Alen Yen's ToyboxDX

[Alen Yen's ToyboxDX]

[Eau de Alt]

6/10/00: Oya-Shirazu!

The Japanese call them Oya-Shirazu.

Americans call 'em Wisdom Teeth.

And I call 'em a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASS.

I just had mine out. All four of the suckers, in fact. I'm currently sitting at home with a mouthful of blood-soaked gauze, half out of my mind on some sort of narcotic painkillers, and yet I can't stop myself from paging through the newest issue of Hobby Japan. Actually, the Percosets are really improving the experience: I'm seein' trails, man!

Know what else I'm seeing? Some pretty cool stuff, actually -- and all narcotic hallucinations aside, sorry for taking so long to drop some news on y'all!

POWER UP!

Normally, I'm not much of a fan of Xebec/Kaiyodo action figures -- they're a bit too Spawn for my tastes. But this made me sit up and take notice: Xebec's announced that they're making a DIECAST action figure of of the powered suit from Robert Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers. (It's the design as seen in the mid-Eighties Japanese animated version, not the hideous late-Nineties Hollywood film.) I'm going to have to buy a whole platoon! (Price and release date are undecided -- look for 'em later this year.)

GOTTA GETTA MASS-PRODUCED GETTA!

Interesting tidbit: it seems that Medicom Toy hosted the display for Studio Half-Eye's fully-transforming Getta One toy at the March 2000 Tokyo Toy Show. (For those just tuning in, Half-Eye's Getta One is an insanely engineered, fully separating and transforming, fully built and painted resin "toy" of the old Getta One giant robot.)

Hobby Japan reported in their June issue that Medicom is in talks with Half-Eye to bring their Getta toy to a wider, more permanent release (currently, each of the parts is cast, assembled, and painted by hand by Half-Eye's staff, making the production run frustratingly small and slow.) More on this as it develops, but a mass-production run of the Half-Eye Getta would be DEEPLY appreciated by fans who can't afford the current $500-plus pricetag.

Zoids! ZOIDS!

And finally: remember Zoids? (If not, you probably remember the American version, Robostrux.) You may have already noticed that Japanese toy-titan Tomy's been selling re-issues of the old toys for bargain-basement prices, but things are about to get even better for the freakishly few diehard Zoid lovers out there. Tomy's announced that they're also going to reissue the impossible-to-find Mk. II versions of Gojuras (the huge T-rex) and Iron Kong (a heavily-armed gorilla) as well.

The colors are different -- Gojuras Mk. II is a sandy brown, while Iron Kong Mk. II is all red -- and they both feature totally different weapons from the "normal" versions. No release set yet, but look for 'em sometime later this summer.

5/30/00: NIHONGO-BAN!

You may have already noticed -- the 'staff,' such as it is, of ToyboxDX is proud to announce that we're going global! Or to put it more precisely: I think we're turning Japanese.

We've translated the first of our data lists, Raging Bullmark, into supple, succulent Japanese, thanks to the supple, succulent TBDX Secret Agent Hiroko. And we've even created an all-new Japanese language intro for Japanese toy fans, just so they know what we're all about -- (that is, the 'magic triangle' of social isolation, heavy drinking, and driving over of Machinders with Roger's Honda.) Will they run screaming from their computer screens once they see the international insanity their toys hath wrought? We'll keep you posted.

On a serious note, this is just the beginning -- Hiroko and I plan to keep churning out translated versions of the lists and other content on the site, and this whole deal wouldn't have been possible without the unstoppable Robert Duban's emergency crash-course in Japanese-language HTML design. The Japanese collectors I've spoken to over the years are amazed that foreign fans of Japanese robot design even exist; TBDX Japan is our little way of representin' our colors on an international scale.

--M.A.

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