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Post by bryanarchy on Dec 13, 2004 13:47:13 GMT -5
Hey Guys, I have been a lurker on this site for some time but finally decided to get a login and password so i could maybe explore the options of getting some help. About 5 years ago, i was at an antique show and one of the vendors, a comic store, had some henshin cyborg toys, namely the cyborg 99 toys. He had the King Walder II Magma and I was totally smitten with it. At the time, i couldn't justify the price of it and passed it by. Since then, i have been dying to get one and i regret it so much. Over the years, i have been searching for one, and have gotten into Henshin Cyborgs and have built a collection that i am pleased with. I have yet to see another walder magma. Nonetheless, I am hoping one of you may be able to help me out with this. Does anyone have an extra kicking around or know where i can get one? I would really appreciate the help. I'm in Canada, by the way.... Thanks for your time, bryan  Image from mykooltoyz.tripod.com/cy99kw2.html |
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Post by hypnotator on Dec 14, 2004 8:55:09 GMT -5
Hello Bryan, welcome, now you have stopped lurking. You should have bought Magma when you saw him! How much was he? I got both my KW2 figures when they first came out, direct from Japan. Cost me about £50 each ($100 US) by the time I paid postage. Saw them once here in England after for £50 each. Nowadays I see them fairly often on Yahoo Japan and nowhere else. I don’t think they were produced in small numbers, but they’re 5 years old already. If you have lurked here enough you will know that buying from the Yahoo Japan auctions is expensive and complicated. I expect one will surface on Ebay sooner or later, but it might be a long wait and you might get outbid. I imagine your best bet would be to contact Japanese toy dealers direct and see if one can pick you one up. There are probably a few left in Japanese shops. I’ll PM you with the few contacts that I have.
Johnnyhaggis is in Canada; he might know of a supplier. If you can get one in your own country you’ll save on postage.
What items do you have in your collection? My collection started with the British Cyborg figures, then the coming of the internet coincided nicely with the release of Neo Henshin Cyborg in Japan. The new reissues of the vintage figures are disappearing quickly, so if you’re interested in them and don’t have them yet, I advise you to give them priority over Magma, who has already been and gone from general availability.
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Post by bryanarchy on Dec 14, 2004 18:15:55 GMT -5
Wow, thanks to everyone for the pm's and emails. I have been given some leads and hopefully one will pan out.
When i saw the KW2, it ws only like $50 Canadian. At the time, it seemed like a lot of money, but now, i would have bought two for that price...
My collection is quite modest and unspectacular, I have a couple cyborgs, a cyborg 99, all the soft vinyl walder monsters (i actually have 3 of the skeleton walders) and then three of the Green aliens. My multiple numbers reflect the fact i found them for $5 a piece at a comic book shop.
Out of curiousity, how many people on here are doing the "pay a broker in japan" for getting them off yahoo? Aside from the commission, has anyone had a problem? Just looking at some of the links people have posted on here, there's some really awesome henshins i have never ever seen before!
Again, thanks for all the help, I truly appreciate it.
bryan
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Post by Shropshire Slasher on Dec 14, 2004 19:09:49 GMT -5
I use Masato (M-world) a lot.
He's fine and I keep a float with him of 5,000Yen just to keep it running smoothly as he sells 8 items for me per month on average.
Yes, welcome to the boards- I'm not a Cyborg fan myself though I have dabbled in retarded cyborg bootlegs on occasion.
Alex in Seoul
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Post by hypnotator on Dec 15, 2004 6:26:27 GMT -5
Hello Bryan,
I thought I’d answer your questions about Cyborg story here on the board, rather than in a PM, just in case there are other lurkers who are interested. Paul L’s indispensable and labyrinthine website microforever.com used to have translations of the Cyborg story, I presume from the boxes of the toys. I couldn’t find them just now and it appears he has trimmed the Henshin Cyborg pages, but they might still be there and I missed them.
From what I remember, King Walder is the King of Space, whatever that entails, and he kills a guy called Ken-ichi with a blast from his flying saucer, I think. Ken-ichi is rebuilt into Henshin Cyborg by a scientist who I think is also his father. That’s about all I remember, and I don’t know how Shonen Cyborg, the jaguar, Android A and the Invaders fit in.
The three British Cyborg figures came with comic strips on the backs of the boxes. Although I don’t have any boxes, I remember them well from childhood and I pilfer pictures from the net whenever I come across them. I have posted photos of the strips in an earlier thread on this board, but if you want better quality, in-places-legible versions, you have only to ask and I’ll email them to you.
