Just curious if there was a criteria for toy of the year?
If people gave a shit what I thought my opinion is the toy of the year should kick ass and be "easily" available. A cure collab based on a classic figure in BxH colors by SB would have been at the top. The fact that most people can't get their hands on the toy of the year makes it suck balls. Plus there are other figures that slap you in the face with style to someone who knows nothing of "kaiju" and are unique where you are like Whoa! where the hell did that come from? In my opinion the new bemon sculpt hardly comes close to that (to anyone outside the scene it looks D&D or McFarlane, if they even know that much about toys, like people have said) in fact it hardly even looks like a traditional or new school figure which to me makes it one of the shittiest representations of japanese vinyls to people that know nothing of this stuff.

Ha ha! tell us how you really feel Collin!

Good point about the Bemon not really being 'kaiju' I think -
he comes off the cover of an American film magazine I believe?
In fact, off that list, maybe only Gargamel's Rokuron IS kaiju.

And the first version of that was cast in clear orange vinyl -
something that had already made me wonder who the target market was.

I'm not against cultural exchange per se.
Consider Tezuka Osamu ("Tetsuwan Atom"'s creator),
probably the father of modern Japanese anime and manga.
Well, both he and Miyazaki Haiyao (head of Studio Ghibli)
were inspired in their youth by Walt Disney.
(Disney paid Tezuka back by stealing the plot for "The Lion King", lol.)

I just don't want to see my kaijus turned into Dunnies.

Uh oh, if you thought that was too much of a rant I must have taken that WAY to far.