Thanks for the advice! I will gladly share anything they post for international preorder, as it is announced. If anybody has interest in seeing the Pop-Up shop stuff, let me know. Most of it is gorgeous, but I don't know if anybody here lives close enough to reliably mule these, so I'll probably just leave those alone. The new Pagos seems to match the pastel color scheme.
One nice thing about Instagram is that you don't need an account to view posts, at least for accounts that make their posts public. So, anyone should be able to view this in a browser: https://www.instagram.com/marusan_kaminaga/
I have an account - I don't want to follow toy shit on it though. I come here for toy shit. If we don't post toy shit here, then what's the point of here?
That is kind of the downside as this place has evolved. I come here for toy stuff too, but unfortunately people are keeping release info, lotteries, and even just toy sharing to all these other platforms. Which I don't begrudge at all; but at the same time I do think that this is a heavy reason why people who are members of this community just use the board to talk shit, watch drama, post about other stuff, or just lurk to see if something interesting pops up for them in the BST. And, unfortunately, people have left the board as well, because it does not offer what they used to come here for (toy stuff). Look, I get SB can change and adapt with the times, and has been around a while (in internet terms at any rate). But going back 5-10 years when these platforms may have existed but not been as widely adopted and used for toy sharing/mainstream, this place was still chock-full of great toy info and discussions. In the 5 years before that, this was just about the only place, certainly on the internet, where you could find out about these weird Japanese monster toys [outside of Japan], never mind actually carry our in depth discussions, share knowledge, etc., around those things. And, one thing that I believe did come out of these earlier days, in addition to building the hobby and this great community we have developed, is the inspiration and encouragement for a lot of non-Japanese artists to enter the genre, and who have now become 'household' names within the medium. In short, styles and tastes have evolved as it has grown, this is more the expected result; but unfortunately I think the age of social media has actually let to more isolation in the hobby, hype-chasing, and exclusivity-preening. All of which are the points I, personally, do not enjoy. So, IG is good for some things, and I know I am missing out on stuff by not having a phone and checking there regularly. But it is not Skullbrain, and doesn't offer what I come here for.
There were plenty of places to discuss this stuff long before Skullbrain arrived and while it was in its heydey. In the early to mid 90s, people were active on Usenet groups like alt.fan.godzilla, alt.tv.sentai, and alt.movies.monster. When message boards started popping up a few of the Godzilla sites had them, plus there were Japanese toy collecting web sites like ToyboxDX, Cool Japanese Toys, and Bullmark.com, and there was a Yahoo Group associated with Club Tokyo. This was how many of the kaiju collectors got to know each other. Before Skullbrain, I had been trading toys and information for years online with Jim Cirronella, Chad Hensley, Brian Flynn, Mark Nagata, Mark Suggs, Mike Johnson, Richard Cox, Coop, King Rory, Sean Linkenback, etc. The newer social media platforms differ from message boards. Facebook has discussion groups but the software isn't very good for threaded conversation and deep discussion, it's really just intended as "flypaper" for quick reactions. Twitter is better for conversations but the individual messages are short and limited. Instagram is essentially the reicarnation of Flickr (yes, I know it's still alive). Excellent for sharing pictures with a small amount of text and the ability to tag them so others can discover them. I love Instagram, but not every Japanese toy outlet uses it. Marusan uses it regularly and effectively but I wish they had an RSS feed on their site. I still subscribe to M1GO's blog, and for Bullmark, who also has no RSS feed for their site and still relies on paper fliers to get the word out, their stuff usually pops up on http://sofvi.tokyo/.
My apologies Roger, you are absolutely right, and I did not mean to gloss over those things as well. The board was not the first, and may not be the last, I was just speaking of a sort of venue for mass-dissemination. Having been in the era of usenet groups, and even ordering from catalogues and auctions based on couple sentence descriptions alone before that - hard to imagine that for most people nowadays! - so I can certainly appreciate the history of where it has come from; but those groups tended to be very localised and hard to get to know of, without that lucky first connection. And usually this was through trading at a con (typically unrelated, when even these were sparse) or the like. These were also times when you were lucky if you managed to fit a 'hit' for searches... on any of the seven web browsers you had at you disposal. So, it has all grown along with the technology, and that may be what we are now going through. But as you pointed out, different mediums for different things - and different preferences.
I greatly prefer message boards to social media, but social media is where everyone is at these days. There also are obstacles that social media has overcome that makes it attractive to some people. More than one of my friends has complained over the years at how hard it was (and still is) to share images on some message boards, and by comparison how easy it is to do the same on social media.
I love seeing these photos from the factory. Also, it looks like the latest batch of “Shōwa Revival” Marusan Classic Godzilla 350 is available exclusively from the Godzilla Store, but I would not expect them to ship outside Japan: https://godzilla.store/shop/g/gGSG0900028/
For those who are interested in Marusan's 450 series, there's a new ape in town: http://skullbrain.org/bb/index.php?threads/fs-royal-ape.54250/
Same. This release is great, but really came along at the worst time. I hope some good SBers manage to connect with this cool toy.
Yeah, we totally understand how the timing is bad for everyone, but we wanted to get it out there. So far a few have found homes.
@daveblog and I are happy to see people having fun with their apes! A couple of shots from @deafmetal: Video from @Mark K: And another shot from klenseven on Instagram:
@Roger Paul did a wonderful job on that giant Goji, that could easily be an official release. I always love the light blue with flesh vinyl combination, and those silver highlights he's added are great! A brilliant custom, and under Paul's incredible skill, executed beautifully. A very suitable partner for that giant ape.
I love it. Bullmark did a reissue a couple of years ago that was very similar: http://sofvi.tokyo/180620_marusan/
So is it just a coincidence that the day I burst forth into TOY PRINCEdom is also the same day I receive my (long EMS limbo’d) first BIG kick ass new Bullmark?!? I think not.