Ah - thanks! In the waves of mid-size Hedorah eye-ball sets I forgot all about the giant Hedorah. So if 43cm is "giant", what are the 4' tall figures called? Super Giant?
Good job Roger! Only one change I'd make: Hukkokudo is now owned or made by Target Earth but then again isn't TE a subsidiary of Marmit also?
One thing I would really like to know is, whether there is any way to tell the B-Club re-issues from the vintage, with the absence of any writing (either Popy or Bandai) on the bottom. Anyone have ideas if there is something simple?
Colors. B-Club reissues are deliberately made with different vinyl/paint colors from the originals. If you want to know what the original colors were as a comparison, get a book like Kazunori Saito's Beautiful Book of Monsters. There are a couple of reissues out there, like M1GO's Hedorahs and Megalons, that are made using the colors of the original, but it's done using paint jobs on flesh vinyl, and care is taken to leave some unpainted bits showing on the underside of the feet and other places.
So, I started thinking about fiddling with this document again. @chimply.kaiju - do you still have those scans/translations you posted on page 1 somewhere?
This is interesting. Before Bandai started reissuing Bullmark figures there was a "Tsuburaya Ultra Monster Friendship Association" (at least that's what the machine translation calls it): http://www.ultrakaijyu.com/Treatise/Treatise1.html Looks like they were selling through magazine ads and the feet had serial numbers?
Great source, I didn't know that B-club had produced not previously release bullmarks, is there a complete list out there?, I quickly jumped to Club tokyo and found around two characters...highly appreciated
The hardcover Bullmark Story Book has pictures of them, I think there are six? For some reason they don't seem to be in high demand, I see them frequently on Mandarake for cheap cheap.
Wow, that is fascinating information. Basically, it sounds like these were made from the Marusan molds (with a Marusan stamp on the foot sole). They only had Red King, Baltan and Gomora at the time. Sales were mostly by mail-order at 5,800 yen a piece, around February 1989. Serial numbers were written on the feet with magic marker. Sales were poor, and it sounds like the author believes they did not exceed 100 pieces of any of the figures. In addition, Bandai released its own reissues of the Bullmark molds of the same characters at the time (the article says in 1989, but I thought the Bandai reissues were from 1991) at 2,500 yen a piece and with very similar coloring, which I guess effectively were the final nail in the coffin for these. EDIT: There appear to have been multiple rounds of Bandai reissues; ignore my question on the dating. I guess you need to look carefully at the reissue versions of these 3 figures. If you find the Marusan mark versions, they would be pretty rare items.
akum6n and I were discussing these and I am starting to wonder about those flesh-colored blanks that showed up in the 80s or 90s. I also just noticed that the header card shown on the ultra-kaijyu site doesn't have licensing sticker. Maybe this "kaiju friends club" was doing this without a license and got strong-armed into making these for Bandai? Maybe they're also the source of the fleshlegs? Hmm.
Well, the header card does have the Tokyo Broadcasting sticker and the copyright mark notes Tsuburaya Productions. Seems like it was licensed. The one part of the story that strikes me as odd is that Bandai's repros of Gomora, Red King and Baltan look almost identical to these. That can't be coincidence, particularly as these reissues seem to have paint schemes deliberately tweaked to look different from the originals.
Wow great!!!!! Thank you as I don't have this bullmark book!!!! @Roger QUOTE="Roger, post: 956750, member: 72"]Hm, maybe it was 11?[/QUOTE]