As disfigured as she is, she still proved to be a hard figure to come by (I resorted to eBay eventually) – and as I lamented over her once beautiful head sculpt, I thought that it wasn’t really that far off. Maybe, just maybe, it could be saved. So I sent the head to Ibentmyman-thing to see if it could be prettied up. Sure, I also did some stuff to the original Hasbro Emma Frost body, but the real credit goes to Benty.
Mark Nagata of Max Toy Co was kind enough to speak with Jedd-the-Jedi at STGCC. If you missed it, click here to check out the first part of the Mark Nagata interview. In the conclusion to the interview, Mark tells Jedd about finding his toy Holy Grail, his top five toys, and more!
Do you have a special story of a collectible toy of any kind that you obtained through extraordinary circumstances? Have you gotten a hold of something you never dreamed you’d be able to own in a million years, something so extremely special?
(Laughs) Yes, I do! Yes, I do have a story about that. So, there’s a Bullmark figure, which is a Japanese company from the 1960s and 70s, and they issued, in very small numbers, a standard size Ultraman figure in red vinyl. Now the reason why they released it in red vinyl is they were hoping the colour red would appeal to girls, instead of the grey or like silver colour of what Ultraman is supposed to be. But Ultraman never was red in the series, and then the girls hated the figure anyways, so it never sold, it was a flop for them.
So going forward when I started collecting the figures in the late 80s-early 90s, and I’m doing research about all the different types of figures I had to find, when I found out about the red Ultraman that was always at the top of my list, like if I go back to Japan I’ve gotta look for this, or if I’m looking at eBay or Yahoo Japan or something I gotta find this. So on one trip to Japan, we were in the Nakano mall, which is a very famous mall with like different shops, like Mendorake and toy stores.
One of my friends said “Hey, go look over in the case; I think that’s something you’re looking for!” So I walk over there and there’s a red Ultraman sitting there right, so I was like “oh my God”, and I had to find out, I had to go over and ask how much, right? So I went over and in my very, very poor Japanese asked “Ikura desuka?” – you know, “How much?” And the guy goes “$5,000” – USD $5,000. I just thought… ”I can’t, I can’t. My wife’s gonna kill me!” And I only had $2,000, that’s all I had – for the whole trip, so no way, and I don’t wanna use credit card or anything. So all my friends said “Oh, you know, I’ll loan you a couple of hundred dollars, maybe you’ll get enough to make a big pool or something,” and I said “No no no, I don’t want to have to owe you guys!” So, I left.
I’ve had a really good week (or so) for toys. It started on our anniversary – as a gift, my wife got me the Wal-Mart exclusive Avengers Hulk that has been eluding me for some time. And she didn’t even blink when I told her that I was planning to Frankenstein him with some other Hulks to make the best Hulk ever (maybe some day). And it’s kept going since then:
Hasbro Return of Marvel Legends – BigBadToyStore let me know that my pre-order of Wave 3 was in.
3A Toys Action Portable – My most-anticipated figure, the Fighting JC, was announced in 1/12 scale, and on order day I also scored an AP blue-suited Zomb for a great price on eBay and the secret Dark Sarge Zomb on bambalandstore.com, right as the JC sale was closing up.
Hot Toys The Dark Knight – I missed out on the pre-order window for the SWAT version of Jim Gordon, but Sideshow just let me know that they found one for me (I had put myself on the wait list).
With all this good stuff happening to me (aside from now being completely broke :)), I figured I should spread the good toy karma around with a Free Stuff giveaway. Here’s what’s up for grabs and how to get up to three chances to win.
If you’re looking for some eye candy this weekend, Diamond Select Toys is willing to oblige, and even send some your way, if you’re lucky – with their Femme Fatales Giveaway! It’s easy, pick your favorite pic of a Femme Fatales statue and post it on pretty much any of the social media networks, send the link to collectdst@gmail, and if they pick you, you’ll get some Femme Fatales goodies so you won’t have to scour the interwebs anymore.
Mark Nagata is a Renaissance man. He just might have the largest Ultraman collection in the world. As a designer and artist, he’s worked for the likes of DC Comics, LucasArts, and Hasbro. For several years, he published Super 7, a magazine focused on Japanese vinyl toys, before going on to start the Max Toy Company, designing and manufacturing vinyl art toys. On top of all this, he’s a tremendously nice guy!
Jedd-the-Jedi had a chance to sit down with Mark at STGCC. In the first part of their conversation, they spanned toy collecting, the differences between working for the big guys vs. running your own show, and if it’s alright to play with your art toys. It’s really a fantastic interview. Read on!
Jedd: Hi Mark, great to be talking to a fellow lover of toys. First off, what got you into collecting toys? You wrote on your site “I think it’s safe to say that most of us collect because of our childhoods,” so do you have any childhood memories of a particular toy or action figure that you want to share?
Mark Nagata: Oh boy, for sure. Well I think the first impression I had for Japanese toys is when I was about 9 years old, and I had an aunt who was living in Japan, and for Christmas she sent a very big box to me, and inside were about 20 different Japanese toys. So Henshen cyborgs, Bullmark figures, kaiju toys… but at the time, I didn’t know that’s what they were called. To sort of back up a little, I’m third generation Japanese American, so my parents were born in America and my grandparents came from Japan to America, but me being third generation, actually I don’t understand Japanese and I don’t speak Japanese, so when I got this box of toys, I couldn’t read anything except for the company name Bullmark, ‘cause it was printed in English. I didn’t know the names of the characters, I didn’t know that they had TV shows; I just thought they were toys.
So, from that point, it was really… I fell in love with the visual part of the toys. The way it looked, the packaging, because all the packaging had like very dynamic artwork and colours, very crazy colours, and all the kaiju for me… were just… I couldn’t even put into words what it did to my imagination. Because at that point, my toys in America were GI JOE 12 inch, Major Matt Mason, so very… 60s, 70s types of toys, but um very plain, based on like a real astronaut, or an army man. No imagination, right?
So when I opened that box, and I saw these crazy colours, and these kaiju and these spacemen, I was like… you know, what is this? I haven’t seen this before. So when I look back all these years, that’s the point that started me on this journey to this day, which is being able to make actual kaiju toys in Japan.
