Dokuro (Skeleton) King review with pictures

[hypnotator]

Here he is - the Dokuro King reissue, aka Skeleton King, aka the Torg. In a nutshell, he looks nice but he’s plasticky when you pick him up. I don’t have a vintage KW or Dokuro to compare (if I did, I wouldn’t have needed to buy this, would I?) so I can only compare him with my vintage Henshin Cyborg, my KWJr Dokuro and my Denys Fisher Muton and Torg.



Some of us have been waiting for this a long time. I understand that there is one guy at Takara who has been petitioning for HC reissues; I think he’s the same guy we see in all the pictures. First they did a remodelled Neo Cyborg and some revolting “lip service” vinyl Walders. I understand these were not as successful as they hoped, possibly because they released so many colour variations that everyone gave up on collecting them all. So, they did another remodel, double 9, and focused more on the costumes, plus they did some really nice Walders, only they tantalised us by only releasing two of the four. Then they did the Shonen reissue with the KWJrs. These were great in my opinion, but a little hard to come by. The monster suits for the KWJrs were a bit large of head and chest. Then they did cheap gashapons and comical kubrick/lego versions. In short, anything but straight reissues of the figures I wanted so much.



Then they finally got round to it, just after I shelled out for my vintage HC. Again the emphasis was on the suits. They didn’t even change the colours of the machinery. Then they did a sort of two-tone Cyborg with big rubber underwear. Presumably people bought this just because it was supposed to be Mazinga. Give me an SOC version any day. Needless to say, I bought none of these, as I already had a silver HC. I understood from Microforever’s review that the plastic was less than top quality and the joints are loose on these HC reissues. The manga tie-in angle always seems to be more important than the Cyborgs themselves, which bugs me.



At last, they reissued the Dokuro King. The box isn’t a repro of the old one but it does pay tribute to Denys Fisher. The smell of plastic hits you when you open the box. The transparent purple plastic of the Walder figure is much darker and less glossy than that of Muton or KWJr, and you can just about make this out in the photos. It’s a slightly softer plastic too. However, the joints are nice and tight. My biggest gripe is something you can’t see in the photos. The brain and guts are soft, hollow vinyl, unlike the solid, hard plastic of Muton’s, KWJr’s, and, I assume, vintage KW. (Mutonis, you’ve got some vintage ones; can you confirm this?) The brain isn’t so bad; it squashes down conveniently when you are changing heads around. But the guts jiggle tellingly when you hold the figure, and they sit a little too far forward in the torso. On other KWs, the guts come up and meet the bottom of the neck joint, but on this one, there is a big hole so you can peer down and see that it is hollow. Come on, Takara, you could have anchored this somehow and it wouldn’t show that you cheated!



Regarding the Skeleton costume, I could see from other pictures on the net, before mine arrived, that the grey colour is too flat and not silver enough. The boots and gloves have a silver tint, but the chest and head don’t. The vinyl that they are made from is silver grey, but it really looks like they have slapped a flat grey paint on top in some places.



The chest piece is really soft vinyl, much softer than the rest of the costume, almost like rubber. It tends to sit crooked until you put it straight. I’ll bet the vintage one was harder vinyl, like Dokuro Jr and the Torg. I know from pictures on YJ that the vintage Dokuro King costume has slits in the back of the boots. The reissue doesn’t, and so this is a handy way of telling them apart, but I think the difference in colour means you’d have a hard time mistaking the reissue for the vintage.

Well, I’ve done nothing but gripe about him, haven’t I? Despite my criticisms, he looks lovely on the shelf, and I’m delighted to own him. It’s very unlikely I would ever have afforded a vintage one. With more colour variations on the way, plus they are going to sell them carded without the manga costumes at half the price, I look forward to seeing a row of 12” figures on my shelf soon. If I ever do have a few hundred quid to spare and I can summon the impetus to muck about with YJ middlemen, I can concentrate on Androids and Invaders. I believe it is unlikely they will be reissued, unless, of course, someone reading this knows better….