British King Walder is called Muton and he is a planet destroying space conqueror with three “Subforms” that he can transform himself into (the three costumes that were done in the UK). Humans build Cyborg to defend the Earth, so he is technically a robot and not a Cyborg at all. His transparent body is supposed to be made of diamond. Japanese Android A is a good guy, I think, but his British counterpart, Android, is bad. Aliens on the planet Veganon are dying because their sun has turned supernova, so they build Android to kill all humans so they can colonize Earth.
To be honest, one of the reasons I like Cyborg figures is because they don’t tie in with a telly series or movie. I love robot toys and sci fi literature but I hate most of the on-screen stuff, and here in the UK at least, most people seem to collect a toy because they love the movie it comes from. Cyborg toys, for me as a child, were a tabula rasa beyond the brief strips on the boxes, open for me to impose my imagination.
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Post by johnnyhaggis on Dec 16, 2004 6:59:56 GMT -5
I must concur - what's fun about this stuff is that I have no idea what the hell it's all about. I can imagine that Micronauts would have been alot more boring if they had been a tv show. You jus thave to invent a story based on their faces and bodies.
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Post by bryanarchy on Dec 16, 2004 10:23:07 GMT -5
I completely agree about the idea of toys that aren't accompanied by a full range of cartoons, etc. I don't think there's a boy's toy out there now that doesn't have a 30 minute 'ad' every saturday morning.
I think the thing that attracted me to the henshins (and micromen to an extent) is the art and imagery of the packages. Something about the art and the toys suggests the characters are almost godlike or omniscient. Maybe it's the combination of the transparency and the deadpan expressions...
It could also be their hyperposing action...
The story, as you relate, hypno, makes a lot of things fall into place for me. It's a wacky variation on the typical young boy and his robot, hey? I'd love it if you sent me any of the art/text you have.
Now that I have been hopping to some of the links on this site, I'm really into the idea of finding some of the monsters that aren't soft vinyl, but posable.
Does anyone know how popular these things are in Japan? Is it a small cult following or a runaway train?
bryan
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Post by hypnotator on Dec 17, 2004 6:49:07 GMT -5
"Godlike or omniscient"? Steady on! It's a plastic toy for chrissakes! But seriously, I understand, in fact I think I've collected too many Walders and they're planning to overthrow me and take over the household. I watch their smug little expressions and I think, I know your game, you don't fool me you little creeps. I have to take them out and ritually humiliate them in photostories just to remind them of their place.
I'll dig those comic strips out over the weekend and email them to you.
The original Invaders, the proper ones, usually command at least a couple of hundred dollars each loose. I don't know how many Japanese HC collectors there are, but it's certainly a bigger phenomenon than in the states, where Cyborg was never sold, and here in the UK where we did have Cyborg, but toy collecting is not big, and most toy collectors are Star Wars heads.
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Post by johnnyhaggis on Dec 17, 2004 8:17:23 GMT -5
Star wars heads? Did Blair deregulate environmental standards so that theres alot of mercury in the water up there? Star wars toys have to be some of the least interesting I can think of, and the movies are only marginally better. They were alot of fun when I was 4 though. Wow, I cant believe m a star wars snob. Now Star Trek, theres a fine show. Watching it recently I find it funny how I never as a kid realized how completely sexist it is (although they sure tried hard), but still a fine show.
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Post by hypnotator on Dec 17, 2004 10:23:14 GMT -5
I’m a Star Wars snob, too. They took the convenient size of Microman and removed the poseability aspect. We all bought ‘em like hot cakes anyway, just because they were meant to be the Star Wars characters. Goose stepping little lumps of plastic…. On the plus side, you could throw them down the stairs or give them to the dog to chew, and they wouldn’t look much different after. Indeed, this is the best use for them. We gave our Cybo-invader a cardboard false floor with little seats so it could be their “Millenium Falcon”.
I hope you mean the REAL Star Trek, with Kirk and Spock, not those awful Oprah-Winfrey-in-space modern things. Spock is the ultimate space dude.
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Post by johnnyhaggis on Dec 17, 2004 13:02:17 GMT -5
Yes the real Star Trek. I thought the later series were OK too, but when the monochrom primary coloured shirts and the cardboard planet backgrounds and starts that are held in the cosmos by space strings were gone, so was most of the magic.
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Post by cyborgbushcricket on Dec 22, 2004 5:21:32 GMT -5
oooh, ive just got my much sought after walder II magma. I must say this is a really neat toy and worth searching and waiting for Bryan.
Overall its more impressive looking than the general due to its colour and of course the spikey hair do!! The weapons are huge and its cool to be able to pose this next to its older brother ie. red reissue walder with snake hand (from green of course)and 'spiky poison corkscrew' hand which are similar of course to magmas weapons.
CBC
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