Something I've been wondering in my brief time here is what got people interested in kaiju (as a genre) in the first place. Was it a certain movie, TV show, toy or something else? I'll go first.

Growing up in the Chicago area in the early 80s, Godzilla movies would occasionally be on, but what I was really into was Spectreman. It was my favorite show, much to the dismay of my mom. When the series wrapped up, the same channel started showing Ultraman in the same time slot. I gave it a try, but wasn't into it. In the last couple of years, I've rediscovered all of those things and more, and I'm glad. How about you?

Just the toys. I saw a lot when I was in Tokyo like 5 years ago, but the shops were so overwhelming that I didn't really know what I was seeing. I started getting interested when everyone was posting pictures on Kidrobot, and the Bwana Spoons x Gargamel hedorans made me start collecting.

In grad school a buddy was into transformers
and random Japanese robots and monsters--so we watched
monster movies and I started following it. I was more of a juvenile
delinquent as a kid than someone who was way into toys and shiz
so I got waaay into catching up geeking out with collecting kaiju
and makin stuff.

kaiju got into me seeing godzilla vs the smog monster on wptt tv 22 in the 1970s
but most likely Ultraman nemesis' a bit before that. modern era sofubi tho would be m1go and marmit certainly Billiken as well.

preskullbrain i discovered $ecretBase and Gargamel through trading information with another micronauts/microman fan at the same time S7 issue #1 hit. the past few years the insanity of longneck/svhc has infected me.

planet toys hideshi hino monsters were prolly the 1st modern kaiju figures i picked up tho back in the late 1990s.


hino monsters are my favorite kind of monsters.

When I was a kid my uncles would send me toys for xmas and birthdays from China town. So I grew up with Mazingers, Ultramen, and Voltron.

When I was a kid, a scruffy man in dark clothing came up to me on the playground & handed me a small godzilla. "The first one is free", he whispered, the faint smell of vinyl on his breath.

I dug the proverbial Voltron, GI Joe, Star Wars, He Man, Garbage Pail Kids, M.U.S.C.L.E., Godzilla & Kung-Fu flicks, et al. as a kid. But I always had a special fondness for the aliens, monsters, droids, & robots. Plus, my grandma kept a bunch of stuff (vintage Hotwheels, etc.) from when my dad & uncles were young. So naturally, when I saw the Pink Dokuwashi, I put aside my (ahem) childish *koff* KR ways & started buying real toys. What really converted me was the feel/smell of the Japanese vinyl, second to none! Also, I will take my floggings willingly for being a KR ex-pat...
"Thank you sir, may I have another?"

Flynn, was that you?

and
Darth Flynn or Brian Vader

Pushead´s "came from the sea pirate" was the first toy I bought since I was a child and it opened my door into "kaiju".....
though I collected Star Wars and MOTU when I was a child....but never had any kaiju-stuff
but Im not really sure if I didnt have a hp gid bemon 15-20 years ago when playing at the playground ? it did glow and was very Bemon-ish looking
maybe it was just a shiny Barbie

i loved the godzilla flicks for as long as i remember, but never knew a thing about the existence of kaiju. then i impulsively picked up a copy of Full-Vinyl at Half Price Books and was amazed by the Secret Base, S7, & Gargamel articles....and the essay about toy collecting being a form of necrophilia. that was interesting.

Growing up in a Japanese household with lots of Japanese friends, I was exposed to all the die-cast robots, alien monsters and the masked heroes that fought them. I have always had a place in my heart for all this kinda stuff because of that.

But to more specifically answer the question for this new age of jp vinyl toys and my entry into this world, it would have to be the Rumble Monsters Damnedrons. Slime monsters that look like they will absorb anything and everything to get at their prey. The melty sculpt into the ground just got me HOOKED...and you can figure the rest out yourself.

Grew up watching Ultraman.
Then came "So Crazy Japanese Toys"
I'm on my 3rd phase thanks to SB.

I blame this guy.

When I was a kid a friend of mine had a 2' tall Godzilla - I was in awe of that thing.

My grad school mentor/advisor.

