Most I've found are incomplete or have a year that often corresponds to the tv show. What do you guys at http://www.clubtokyo.org/ base your dates on? Thanks!!
This is an interesting question. I think the assumption that the toys were released at around the same time their respective shows or movies came out is a fair one. I'm really not sure how else we'd know of a release date, come to think of it! I guess you'd have to go the the manufacturers' records, but I think those are now pretty spotty, at best. The other route would be to look vintage catalogs and see what was planned for release in a given year. There's a lot of stuff that was made that's not in old toy catalogs though, so your results wouldn't be terribly comprehensive.... I have often joked with a few fellow collectors that we should be carbon-dating toys that are potentially fake vintage toys... Maybe we need to go that route!
Also, @knights_of_old you should check out the archive section af www.ultrakaijyu.com, many dates in there.
