Everybody knows who Gundam is, right? One of the first "realistic" giant robot series, Mobile Suit Gundam single-handedly changed the tide of Japanese robot animation. Rather than focusing on mythical "hero robots," anime shows in the post-Gundam era inevitably portray giant robots as utilitarian war machines: like military tanks, they're often scraped-up, grimy, or damaged. This "military feel" is one reason why the oft-neglected Gundam Cloth toy series from Bandai was such a surprise when it first came out.

Until recently, Gundam toys had a somewhat spotty history considering the popularity of the series. Although the now-defunct Clover Toy produced a short series of cho-go-kin-esque Gundam pieces that are beautiful (if somewhat impressionistic) reproductions in their own right, Bandai never really heavily marketed toys for the Gundam series until the mid-1980s. In an apparent attempt to keep overhead down, Bandai chose to sell an ever-increasing number of plastic model kits based on ever-more-obscure Gundam robots instead. When they did begin merchandising toys from the series, they hit it with a vengeance, releasing a series of ten or so pre-assembled versions of their model series called "High Complete Models" and a set of three large-size and realistically detailed "Deluxe" pieces, just to name a few.

What they did next affected the toy and anime industry in much the same way that Mobile Suit Gundam did: they began releasing the "Super Deformed" series of robot characters. First as easy-to-assemble plastic models and then as complete toys, Bandai combined the giant robot genre with the Japanese penchant for cute and cuddly characters, and the giant robot world hasn't been the same ever since. Rather than portraying the "mobile suits" as hulking war-machines, Bandai produced detailed and compact "squashed" versions of the robots. With comical proportions, wide eyes, and huge heads, these toys were meant to appeal to the insatiable appetite for cuteness that is inherent in the Japanese population at large. This probably also explains their obscurity in the USA, where mecha-collectors usually demand precision and realism in their robot toys. But where did this all come from?

It's simple, really. In the mid-1980s, Bandai marketed a series of toys based on the popular show "Saint Seiya." The Saint characters wear zodiac-themed armor known as "cloths," and the toys from this show featured plastic figures with detachable diecast armor ("cloth") pieces.

Apparently taking its cue from the success of this series, Bandai took note of the popularity of "super deformed" caricature and combined the idea with the Saint Seiya design of removable armor, dubbing it the "Gundam Cloth" line of toys. The Gundam Cloths feature humanoid figures onto which robot armor pieces can be fit, producing highly detailed (and highly deformed) caricatures of the Gundam mobile suits. (In the actual show, these are giant, piloted robots; the wearable armor is just a cute gimmick made especially for the toys.)

It's a shame that the "Gundam Cloth" series of toys is so neglected here in the 'States, because these are really fun toys. They're colorful and some feature diecast, and in spite of their squashed look, they're pretty accurate portrayals of the robots to boot. The initial run included figures of RX-78 Gundam, Char's Zaku, Nu-Gundam, Sazabi, Zaku II, Zeta Gundam, and Hyaku-Shiki. Some of the pieces were fairly elaborate: Nu-Gundam came with a host of weaponry; The armor from Zeta Gundam could be removed and placed on a frame to "transform" it to a flying "wave-rider" mode; Hyaku-Shiki came with a gold-chrome covering and a giant beam cannon. Several also came with fully painted "deformed" versions of characters from the show. But they didn't stop there.

In an effort to top itself, Bandai mutated the line into the "Musha Gundam Cloth" series. "Musha" is a term that means "samurai doll," and true to their name, the "Musha Gundam" pieces featured - insanely enough - a medieval Japan theme. These figures really need to be seen to be understood, but attempt to combine features of mobile suits with samurai armor. In spite of this major detour from the realism of the Gundam world, it's not so surprising, really. Gundam itself, with it's twin horns and beam-swords, certainly bore a resemblance to a suit of samurai armor. The "Musha Gundam Cloth" series carried this to it's logical extreme, outfitting the robot cloths with simulated woven-bamboo armor, huge horns, katana, and battle-pennants. What's more, Bandai re-scaled the Musha series back up to "normal" proportions, and re-released their aforementioned line of Deluxe pieces outfitted with samurai armor pieces. Talk about cyclical.

The Gundam Cloth series wound down after a few years, and despite it's enormous popularity among Japanese children of the day, it's almost completely unknown in the USA. Ingeniously designed and well detailed, these pieces truly rank among the best of the unloved and unappreciated Japanese toys.

-- M.A.