What a wonderful haul, Grace Not a stinker in the bunch and they all look so squeaky-clean. You should check out other Iron King kaiju by Ark. They are all somewhat dino-like and sprayed in lovely, bright colors. What are the markings on the mini Earthtron? That Miura "spinosaurus" still eludes me Nice photos, too!
Thanks Mark, Stevie, and Jon! Mark, your dino herd give me something to shoot for . They all cleaned up nicely with just soap and water, and a gentle brushing. The Miura Spinosaurus has a 1 mm hole on one of the spines, but other than that, they are all in great condition! The mini Earthtron's foot is quite worn, and really hard to see the markings Other foot's markings are even more faint. I had to use the lighting in someone's office for better contrast... I found a listing in the Mandarake store https://order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1021610199&ref=list My little guy was less than half of Mandarake's price! The red colorway doesn't show up in Club Tokyo's archive, but I'm hoping Mandarake's listing will confirm the pedigree? Here is the front and back view of my little guy (playing with pandas ) and his side view from the previous page... The color on the back of my little guy, differs from the Mandarake specimen, in that the accent spray on my guy is gold, but on the Mandarake's Earthtronlet, it's green. Also on the Mandarake version, the purple spray comes down lower on the left leg. I'm not sure what to think. Perhaps it's wear difference? or not Bullmark? or repainted? I really adopted him, because he's cute, and if he's a vintage Bullmark, that would be nice too p.s. Mark, can you please post a link to the Iron King by Ark, that you refer to? Thank you!
@Mr. Humphreys The Ark Toragiras was my first vintage purchase! Must have been... hmm, 10 years ago now? I agree with Mark that all of the Iron King figures from Ark are worth a look. Only 3 total and no repros out there.
Hmmmm! Well it's very surprising there are no repros! I think the Toragiras is a very handsome creature! I'm sorry @Mark K and @akum6n , I don't know too much about Ark dinos. I think that Arkron ("Ark") was a company created by some who left Bullmark, in the 70's? I think they made a lot of robot toys. Can you please post a photo of the other two dinos? It's a shame there are only three!
I'm a sucker for windup toys! Nice tail articulating action there, but I would think the poor guy would get rusty after some use and exposure in the tub!
Sure could. That may have led to the demise of most of these figures, which may be the reason this is the only one I've seen. ^_^
Well, now we've both seen two! Mine's slightly more worn (but not too rusty) and is missing the red rudder part, but the mechanism still works just fine. These pics are older and "filtered" ~ I'll take some new ones of this beast.
@Mark K and @akum6n , found it!!! Kapurigon makes an appearance at 1:31 and at 3:08! And at 3:27 poor Toragiras, takes quite a beating! (with rocket power too ) Thank you for all of the interesting factoids, it's very educational! p.w. gwarsh! this is such a 70's show!
It is made by Marushin. They have been discussed on here a few times (several within this thread I am sure). I believe that fellow is actually a kentrosaurus. You can read a little on him from this post by RobotXMonster aka @akum6n. (Well you are certainly in the right place for info. ) PS - Daniel, you rule.
@deafmetal @ultrakaiju Actually this is just good ol' Triceratops made by Marusan. The original is mentioned on page 3 of this thread. Then a post on page 8 from @animator tells us that mine is a painted lucky bag release from Gtumble Toy. There's also a video of the Marusan reissues on page 13 posted by @Fusta
Oops, sorry, my misunderstanding. I thought that this was the fella in question here (i.e. stegosaurus vs. triceratops), as I understood it, but yeah, now I am not sure which you meant. Either way though, you got your answer. Sorry about that. And Rei is absolutely right.
@ultrakaiju - No worries, more than one wonderful stegosaurus on this page, and I really like them both. @rattanicus - The Marusan lucky bag stego looks spectacular. Great piece.
Nitto / Kawada Tyrannosaurus. Unopened! Madness! Among other interesting details, the header clarifies the relationship between Nitto and Kawada relative to this toy: Nitto appears to have been the manufacturing company, and Kawada the sales company. I wonder if this was the same arrangement as for the Gamera figures. @Mark K ? EDIT: Actually, Super7 Issue #1 covered this in its article about Nitto: this was the same arrangement as for the Gamera figures. In fact, the dinos are believed to have been produced at the same time as the Nitto Kawada Gamera line, 1978. In hindsight, I should have kept the header photos at higher resolution. May repost higher res versions later.
@akum6n - It's sweet that it is still in the net packaging. My only net packaging. So tempted to open it or buy another. Starting in 1978, Nitto join forces to collaborat with Kawada Toys. Starting in 1978 releases are refer to as Nitto Kawada versus just being refer to as Nitto. The following information came from Yuji's book: The manufacturing was done by Nitto and the sales release by Kawada. The company collaboration was a direct result to compete against the growing popularity of Popy kaiju toy lines.
@chimply.kaiju Thanks for adding the photo of your Gappa... they certainly seem to have been part of the same line. Keep it sealed! You can still touch it through the mesh.
I tried to adopt some pachi dinos last night, but I have spent way too much this month already: They look like so much fun though: After reading through this entire thread again, I have to say the Marushin dinos are my favorite right now.
You can probably find examples in better condition for those prices. All 3 look like they have some pretty heavy sun fading.
^^ especially for the first one... it almost looks like a different color vinyl than mine, with how much fading going on from sun exposure: View this post on Instagram