It makes no sense that Japanese children have toys of the monsters that ruin their country every year.
Well, we already have this existing thread for general discussion (and I think there was even an older one preceding this), but if we are going to discuss Toho films, the appearance in which I think is neither random or weird, most people [or maybe I should say most of us fans of a certain age] will probably recall that in the opening scene of Godzilla vs. Hedorah there is a pretty lengthy (and not subtle) scene of the young boy playing with his Bullmarks (giant and regular Godzilla). I remember this was always a very memorable scene to me (maybe I can blame my toy addiction on that?) Sorry I can't find a great screen cap, but as an example You can also see plenty more in the background here, including a - gasp! - non-Toho Ultraman I believe there may even be later scenes in the film where is shows his toy collection inside his room. In any case, the first part starts at about 3:00 in, and is viewable here. I always sort of actually liked the idea that this was an 'in-universe' appearance of the toys, as in, that they ultimately ended up marketing the toys of these terrorising creatures - and heroes! - as kids naturally started to idolise them (as we all do on this forum), or realised the error of their ways and the appearance of the kaiju as the sort of nature/unavoidable mystery which they sort of are. Well, who am I kidding, I just loved to see the toys!! I loved this as a nice little nod to the fans, and kids out there. And I think it makes me smile every time I see it.
Thanks for sharing @ultrakaiju ! I'm watching through most of these for the first time, and that one's next on my list. I'm following both threads, but wasn't sure which one would be more appropriate for my earlier post. So don't give me a strike for not using the search feature, when we have multiple threads going simultaneously on the same topic, haha.
The King Ghidorah toy in that scene makes about as much sense as a Mohamed Atta Reaction Figure in our reality.
But that's just it, in a sense, right? The popularity of the genre was at least in part due to it functioning as a recapitulation/reinterpretation of the atomic events. The toys, then, can be seen as fantastical, totemic encapsulations of those unfathomably horrible, huge-in-scale events, a symbolic capturing of them that one can then have some safe tactile understanding of/dominance over. A toy of Mohammed Atta would be like a toy of the pilot of the Enola Gay... a non-starter. But if our culture had animism in its popular religious roots (and all other time-bound cultural/industrial factors aside), who knows how 9/11 might have been differently reflected/interpreted in our pop culture and in our kids' toys.
My head canon is that the movie takes place in a world where the only kaiju are Godzilla and Hedorah, and Japan has never been attacked. King Ghidorah and the other characters the kid plays with are fictional (like the Easter Bunny), toy companies make figures of them (like the Easter Bunny), and children have hours of fun playing with them (unlike the Easter Bunny).
HAAAAAAA I'm just sitting down, finally hitting the couch to unwind after the home from work/make dinner/fam time/put maniac overtired kid to bed whirlwind, and my post above comes into my mind and I'm like, "Oh but DUH, but we're talking within the world/reality of the film, so that's a lil' different" and here I come to edit my post so it's just a picture of the I Like Turtles boy 'cause that's about how sharp I feel now... and here you are Rog, bringing up the same pernt and using the wonderful phrase "head canon". Yup. Yes. I dig. I look forward to hopefully getting into all of this with you more deeply at, say, Rutt's Hut or Hot Dog Johnny's, in a couple weeks.
Love where this conversation is going, and happy I could spark some random thought processes. In my academic days, these sorts of things are what actually made it all enjoyable. Not sure I agree with the Atta analogy, and certainly I could point to real-world analogues which have existed in our win reality (e.g. army men, or really any batch of war/western/historical themed toys), but in any case I would just love to be there to carry this on with both you in person, especially at either of those locales!
This kind of logic works for All Monsters Attack, as well. None of the monsters actually attack Japan (ironically) during that movie, and there's no real indication from the dialog that they ever have. The kids have a concept of the monsters, but all the monster fights happen in the kid's imagination. In fact, Gabara was introduced as a projection of the kid's fear and hatred of the class bully, rather than a real monster.