SDCC '06 Ghostfighter . . .

my friend had an issue of super7 magazine with all the henshin cyborgs and I was hooked
it took me a while to get up the guts to spend $60 bucks on a toy though
but now I wish I could find what i like for that amount

$600 is the new $60 but i still do not want to pay $6 for star wars figures

Rodan from Mattel was i think my 1st Japanese monster toy, my brother had Godzilla before that but i got the Rodan in 1979 for my birthday. after my mom hooked up the wings i still remember running around the yard as fast as i could go with Rodan and its 38 inch wing span, such a great toy.

there are some great pics of Rodan on here:

http://weirdscifi.ratiosemper.com/shogun/rodan.html

ha - nice icon antknee, especially since that's my icon I created for other discussion boards

I too grew up in the Chicago region but in the 70's. My folks were cool and let me watch all of the classic Kaiju flicks along with stuff like Matango. The also picked up some of the horror / monster mags of the time and all of them had their effect on me.

Oh yeah, then there was Spectreman on TV...sweet memories of that!

So from the get-go I was into the "scene" and as soon as I could I got the toys...then the vinyl started once I had the cash. It's been all downhill from there!

[expletive deleted].

No, seriously. First I started buying [expletive deleted], then I grew up. Bet that's true for alot of us.

grew up longing for Popy Die Cast. Raideen, Kikaida, Go Rangers, etc.

Then 3.5 years ago, Paul Kaiju, Locomoco and Brian Flynn showed me the way. Ghostfighters are the gateway drug!

When I was very young, probably nursery school or kindergarten age, we were fortunate enough to have cable and one of those stations showed Ultraman. Two of my best friends and I would always love watching it.

One time our parents dumped us on a babysitter who took us to an afternoon matinee. It was the first time I saw a movie in the theater, and it was something awful like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. Tacked onto the beginning of the film, though, were trailers for a Godzilla double feature: Megalon and Smog Monster.

We howled through the whole movie that those were the movies we wanted to see instead of this, and we really made her miserable. The next day our parents took us back for the double feature and life was never quite the same.

I also remember watching the Godzilla Power Hour (with Godzoooookie!) but that probably shouldn't count. ;p

As far as toys go, I probably had one of those shitty Imperial Godzilla toys that everybody had, but I didn't actually own a Godzilla figure until high school. A Bandai one. Picked it up at Pony Toy in Edgewater, NJ, I think.

A steady diet of Ultraman and Japanese Monster Movies on television and in theaters as a little snot growing up in San Francisco. Then, in grammar school, we had a field trip to Japantown in 1973, and I saw my first Bullmarks, up close and personal (I still have one MIB with the original price tag of $1.95). Those were the days...

I grew up on Japanese robots....Mazinger Z, Voltes V, Getta Robo, Daimos, Grandizer, Gaiking...the really cool robots. Along with those were Go Rangers (Banbadabanbanban banbadabanbanban...), JakQ, Spacekateers, and of course Gatchaman. I knew about godzilla, matango, rodan, and all the other kaiju...along with Ultraman and Ultra7 but they all eventually got banned by the goverment. There are some interesting theories as to why...
I actually had a lot of toys that are considered vintage now when I was growing up...mostly die-cast, and a lot of which I wish I still had no matter how beat up it was.

I loved Japanese monsters as a little kid, to my mom's initial concern. As a slightly bigger kid, my younger brother was totally obsessed with all monsters, especially Japanese. Our dad would occasionally drive us to Japan Center in San Francisco where we'd buy vinyl kaiju for Will (my bro.) Imagine ... now-vintage Bullmarks and Popys, probably for about thee dollars or so, each. (This was early-to-mid 1970s.)

Those toys got pretty badly beat up. You know how boys are ... we'd attach M-80s to them and blow them up and stuff. We weren't thinking "collectable" at all. All that survived were some wooden toys that my grandfather built and the famously indestructible Tonka trucks. Bye-bye old kaiju.

Over the years I remained fascinated by kaiju toys but had no bearings. All I really saw was Bandai stuff that didn't seem quite good enough to buy. Then I briefly got into Muttpop when they were brand new, related to interest in all things culturally Mexican, and quickly gravitated to Skullbrain and Super7. Weird how a fascination with Lucha Libre led me back to Japan, but interests can be like that.

At last, bearings found!