Bit of a mystery these, they appear to come in two sizes, big and very big, I now have all the big ones but only two very big ones!
The story starts about 15 years ago when I bought three off the brothers' Curry, who used to have one of the most interesting stalls at Dave McKenna's toy soldier show in the old masonic hall in Birmingham.
They didn't know what they were, I didn't know what they were (apart from the obvious; some kind of Japanese monsters, probably dinosaurian Kaiju from the Godzilla franchise), but I could see their potential with small scale space or GI figures, so a price was agreed, and a deal was done!
These were they, the initial three, I now know the one on the right is only a big monster, from the set of twelve this post is mostly about, the other two are very bigs from a set of unknown quantities!
I posted them on Brain Heiler's fan site on Faceplant a couple of years ago with a call for help ID'ing them, and Keith Bowman and David Crow both answered the call, with the upshot that it is believed they are all Kaiju from The Ultraman / Ultra Seven franchise, not Godzilla, and from the left, can be ID'd as;
- Bemstar
- A version of the Red King
- Neronga
But then this turned-up! Credited to a Victory, and carried in the UK by Henbrandt, I've seen them on eBay in the US and Germany, but with no clear jobber beyond the Victory brand-mark, I've added the extra three as there is room, indeed, there's so much room in the box, you'd think it was a counter-dispenser with maybe 24 items, but the box makes clear it was a set of 12.
Grouped mostly in pairs of matching plastic colours, presumably for production reasons, so I shot them in the same groups. These are the pair of reds, who are exploring the ashes of the bonfire down the bottom of the garden, both have green spine plates, and both need ID'ing (as do all bar the Neronga), if you know more about these things than I do!
The Greeny-golds! Another pair, and including a baby Beamster? They got to fighting on the gravel area at the back of the drive! The two larger ones in the original purchase have moving arms, with the red king having moving legs too, the smaller ones don't have moving limbs.
A pair of pinky-golds, while they don't have the moving limbs, they do have two halves, but only for reasons of production, there's little deliberate or meant movement, and they may actually have been glued or heat-sealed?
Running out of ideas, the blacks and grey (another Neronga) were posed round my late Mother's kitchen! the Neronga is slightly different to the first one I found, but we'll compare them in a minute.
Ah! The 'fairy' trio! Pale blues and mauve, I'm guessing these are not terribly close to the the characters they are ripping off, but it would be nice to get some sort of name/title for them all, if only to give me the excuse to blog them again another day!
Big and very big on the left and variations of the Neronga on the right, none of the ones in the box have 'China' stickers, so maybe they were marketed in different forms of which a box of twelve were one, and individual shelf-sales (with separate stickers) was another? Of course, it could just be that someone took all twelve stickers off! The older purchase has more silver paint and slightly darker plastic.
These were on evilBay the other day, only six of the twelve and more variations, but then you may have noticed some variety, just on the box-top photo'? The mauve is purple, and one of the reds has gold spine-plates, as here.
I think the dark blue one here has been given a home-paint, there's washing/weathering and more colours than the others normally have?
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