You learn something new every day. I emailed Eiji Kaminaga at Marusan and here's what he said:

Wow Roger, Going straight to the top!

Oh man, that is such great info Roger!
It'd be interesting to see how many dinos were released with the little chicken logo.

Really appreciate the research, Roger. So I guess there is no Marusan "penguin" logo.

I wonder which of the sculpts were produced by Shimada Toy during that brief period.

Outstanding job getting that info, Rog.

damn roger , its no wonder your revered as a god in japan . well , at least by the people at M1 . great info !

Fiddlesticks, my name's Roger and I'm a man, same as you. There is no God...

;p

Glad you guys enjoyed the info. Eiji tells me that he has a book out about the convoluted history of Marusan and Bullmark. I'm going to post a new thread about it as soon as he gets me the details.

really ? was jesus just a man roger ? anyway , i should be getting a vinyl in soon that i talked about with the marusan guy when i was in japan . could you pass along a pic to him roger and see if he could add some info ?

No. Go fuck yourself.

Was the identity of those teeny weeny sofubi dinos that Mark K found ever discovered?

WOW! Thank you Roger, for going all out and helping me with the info on the toy! It's nice to have the history (I'm a geek for details)--and a very interesting one, and I'll appreciate the dino even more so now! I look forward to your post about Marusan and Bullmark.

Question on the Takoda/Peach dinos- I was looking at a catalogue page for Daikyo (i.e., original Zagora) and noticed that it had the "peach" logo next to the Daikyo name. Several of the toys on the page were also dinosaurs identified earlier as Takoda/Peach toys.

Does Daikyo = Takoda/Peach?

The unmarked orange Triceratops that vintagevinyl posted in another thread is also on that page, which confirms its origin.

Too bad those dinos were not made by Ark- that would have driven me nuts. They are still quite nice.

im looking at the same catalog as you akum and yes , daikyu is " peach " not takoda although spacemonkey pointed this out a while back . that catalog shot cleared up a lot misconceptions i had .

Ah, that old exchange makes more sense now. Thanks for confirming that.

the one thing that struck me rather odd was that the zagaron and mighty were made into new sculpts the but third daikyo kaiju was never remade which is too bad as its very cool .

Pic?

Thanks for the scan.
And yes, I agree w/ you.

Thanks for posting the scan.

That third kaiju looks like the same sculpt as the Ceratosaurus from their dino line. Most of the reissues (Space Kaiju 3 from Miura Toy notwithstanding) have been of the toys already released as 'Zokki Kaiju' minis by Gargamel- Space Kaiju 1/2, Zagora, Mighty and the IKB Hedoras, so maybe it was passed over. It would be nice if a company like Hukkokudo would take up the reigns of reissuing the other dinosaur vinyls made by companies like Miura Toy and Daikyo. Assuming the molds are still there, that is.

I just noticed something interesting when looking at that page again. I always thought that the Zagora and Mighty made by Daikyo were unlicensed, but the logo on the top of the page says something like "The Works of Nakaoka Toshiya." Maybe they actually were done with his approval...

That would explain the 45's that came with the figures pictured in the catalog or plans to include with them anyway.
More than likely, they had excerpts from the Nakaoka Toshiya book. Coincides with the popularity of Japanese record books of the time.
Amazing info...blows the "bootleg" mythology out of the water.

Was this Zagora ever produced? Is the Hukkokudo a copy of an original or based on the catalog shot?

this is a rip from an old yahoo auction but i did see one for sale in japan . dont know too much about the reissues but i was told the spikes on the back are different .

They look pretty similar to me:

From what I recall on the Hukkokudo blog, their Zagoran is made right from the old Daikyo molds. Same with Mightin and the other space monsters they released.

I would kill to have one of them sono-sheets (flexi disc?)
bet there was some wicked bootleg break beasts on that plastic...