Mini-vinyls of real robot characters? Talk about an all-but ignored genre. There’s a surprising number of them out there, though. I like to think of these as “toys that should never have been,” and for a variety of reasons (like, mainly, I’m broke) they’ve been one of my main collecting focuses of late. Ninety percent of the time, one can pick up mini-vinyls for a literal fraction of what it’d cost to get a diecast rendition of the same character, and with good reason. Take these Gundam vinyls, for example. They’re quite possibly the worst Gundam toys ever created. They’re sloppily painted and appallingly out of proportion. They’re more like rough sketches than actual finished products. Gundam even has his shield on the wrong arm! I pity the poor child who received these instead of the DX diecasts they’d asked their parents for. Yet I love the things. Somehow, they manage to capture an indefinable essence of each character: look at Gouf’s whip curling around his forearm, for example. (Too bad he’s also got a case of flail chest. Must’ve been lying out in the sun too long. I’ve got to touch that up with a hair dryer one of these days.) As luck would have it, Clover Gundam characters fall into that ten percent of mini-vinyls that are frustratingly difficult to find. They’re almost impossible to locate mint on card (yep, they’re blister-carded), and complete sets can command surprising sums in bidding wars. I was lucky enough to score this set off of a Japanese auction for a fraction of what it’d have gone for in a store. I’m praying the investor-collector types ignore the lowly real-robot mini-vinyls for a while longer. These pieces represent one of the last frontiers of Japanese toy that can be purchased without breaking the bank. -- M.A. I swore I'd never get into Grip diecasts. But I've always been a big fan of Blazer, Rockbat's inscrutable robotic buddy, and when I saw a Grip version of it on sale for only ¥2,500... Well, you do the math. Eidai's Grip series of palm-sized mini-diecasts are legendary for their precision and gimmicks in spite of their size. Blazer's no different. He's more articulated than a lot of full-sized toys, and the only plastic on the thing is the head. Plus, the Grip "suspended animation chamber" style packaging is a total classic. Pure vintage bliss. Is it just me, or does this slightly portly rendition of the character resemble a long-lost brother of Bender from Futurama? -- M.A. back to Library Index