Hypno

[cyborgbushcricket]

Its great to see reissue dokuroking, walder jr kaijin and muton next to each other, I like how you get variants of essentially the same toy without them being silly 'real' variants, if you see what i mean. The toys kind of evolve, a bit like say takara microman dash wing becomes micronauts space glider becomes palisades reissue space glider, each time there are subtle changes.......usually for the worse though!!!

[cybernoid2]

..Hi Hypno..where did you find your dokoro king reissue?
on ebay I haven't yet saw one..

[rednecktex]

Thanks for the great pics Hyp!

I appreciate the lead to your seller.

Unfortunately the US dollar is weak. It would be over $90 USD for me before shipping.

Here's a pic of the black bounty hunter one on Yahoo.

page2.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/b56348260

They have been going between 9 and 15000 yen.

You bought it from a mag over there called warp.

One seller said it cost them 9000 with shipping.

So now we have black, blue, yellow, red, green, and purple.

I wish they would reissue the blue one with a blue head.

I would rather spend 8000 yen for the reissue than 93000 for the original with clear head!

[hypnotator]

Welcome to the board, Cybernoid! Cyborg and Microman are my great obsessions, so it’s nice to welcome someone with similar interests. I’m in the UK and my obsession started in 1976 when the British Cyborg figures appeared. Here is where I got my Dokuro King reissue:

www.childhoodtoys.co.uk

This chap is in the UK, though, which was really convenient for me but possibly not so for you, unless you are here too. Tex, I was really thinking of Spymagician and Cybermuton when I first posted this link, as they live here.

I’m glad I bought my Dokuro when I did. I couldn’t really afford it, and my good lady was none too pleased, but I had seen him described as an Ehobby exclusive so I thought he might turn out to be scarce, like the Shonen and KWJr reissues. Sure enough, I have not seen him on Ebay yet.

I really can’t afford the Warp Magazine one, much as I would love him. There are a few on YJ but I can’t even afford to think about it. I’ve fallen in love with the Microman sized Satan King costume too – boo hoo I’m too poor.

As far as I’m aware, Tex, there are no plans to do reissue blue or yellow KWs yet, although I hope they do. I presume you are just listing all the colours that existed ever. The vintage ones are beyond my powers of purchase for sure. I agree, the clear head on the blue one was a strange design decision. My Dokuro Jr. has the clear head; that’s why I display him in costume. The aquamarine KW2 has a blue tint to his head, though, so perhaps there is hope.

Hypno

[cybernoid2]

tnx for infos, but now that skeleton is out of stock..
now I'm collecting micronauts, microman and diaclone...but I like a lot some henshin cyborg (especially walder people)..
I have a question: on yahoo japan I saw some walder costume for microman..did you get one?
are them original from takara?
ok, bye and keep posting you great takara pics!
bye

[hypnotator]

Cybernoid, that’s the Satan King I’m referring to! I’m not sure if he’s by Takara, although it says so on the box. From the price, I assume he is a very limited run, like a garage kit or a tribute figure. The detail looks beautiful. I posted a thread asking if anyone had him or knew anything, but I got no replies. He was expensive; about 15,000 yen if I remember correctly. Some times I think that if I was a millionaire, there would still be some toys I couldn’t afford.

Similar to this, I’ve seen something called “Mutron” with “Micro Creatures” on the box. This appears to be another Henshin style costume for Microman, a weird alien, very like a vinyl garage kit, all in white so presumably you paint it yourself. The box has a Micronaut style logo and the Microman logo in Japanese.

There are a few other things I have seen on Yahoo Japan and would like to know more about. There’s the mini Cyborg; he’s cheap and plentiful, but there’s one on Ebay too, and the text seems to indicate that he isn’t properly articulated. I’ve already got the barely poseable gashapons and I don’t want another rigid cyborg.

Also, there’s a figure from a series that I think is called Pulsar, with a transparent chest and features inside. The figure itself doesn’t interest me, but shown in the photo next to him, not for sale but just to give an idea of scale, is what appears to be a smoked black vintage Henshin Cyborg. I’m aware that the Henshin Collection Mazinga has a partially smoked Cyborg figure, but I wasn’t aware of this. Was anyone?

