Lunchtime thoughts ...

When my niece was a little girl I worked for Nickelodeon. It was a real pleasure to be able to give her all the weird Nick toy schwag that the company was always lavishing on its employees. She thought she had the coolest uncle and I was happy seeing the toys and "toys" in her hands, appreciated more than they would have been in mine.

I get a kick out of visiting a couple of my best friends who have a three-year-old girl. She thinks of me as one of her uncles even though I'm only longtime friends with her parents. She loves her toys, especially her Giant Ice Bat. I recently showed her how to draw Godzilla and she took an immediate liking to him, preferring to call him "my dinosaur." I'd remind her that his name was Godzilla, but she'd answer "I know that but he's my dinosaur." I'd love to give her some fun kaiju but her parents have asked me not to keep spoiling her with toys as I'm inclined to do. Her parents are Japan-philes and Industrial/Goth in culture, so I'm certain that monster toys wouldn't scare the kid. Every time we tell her that something might be scary, she says "no it's not!" Great l'il trooper.

wing_clipper posted the most adorable photo not too long ago of his daughter holding a recent RxH Chaosman. It looks like she'd adopted it as her own toy.

Another board member has a young son who seems to love neo kaiju as much as his dad. Indeed, the dad recently told me that his Zagoran collection is actually the kid's at this point.

I love children because I think they're so brilliant, tend to have great open-mindedness, and playing with them lets me indulge my own remaining boyishness. It's fun to encourage them and their interests, and a total joy to share toys with them.

Generally I think of "art toy" collecting as an adult thing, but toys are toys, and even scary monster toys were originally intended for kids as we all know. Vintage kaiju may command giant clams today, but at one point some kid was playing with that now-expensive Mirrorman in a sandbox. Can't put a price on that!

Sometimes I wonder if there's really such a dichotomy between kaiju for grown-ups and kaiju for children. Obviously our pricey collections risk damage when played with, but if I had children of my own, I'd allow them to play with at least some of the toys from my collection because the joy of seeing kids enjoy toys is greater than whatever selfish pleasure I take in having a rare bit of supercool vinyl. Uncle Dean gets to reserve some for himself, though.

That's probably why I dig the vintage Bullmark/Takatoku/Popy pieces with some kid's name written in katakana on the foot. It reminds of the original intent, and that it was used as such at one time.

sometimes, in the thick of the hunt, we as adults forget that these are toys and should just be fun - i know I have stressed over getting th etoys more so than I have enjoyed them at times once I get em


good reminder to just have fun with em

My son has a couple shelves of Godzilla toys, mostly Bandai, that he used to play with. Now that he's a bit older he doesn't play with them anymore, and he refers to them as his collection.

I used to love to play with him and his toys on the carpet, building cities out of blocks and having a ball smashing it all with Goji and his pals, while Destroy all Monsters played on the TV.

I recently gave him his first M1-Go figure, a Mecha Godzilla. He says it's the best part of his collection.

I think this collecting thing is going to go on for at least one more generation.

well put dean!

at times, i think my daughter enjoys my toy collection more than i do ...
most likely because she sees them for exactly what they are, toys.

i get a kick out of watching her play with them ... such as making two chaos fighters hug and kiss each other, which is really funny in some strange sort of way, lol!

now her new favorites are my killers, which she calls her "fishies"
she has them 'swim' all around the house,
while i try to make sure the dog doesn't go for em.

but you're also right about some pieces not coming off of the shelves,
she doesn't get to play with all of them!!

my 3 year old daughter's favorite kaiju is the green Gargamel painted lucky bag Bako!! she loves it.

I think the neo-kaiju type of toy presents this question in a unique way, because the toys are made by artists for adult collectors, but are designed to mimic toys from our collective childhoods, e.g., the Walder colorway Akrokaiser.

This, in my view, makes it different from collecting mass-produced Power Rangers toys, which are openly intended and priced for kids as a new character or series. I think when adults collect those toys, we are truly adults buying kids' toys.

So, I guess, the question might be, "what makes a toy a toy?" But that might be splitting hairs, in attempting to distinguish collector-level toys from mass retail toys.

Ultimately, expensive or cheap, I think the most important aspect of toys is to ensure that today's kids grow up with a favorite toy or toy line, such that they can have the same fond memories of playing with said toys, as we all do.

Interesting thoughts, xoconostle. But don't you mean "Kaiju for Grow-Ups"?

I gave a dorble to a 6 year old boy once, he poked his finger on the horns a few months later and I got an angry Mom phone call.

(Now I sneak him toys through his dad.)

