I'm listing this guy as a companion to last weeks SharkMan. This is a medicom produced Retro action hero, with the clear RAH300 base body, that came out last year to celebrate SecretBase's 4th Anniversarry. Its a total collab, as it uses the SB Phantom 8 Man suit mould (in a rather spiffy silver and copper spray paint colorway), and adds a belt and orange flight suit in tribute..of course...to the vintage Henshin Cyborg suits. The suit is an excellent addition, and really adds to the figure. I was thrilled to find a clear inner head under the rubber-ish bee head (yep, the bee head is a nice malleable material as opposed to hard vinyl). The suit is stamped as MADE in JAPAN, and the quality is excellent - so I'm guessing that the regular SB factory was used to produce most of the components. There is also an all clear vinyl version available. Both come in the standard retro action heroes packaging, with the curved front piece. This box features some great text, describing the story of Phantom 8 Man in English, and some pics basically ripped off from a vintage Uk Muto and Cyborg box (not the first time, by the way). Totally underrated and so very yummy. Inner Head Shot Outer Bee Head shot
man that is cool! did it come with the body? I have seen that available countless times and just passed right over it.
The whole guy comes complete with the RAH300 base body. I haven't seen many of these come up lately though. Mne came from Secretbase's store in Tokyo last July, where it retailed for a bargain 8,000 yen.
WOW, i know zero, no, negative about these figures, but that is an extremely awesome toy! those bee heads rock so hard, they are quite simply BADASS btw, great idea for an ongoing forum topic
Yeah, love this feature! Great figure too...I never got too much into Phantom 8 man but there was a pretty cool Neo Geo game back in the day if I recall...
Hope some of these show up somewhere... this figure is amazingly awesome! Love the paintjob and the design features. ...and I love the fact that it comes with the proper body. Surely I'm not the only one that would buy some of those cool suits if only we had bodies to put them on... >_< Love this series... hyper cool Sharkman and now this... let's see some more "underrated" treasures! And Z, you're pretty close. The Neo Geo game was very cool, and based on the manga and anime, 8-Man. Perhaps the easiest resource is over here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_Man And there was an anime revival a little while back called "8 Man After". Take a little look -- it was a cool series, and the original anime was, if I'm not mistaken, part of the Tetsujin 28 / Gigantor generation... Hope that helps! I figure the 8 Man reference in this fig's name is another old school homage / tribute, like the Walder Brains, etc.
So it's the Phantom Bee Man, which makes sense. I often call these guys Bee men anyway. Thanks for the info Koji!
