What is considered the vintage period for Japanese toys? Bullmark went out of business in 1977 so would one say late seventies and earlier is considered vintage? And then 80s and 90s modern with anything after 2000 considered contemporary? Not trying to over analyze or what not. Just bored and kicking around the definitions on another board so I was curious what people thought over here...
I consider "vintage" to be pre-mid-80's, but then again, that has a lot to do with what I like... ; )
Is the period just a number of years old, so every year more are included or is more of fashion in which toys were made. Some bandai godzilla toys are over 25 years old now. I always think of vintage as more of a style. Something about the way marusan/bullmarks were made compared to more modern approaches.
>pre-mid-80's so are we saying anything made on or prior to 1983 is now vintage? >bandai kid logo wasn't this logo gone by 1980 (maybe even sooner)?
I agree with Mike: I don't like to use a flat number of years to define "vintage" rigidly. It's more of a style thing in my mind. And there definitely were some vinyl sculpts in the early 80's that were done in the chunky, charming old-timey way.
long time ago i came up with 1983 as an answer for the same question. funny thing is. erik over at toybox dx, came up with the same year, but for different reasons.
wondering for a while ...since when are vintage toys being collected in japan??? ...todays going prices being paid???
I like this interpretation. We've kicked this around on Toybox for a while but you could look at it this way: 1966 to 1983 - Vintage period of Japanese character toys. The monster boom is started by Marusan (continued by Bullmark) and robots are introduced by Popy. 1983 to 1993 - Modern period. Bandai starts making "realistic" kaiju toys and the mecha era of robot anime begins. The death of Hirohito (end of the Showa era) and the bubble burst changes Japan and things start to shift. 1993 to present - Contemporary era. Toys for children are rarely made in Japan, but companies like M1GO and Marmit get the old Japanese vinyl factories fired up again. Bandai's "Soul of Chogokin" debuts and reissues abound. Adults open their wallets accordingly.
Saw this through the profile posts, and I’d like to bring this discussion back up- @Roger you linked it, so I’m going to assume you still follow this timeline, it’s been 12 years since you wrote that… should the timeline be updated? Or is the “contemporary age” (which would now be in its 29th year) still happening? Does “antique” start to apply to the oldest stuff? (I think I’d call it “Classical” ) And eveything gets relabeled/shifted accordingly? Is 83-93 is vintage now? I know it’s all semantics in the end, but it’s a fun thought exercise. I personally think there should be a delineation around 2016 or so (my dates may be off) where (in relation to soft vinyl at least) you started seeing an influx of new makers from outside of Japan creating original toys. And we also saw the overall popularity explode, relatively speaking. The landscape to my eyes has changed significantly enough over the last 15 years since I’ve been collecting soft vinyl. And in the toy word we’ve seen the rise of third party unlicensed toys, and with the advent of rapid home manufacturing and designing tools, people creating toys on much smaller scale, but also individuals having high quality toys manufactured overseas in factories in China, for instance, without being a big toy company.
The classification system from my post still works for me, but keep in mind I was describing different eras of character toys that were made by Japanese companies for Japanese children. If you want to come up with "eras" for vinyl character toys marketed to adults (Japanese and foreign), I guess the starting point is 1991, when M1GO sold their first Marusan/Bullmark style figure, Kemurujin.
