no.

Hey, what's your problem?

^What's YOUR problem? We all understand that you have a burning hatred for Target Earth. You've made that clear. Some (actually, a LOT of) people choose not to agree with you.

Now quit flaming the thread.

^^^ agreeing with the above. We are all entitled to our opinions, but we try not to beat the hell out of someone till they agree. If you aren't a TE fan then stop lurking the thread.

Yes, let's stamp out all those people that don't agree with the 'rest of us'.

To each his own.

I think TE is GREAT! He's in the thick of things, his output is crazy, he does patchis of patchis which I feel is brilliant! And his creation of GAMERUDON is GENIUS!

Shutup!

This

dont forget about blood freak

Sorry if this is a total Fresh Meat question (I'm still learning) but how can this company and Gargamel make kaiju that are so incredibly similar without any copyright issues?
They both make something that looks like Garg's Zagoran and Deathra, but with different names...
Are both incarnations based off of a different design, or one copy it off of another?

Completely understandable to be confused by seeing that.. actually both companies (and many others) have based their designs off original kaiju designs from the 60s/70s. Slight tweaks here and there, for example Gargamel have taken these original concepts and produced a friendly version of a lot of kaiju, making their designs contemporary but with that vintage flavour

Interesting stuff! I'll have to do some digging into vintage kaiju, then. Thanks a bunch for being nice to the newbie, haha

It's a little more nuanced than that.

In the case of the Zag, the original illustration of the 'Zagora Yama no Kaiju' [Kaiju from Zagora Mountain] came from a book called "Sekai no Kaiju" authored by a Mr. Nakaoka. A company called Daikyo produced a standard size vinyl toy of the character, better known as 'Zagora', as part of its Nakaoka Toshiya Sensei Works Space Kaiju series. Gargamel probably used the Daikyo toy (not necessarily the original illustration) as reference to create the Zagoran. A few years after Gargamel produced the Zagoran, Hukkokudo created a reproduction of the original Daikyo Zagora, and credited Daikyo on the header. Marmit and Siccaluna Koubou then also produced their own versions of Zagora, crediting the original author and illustrators. There is some further confusion here since Target Earth took over the repro molds after Hukkokudo ended, so some of the repro Daikyo Zagoras were sold by Target Earth.

In the case of the Deathra, it looks to be based on an illustration of a character called 'Bagun', also from a book by Mr. Nakaoka. However, there was no original toy of the Bagun/Deathra. Gargamel first produced the mini Deathra in 2006, and more recently, the standard size Deathra. I haven't really gotten into the details, but there were essentially two versions of the Bagun illustrated in Mr. Nakaoka's book; the one seemingly referenced by Gargamel is called 'Bagun No. 1', and the other one with one ball on each horn is called 'Bagun No. 2'. Siccaluna Koubou and Marmit both produced their own version of Bagun No. 2 beginning around 2007-08, crediting the original author and illustrators. Target Earth followed up by producing their own toy of Bagun No. 1 in consultation with the original illustrator. There was a plan for Target Earth to produce a vintage-style toy of Bagun No. 1 as well, but that seems to have fallen through.

I won't get into the issue of who got permission from who to make what (since, in large part, it's not really clear), but that is the general history that we have pieced together over the years.

Really fascinating stuff, thanks so much akum6n for such a comprehensive answer! Always interesting to hear the history behind the toys and characters... I still find it kind of odd that Gargamel seemingly hasn't given any credit to the "original" designer of Bagun/Zagora, seeing how similar the designs are and that they were surely inspired by the originals. That's discussion for another thread, I suppose!

Thanks again!

meant to post this several pages back but did anyone mention this when talking about the warhol dust nag?

TE's stab on other maker's sculpt continues with his own take of SVHC's uchu kaiju (marira).
Wonder why he is not persisting with his dustman/nag hybrid since he doesn't seem to give a damn to anyone.

If you wanna talk Target Earth, let's talk Target Earth........

made my day peter

Is that an omake or the CKA version released a while ago?

fantastic

Could someone point out the differences to the Bemon sculpt? They just look totally identical to me...

I have not seen one in real before, maybe the size and proportion are different.
From the stock picture, looks like the "ears" are a little sharper than Bemon's.
But you are right, TE's version appear to be really similar to Bemon's. I wonder why.

This is what Sato wrote on his blog:

"A lot of people knows that I was the first to sculpt the marilla space kaiju, as I announced on 19/02/2013 (as you can see in the link below)
At that time it was the only marilla toy and everybody knows that is not possible to change the post time and lie about this kind of data"

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/genshou666/20130219

The first Bemon's space kaiju auction was on March 12th.
Do you really think that Bemon saw marilla on TE's blog and sculpted a standard size figure in 2 weeks? If you know just a little bit on sofubi you would know that's impossible.

IMO if you buy TE's toys thinking that he is the original creator of them (see gebolf vs zollmen enbankaiju etc...) then sorry but you're just a stupid.
Otherwise, if you like his pachi-pachi style and you know it and you have fun with the toys than I've got nothing to say.

Well, they're both basically up-sized versions of a vintage finger puppet patchi by an unknown company. I wouldn't really consider either original material.