Cybernoid, where are you based?

Hypno

[jason_z]

Hello!

Can you post the link to the Pulsar figure, Hypno? I'm curious about him. You do know that there's a smoke 12" cyborg from the reissue series (1998-ish), I guess - I don't know of a vintage one, though. Then again, every time I look at YJ I see something that I don't understand. This time, I saw these - apparently Walder monsters with colourless articulated bodies but Walder innards, but then at the bottom there's a picture of those horrible vinyls!

page7.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/g26078110

I feel the same about the gashapons (I have a green Walder one) and now you've got me worried that this reproduction cyborg isn't articulated. That'd be a pity. What made you think that? It went really high at the end (about £30) but I guess that prices may drop after a few have been sold.

Jason

[hypnotator]

Hi Jason,
Ifm so glad that someone else is as bothered as I am about these little mysteries. That Pulsar figure is gone from YJ; itfs a good job I saved the picture! I was aware of the smoked Neo HC, indeed I own one, but this vintage one was a surprise to me.

Regarding the horrible vinyls, I followed your link and ran the text through the babelfish translator on altavista.com. This is a very handy tool, if you donft know about it, and sometimes you can even make sense of the translations:

Commodity details ƒƒ‹ƒ_[ mysterious human series "ƒhƒNƒƒLƒ“ƒO" \3800 "Satan king" \3800 "Plant mysterious human" \3800 Being to be ƒ\ƒtƒr make, if only the dryer and the cutter it is, it can make also the outfit simply! ! Picture 1 and 2 tried making those install which are cut. * The prime field does not belong! ! The commodity becomes those of picture 3.

I infer from this that he is just selling the three vinyls and letting you know that you can cut them up to make costumes, which is about all they would be good for in my opinion. But the clear figures he has put the costumes onto are another mystery. They look like 99s but with Walder guts inside. To my knowledge there were no clear KWIIs.

I tried to look at that Ebay mini Cyborg again under completed items, but I couldnft open the page. It did state quite clearly in somewhat broken English that the seller (without opening the box) thought the figure was not an action figure, just a display one. I was browsing the rocket tubes yesterday and somewhere in the S to Z Section I found a Japanese site with pictures of the mini Cyborg and the Bounty Hunter Dokuro King. I saved the pictures of the latter, and there were some good ones of the black Walder without the costume. I didnft save the mini Cyborg ones though, because he looks so crap. They actually showed him next to a Gashapon Cyborg, and they were different but very similar. It beats me why Takara would do another rigid Cyborg when they do the super articulated Microforce the same size, but their motives can be inscrutable sometimes. I certainly have no intention of buying one unless someone posts on this forum telling us that he is well articulated and posts lots of pictures too. From what I saw yesterday, this wonft happen.

Hypno

[hypnotator]

that's what I get for my correct use of apostrophes

[hypnotator]

Here's that page with the Mini Cyborg

www.ne.jp/asahi/star/hoshimiru/index.html

Hypno

[jason_z]

Hi Hypno,

Good analysis of that translation! Yes, you must be right about the costumes in the auction. I see what you mean about the smoke Henshin Cyborg - he's quite different to the reissue one that you & I both have. More like a cross between the Denys Fisher Cyborg and Android that I have from when I was young. So I haven't a clue either - sorry!

You must be right too about the mini-cyborg. The auction says 'The figure looks not action figure. I think it is just a display model.' Damn! I don't know why it is, 'cos I'm not fussy as a collector, but I like them to have joints. I have some cheap reissue M10X time travellers and they are quite rubbish - though effectively jointed, they're not much better than the gashapons. I mean these guys (using Paul's excellent site again):

www.microforever.com/m10xprizemicroman.htm

And lastly, thanks for the link, which has a great picture of the black Walder. I haven't seen a picture of him without the costume before. Very nice!

Oh yeah - I see that a red metallic reissue Cyborg went for £50 in eBay UK today - and gosh, I think that's rather high...

Jason