Can some of you vintage keeners school me on vintage Tsub vinyls please? I've come across some really nice figures but have always wondered when they were actually released and what the back story on them was. More specifically the King Wanda with black spray and the Sufendon. I know there are others as well but I can't remember them all right now. Also were these all released on a brown base vinyl? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
I have images of nearly all of the standard size EP vinyls. Can PM them if you are interested. Some are here, but the Mirroman section is down: http://mononofu.hp.infoseek.co.jp/museum/tsuburaya_ep/ep_main.html I've read that they were sold in 1982 (via Club Tokyo), along with the Ark and Orange vinyls. Later than I would have thought. Tsuburaya Enterprise (aka, EP) was one of the 3 companies spawned when Bullmark went under (along with Ark and Orange). EP reissued a bunch of Tsuburaya kaiju seemingly at random. One interesting difference between EP versus Ark and Orange is that the latter two also sold new sculpts along with reissues of Bullmark/Marusan toys, whereas EP only sold reissues. I've always wondered whether these new molds were developed by Ark/Orange or whether they were in holding at the time of Bullmark's demise and passed on. By the same token, there are some Bullmark toys that should have been reissued, but do not appear to have been produced. The above website shows them as blank spots, so I do not know if they were unproduced or just extremely rare. E.g., Dakron, Aian and Imbera from Mirrorman (would have been done by EP) and Bullkong, Bandera and Metalinome from Capt. Ultra (Ark). Some are even shown in b/w ads for the Ark/Orange toys. Anyone know? (Sorry, not to threadjack, but the thought crossed my mind while posting.)
Thanks Daniel! I've read so many mixed dates on their release that I was surprised to hear about the 1982 date as well. It's also been interesting to see the wide variance in terms of sale price at auction as well. Is it just me or do the Tsub releases seem to sell for way more than the Ark and Orange vinyls? I keep going back to the link you posted in hopes that the page will be back up. It's never worked for me though.
Yeah, EP vinyls seem to go for way more than the Ark/Orange from what I have seen as well. I would guess popularity of the character factors into it- Ultraman will win over Iron King. The only vinyl from Ark/Orange that is significantly hard to find is Zandora from Zone Fighter. On the other hand, some of the original Bullmark versions of the EP Mirrorman toys... wow.
I would take the date on clubTokyo as relative/approximate date. I think i got it from a translation from the site link you listed above.
I think there are some EP mirrorman samples floating around. They might have been photographed in the old toy life magazine. I saw one at ichi bon boshi once, but they wanted around 8k for it.