Nah, you're absolutely right; it's not splitting hairs, it's a relevant distinction. However, the distinction can be blurred, especially if a child "adopts," say, the Walder Akrokaiser from their parent's collection. They couldn't care less about this colorway's history or how cool Mori is ... the toy's background story is the kid's to imagine. Still, the context will be entirely different for the adult collector who "knows." Maybe there's some karmic justice in how kids adopt our toys like we adopt theirs.

Speaking of Real x Head one of the things I like is how so much about the figures' connotations is not said. I still have no idea, for example, who Shintosan is supposed to be in Mori's world, although I see a lot of potential references to other toys and characters in him. How much do I need to know? Just looking at the fig, I can imagine all sorts of things about who he is, what he fights, etc. I was looking at my whole regular-size RxH collection last night and watching my own mind wander, imagining them "alive." That may not be child's play but it's not so far off for an adult.

Controversy about customs aside, one of the great aspects of good customs is what they bring out in figures that we might not have seen before. The artist gets to play, the collector gets to share the fun. I'm thinking of things like Paul K's Kikaider Pollard or Tut/Mummy Pollard. Really taking it to another level in a manner that's as playful as it is artful.

Totally lovin' the accounts of your kids and the toys, all. Kidz "r" us!

childless guy's 2 cents (although I was technically a child, many years ago)...

the biggest difference is that toys kids play with do (or did) not cost $50+ each---that is what makes them fun! If you have the money to let your kids play with your skullbees or gargadeaths, then good for you and them...but the real fun in toys is being able to play with them and not having to worry about devaluing the collectible aspect of the toy...

When I was a kid, I had a bunch of GI Joe "action figures"...I recall one had a fuzzy beard and mustache, which I shaved off with my pocketknife to give him that "clean cut" look...then I launched him into the air from the clothesline (advanced recon) multiple times, losing one of his legs in the process...he sure would have been worth a lot of money, had I not (extreme) played with him, but I had a blast and certainly don't regret having trashed a $10 toy. I think that is part of what makes the difference between kid kaiju and kaiju for grown ups...

......

Heh I was pretty rough on that same GI Joe ... fuzzy beard dude. Who could have seen the "everything's collectable" effect of eBay coming back then? People were collecting stamps and antique dolls and coins at the time. Actually my dad collected coins and ended up paying for a nice new swimming pool by selling some off.

Somehow I don't see trading my CNY Blobpus stuff for a hot tub, but you never know.

I just started picking up Bandai Godzilla figures (Goji, Hedorah, Ghidorah) for my 3.5 yr old nephew, and word is he and his friends love them. SO much better than some Elmo-type thing (not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that; I actually remember when Sesame Street started and thinking that it was pretty cool, even if I was a bit older than their target audience). It's just that there's an edge to kaiju that (I think) even the youngest can appreciate. It really does help one to remember that toys are, in fact, toys.
Great thread (as usual), Xoco.

Ahh toys for Kids ....thats right!

I just gave a GID Dragamel mini to one of my Goddaughters for her 9th B-day.....she has been a dragon freak since before she could talk

She loves it more than me so off it went

Nice one, KJB...love the Kure Kure Takora av.

My 10 year old boy got started with inexpensive Bandai kaiju. We do a lot of things together like watching old Kaiju Movies and Tokusatsu type shows (on DVD). Now he's got his cousins into em. Just before school was out for summer vacation a classmate of his g
ot his parents to call me to find out what this Skull Brain thing their son was buggin them about. My son had brought a Batman forever Skull Brain to class without telling me. It's one of three that he now have. The first one was a b-day gift and the other two he bought with "video game" money. He's totally vinyl obssessed now. Specially with any kaiju done be Frank K. What impressed me the most about him is his insistance that he pays for it himself with money he saves.
He's got enough cash for an Usagi Gon. He's just waiting for one to pop up.
then plans to have Frank sign it in person "when he meets him" lol.

My son (4) likes to tell me that him and my girlfriend got me a present whenever I get boxes in the mail. He also gets more excited than I do to the see the new "monsters" inside. He is a huge fan and has favorites and everything.

If these things didn't cost so much, and if I had kids, I'd buy 2 of everything for them. I have so many older toys of mine to give my kids when I get some though that there'll be no shortage for them. My 8 year old brother loves a lot of the gross-out stuff I was into in the 80's/90's like Madballs, Ghostbusters, Toxic Crusaders, Ninja Turtles pretty much anything with slime,, that we hit used toy stores together and load up in a team. It's pretty fun, so that's where I kinda get my sharing toy kicks from.

My 2 year old daughter loves Godzilla, We will sit and watch through a couple movies in one night. her all time favorite is "Son of Godzilla". She will sit there and just be in awe, "Look daddy its babyzilla". She will even run around in my godzilla slippers roaring and terrorizing the dog and cat. I love it! She plays with my blobpus/blobpi set as if they were dolls. She is so cute and am so happy that we can enjoy the same things together.