara Ganchan" character from the Robocon-knockoff show Robot 110.)

The point is that Hobby Project pulled it off. In fact, calling Boss Borott "Toy of The Year" is more of a tip-of-the-hat to Hobby Project than the toy itself, especially considering the fact that the firm's been all-but-emasculated by Bandai for unauthorized use of the Mazinger copyright. Yes, it's true: Hobby project had the vision to gamble on a secondary, dumpy character from a show that had been ignored by Bandai for YEARS up until that point -- and paid the price for their success. Bandai squished them under their massive heel like a tiny chogokin-loving insect. Unless they somehow manage to negotiate a licensing agreement from titanic toy-dominatrix Bandai, it's unlikely we'll ever see releases of this type of character ever again (Bandai's top brass are hardly gamblers: they'll never produce a toy that has even the slightest chance of failure associated with it.)

As cool as the Bandai Great Mazinger chogokin is, there's no question that it's a character that's already been done to death, and re-issues such as Takara's Jeeg just don't qualify in the "vision" department. The Nostalgic Heroes Kikaider and Hakaider came very close: they're just as dead-on as the Boss Borott is, but there's no question that Hobby Project had the wherewithal to pull it off first (and without the year-long series of delays that Nostalgic Heroes suffered.)

The vision, the character, the obsessive attention to the 'Seventies-style packaging (complete with a Japanese-language pun on the "meisaku series" name): all point to a group of dedicated diecast fetishists who managed to put their tiny underdog of a company into the annals of Japanese toy history. And who knows -- maybe one day Hobby Project will manage to pull it off again. I hope so!

--M.A.