HENSHIN!!

YEAH YEAH YEAH, WOW!!

http://www.marvel.com/videos/563.Japane ... Episode_01

Yeah maaan. 70's style. Love the effects when Spidey is crawling up and down the building. And when his suit pops out of the braclet.

haven't looked at this yet but i'm sure it is X10000000000 better than Italian Spiderman

I was just shocked that Marvel.com was hosting this!

Great stuff!

Italian Spiderman is awesome.

This is great!

I love the sneaky little batman music as he falls into the cave.

Seriously though, I know this is something we all hold close to our hearts, but can someone explain to me why there always needs to be giant morphing robots and monsters?
Maybe it's just because they just need to exist... I don't know.
This made my morning!

There has to be giant robots so they can sell giant robot toys?

This is like asking why bacon needs to exist.

(Amirite, Mason?)

Spiderman is great. The Dragonball Z version of the Fantastic 4? Not so great...

Anyone know where you can get a collection of these episodes? I've been looking for a long time.
Legitimate or otherwise?

http://www.videodaikaiju.com/

(otherwise)

This is great, thanks for sharing.

I love the scene of him and his brother working on the motorcycle indoors, running the engine! He and his brother are already mutants for their ability to survive a CO2 attack of their own making. I wonder how long they were in there working on it. I was dying.

And I love the little brother's excuse that it's because there's a big race soon, why else would they be working on it inside.

You have to love 70's japanese interpretations of evolving American icons. Good times.

Approved 100% by Stan Lee, too.

SPIDER-MAN is where Bandai really exerted it's advertising/sponsor muscles over Toei live action and anime series -- Bandai insisted on more vehicles and robots in these shows (designed by them, also), which could more easily be made into toys. The force that Bandai exerted on Toei forced one long-time producer (who brokered the deal with Marvel) to walk off the production. The robot in SPIDER-MAN lead the way for the permenent residency of colossal automatons in Toei's Super Sentai series ever since.

Leave it to August to know the REAL reason!

This is also the reason why the Sentai's and the Kamen Rider series grow in the number of characters, costume changes, henshins, and gattai's every year now. It's also the reason I love every second of the damn things!

Matt Alt did a translation of the Leopardon Soul of Chogokin liner notes a while back:

http://altjapan.typepad.com/my_weblog/2 ... y_wow.html

http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN939921

Never handled one of these. Is the SP-7 cool?

I heard it was a very solid toy. Collectiondx had a video review back when it was released. I was tempted myself.

Partly. Because of the dropping birthrate in Japan, there are less children to market these toys to, so they created more characters, henshin forms and vehicles to compensate. There have been several interesting articles about this social phenomenon. This has also prompted Bandai to also produce and market high-end toys for adult collectors, in the 30-50 age range, such as the SOCs and other expensive items.

Definitely, case in point: http://english.tamashii.jp/

There were no "kids toys" at the Bandai SDCC booth, just insanely priced dioramas that weren't for sale!

I think the designers nailed it with the Leopardon and Battle Fever J SOCs, they really look like guys in suits.