Here's one of the "ugly ducklings" of my collection: a 1974 edition Mazinger Z. Sure, he's C-7 and missing a box -- not to mention temporarily grounded 'cause he's missing his Jet-Scramder. He's chipped, he's loose, he's kinda primitive looking. But put it next to a 1998 Mazinger re-issue and let the fireworks begin: this baby veritably oozes soul out of every tiny metallic pore. It's got more class in it's chubby little face than a Soul Of Chogokin Mazinger has in it's whole over-engineered disco-ass high-techno rave-boy body. Are you getting this? OLDER IS BETTER. If I see one more over-hyped nostalgia-oriented over-priced Franklin-mint-esque- desperate-attempt-by-Bandai- to-get-rich- by-creating- an-artifical-shortage, I'll buy a few of 'em. But I'm gonna bitch about it, dammit!

Am I the only one out there who's bothered by this artificially-hyped regurgitation of old characters? I love Mazinger and Tetsujin as much as the next guy, but there have been so many pieces of the two released on this current wave of nostalgia that my head's spinning worse than Linda Blair's. Isn't there something to be said for NEW designs? And what about marketing toys for kids first, fer chrissakes!? Sure, there are lots of "adults" out there who dig this stuff, digging deep into their collective pop-culture consciousness to dredge up memories of long-abandoned toys -- but it's a dead end. There's no way that a Soul Of Chogokin piece is going to generate the tremendous following the older pieces have -- the SOCs are targeted squarely at collectors. And targeting those freaks is something like shooting fish in a barrel. It's like modern-day samurai swords that have been crafted specifically for display, or a 1990's woodblock print done in the style of Hokusai - hollow. The "Soul of Chogokin" moniker that's been hung on this latest line of re-issues is nothing short of ironic.

Just look at these two side-by-side and judge for yourself. The charm and innocence of the 1974 version is undeniable. The superior sense of technical detail of the 1998 piece is obvious as well. Which exemplifies and captures creator Go Nagai's original intentions most closely? What WERE Nagai's original intentions?

In a nutshell, weight. Weight and speed, and the feeling of invincibility that flows from the combination of the two. (In fact, this is why the initial release of the original Mazinger toys didn't come with a "Jet Scrander" wing. How could such a heavy thing fly through the air?)

"When making an animated robot work," said Nagai in the instruction manual for the 1998 Mazinger re-release, "the most worrisome part is portraying a sense of size and weight." He continued that Mazinger itself "...represented a feeling that if this heavy thing attacked with that kind of speed, it could destroy anything." In the anime, Nagai relied on subtle camera-angle shifts and deep, "heavy-sounding" music to emphasize the feeling of size and weight of his creation. The first thought on the designers' minds was to carry through this feeling of weight to the toy as well.

Somehow, and don't ask me why, I feel that the old 1970s Mazingers capture this feeling of weight more than the wildly-popular 1998 version. Perhaps it's due to the fact that the solidity of the older guys lent them a feeling of indestructibility that the plastic-jointed "Soul of" Mazinger lacks. I never used to worry about my Etarnal Mazinger breaking. I worry about it constantly whenever I bend an arm or leg of the new one. The mechanically complex "Soul of" piece certainly conveys that feeling of Seventies "progress from the machine" (a sort of deus ex machina, as it were) that the recently-leveled Japan was experiencing. Much like the wonder of Japan's economic bubble of the mid-Eighties, the Soul of Chogokin Mazinger is an amazing thing to behold -- but all-too-fragile.

Of course, for a sheer sense of indestructibility, nothing beats the Jumbo Machinders. The stickers might fray, the attachments might crack, but nothing short of being crushed by the wheels of a car could break THOSE suckers. And sometimes not even that. (Ah, the wonders of polyethylene.) There's something to be said for a toy so study that it'd survive multiple "flights" off the roof of your house.

At any rate, there are plenty of fans of each and both of the new and old Mazinger pieces. Personally, I just wish Bandai, Marmit, Romando, and all the rest would focus on producing high-quality pieces of toys that haven't been made before. Do we REALLY need ANOTHER soft-vinyl version of Great Mazinger? DO we REALLY need yet another Tetsujin 28 toy from Medicom? One of the main things that always attracted me to Japanese toys in the first place was their impeccable sense of creativity. Re-issues might be smart from a financial perspective, but they sure ain't creative.

--M.A.