he-man transformers and the usual kids stuff got me into toys KR got me into vinyl wising up got me out of it, and Secret Base and Real Head pulled me in before I even knew what those companies were.
I grew up watching Godzilla movies and loved all the different monsters, but never had any of the toys. I collected Star Wars toys since I was a kid...anything and everything! I've been a fan of kaiju toys for awhile, but it wasn't until a little shop called Ultra Pop opened and Paul turned me on to a brand new world of Japanes vinyl! I blame this guy... All kidding aside...THANKS PAUL!
Star Wars. I happened to come across Star Wars Kubricks at a local comic book shop. I went online and found kubrickworld, and then saw a few Secret Base figures and Kaws toys on there. It was all downhill from there.
I got into toys again after seeing Kubricks and then getting all ocd on Monsterism blind boxes. After that I got FOwler's Janitor (Still on of my favorite toys) After that I stepped off but designed a [expletive deleted] for KR and was asking them "why would ANYONE pay $90 for those ugly ass Skullbrains?". A few months later I saw the Blue Masked Ranger Skullbrain at High Five and that was it...
ive bought toys continuosly since i was young. the first toy i bought with my own money (from my aunt on a birthday) was krang from ninja turtles, the first one that came with that weird walking suit with the glass dome, which i buried in the backyard garden. much later i was buying japanese transformers, and picked up super7 #2 because it had some weird robot stuff, and saw the pictures of hedorah, jumbo villains, kikaida, etc, and completely lost my mind.
Kaiju Overall (movies/shows)- MST3K, seriously. Kaiju Toys- I was into Balzac and found out they made toys, than I bought my first S7 not too long afterword and my head exploded.
Grew up on Ultraman, Godzilla, Voltron and MOTU. Been collecting toys all my life. But, I think my first Mutant Evil was what turned my focus to mostly Japanese toys.
Yep. I broke the tails and arms of of several Bullmarks, and those ended up being set on fire for a couple of Super 8mm movies I made... But, I didn't abuse all of them -- just the ones that broke easily, but they kind of added up. If I only knew at the time... If I only knew...
I got a Chewbacca for my 7th birthday when the first wave came and never looked back. Grew up with Mazinger - bougth the occasional toys for years. Then came a rabbit with a cig and a Manson like forehead and I was Hooked. When Frank began doing kaiju, I followed, and his Grus and Prodon were my first real neo-kaijus.
I love love loved watching Ultraman as a kid and any other weird cartoon that fascinated me on early sat. mornings while I munched down my Freakies cereal.. the weird world of Sid & Marty Krofft was a big deal back then as well and The Banana Splits probably unknowingly warped my fragile little mind as well... started collecting star wars.. g.i. joe... motu.. as a young teen music & designer drugs took over in *high* school and I pretty much forgot about collecting toys but starting collecting Kiss memorabilia which I still have.. sort of.. sold a bunch of it... yeeeeears later I stumbled across some UNKL HazMapo's in some random magazine which led me to KR.. then KR led me to this crazy place... found RxH Chaos & Blobpus Dokugans and that's all she wrote...
Martial law was something else. I was too young to truely understand what it was but I knew the words. My childhood was tormented after the banning of the Japanese shows...they also banned video games and pinball machines. The only thing I have with me from my childhood is this: Not really sure why it was the only thing I brought over.
Dude you where lucky. My dad din't let me bring ANYTHING over. He gave all our toys left behind to our relatives there. He figured we could just buy newer cooler toys when we arrive in the States. I guess he never understood a child's attachment to a toy. Maybe I should have said that what got me collecting toys is my dad.
Grew up in the 70's w/ Star Wars & Micronauts. My best friend in primary school was from Hong Kong. He had large Mazinger Z robot collection and many miscellaneous diecast figures. Was always a great fan of Kaiju films of the 80's but never had any toys. They just didn't feature in Australian toy shops. Monster movies were hard enough to source. Being the pre-internet days, my friends and i would hunt down obscure Japanese & Hong Kong video stores. Here we would hire and dub Kaiju, Anime, Kung fu movies (Fists of the Northern Star, 5 Deadly Venoms, Macross, Gamera etc) I also used to spend a lot of time over at NeoGaf forums in it's early days. it's just crazy over there now. Have a large LCD handheld collection (Game&Watch, Yonezawa, Gakken etc) + into NeoGeo. Kaiju has now taken the place of my Japanese video game collecting obsession. Having grown up writing Graff since the 80's i started collecting Medicom Futura2000 stuff around the late 90's. Not much western vinyl ever pushed my buttons except for Tim biskup. Then i saw Bwana's Stevens. Wile looking for info on Steven i came across Super7, Skullbrain.org and Gargamels website
LOL! Paul on that damn homemade micro chopper!! Paul gets everyone into toy trouble. You should have seen him the other day talking to this 12 year old kid who was gonna buy this Damaged Brain and was explaining shit to the kid. He was saying "You see buddy, soft vinyl is like owning a puppy, there are certian responsibilities that come with it." I was about to piss myself, it's like it was a Mogwai!!
One day I was playing a green pressing of Earth A.D. watching some Godzilla movie and it just kind of hit me, why not make this record into a Godzilla toy? They are both green, so I made a rough mold and melted down the record and poured the figure, then I liked grafitti so I just started spraying it up. Thats kind of when punk and kaiju first collided for me, then I came online once this whole internet thing hit and all of a sudden found out that they had been making similar products this whole time. So it all kind of fell into place. If only I knew then what I do now.
Growing up in NJ in the 70's I always looked forward to Thanksgiving because they would show two King Kong movies on TV.The following day was cooler because they would show two Godzilla's one usually being Goji vs the Smog Monster. Only recently got into toys because a cool seller threw in a copy of Super 7 with a Godzilla dvd I bought.
LOL! Because I don't want to be run out of town! But, seriously, most of these have been lost to antiquity... I might have one or two of them left -- I'd have to dig deep into the storage bins. I did find a photo I took in the mid-'70s of a shop window in Japantown displaying, among other things, the Ultraman Leo Bullmarks! Now, I just have to scan it.
I've seen bits and pieces of this release, but don't own it (yet)... I used to make the same kind of movies with friends in rubber masks, shot in abandoned houses, and then my kaiju spectacles with burning Bullmarks (!)... Good times, good times.
I use to play with Zoids and Transformers back in the 80's when I was a kid. Watching Spectreman and Grendizer did also a lot of damages to my sanity, I was just unaware of it at that time. Back in 2000, I did an internship in Japan and found Zoids again...started to slowly collect them, then Chogokin and then I stumbled upon a picture of the red M1 Titanosaurus...I think that was the trigger for my thirst of vinyl !
