Whether it’s Godzilla or his brother, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the popularity of the monster has revived in the last few years. So it’s appropriate that the latest issue of Monstrous Magazine will unfold largely in Monstrous: The Kaiju Issue, an oversized issue celebrating the legendary monsters that will be released on Kickstarter.
The issue includes a variety of features, including an essay on the history of the Ninjagowriter monster toys and an essay by Chris “Document” Wyatt, co-founder of Planetary Toys. The Beat is proud to exclusively publish Wyatt’s work, Terror in Plastic, in the Kaiju issue of Monstrous Magazine.
The fear of plastic
A short history of kendo
Chris “doc” Wyatt
Every time Danny Elfman hits Tokyo, he has a spiritual list of toy stores he is about to attack.
Danny is an international mega-star musician for his work in Tim Burton’s films (Batman theme, ah, my god), Sam Rami’s films (That Spider-Man theme, ah, my god), and for his work in the Simpsons (That Simpsons theme, ah, my god), and in his quirky ’80s New Wave Gas Party legacy. His theme on Wednesday on Netflix helped make the show the world’s number one streaming show at the time of this writing.
Danny has an obsession. But Danny, in turn, is an obsessive fan. Vintage toy fans, especially soft vinyl. So he goes through a small back alley in Tokyo and finds a rare treasure to add to his ever-growing collection. Places like T-Based in Shibuya sell small batch runs of vinyl toys by indie artists. Or, Mandrake Koku in Akihabara, a vast space that feels like a soft vinyl museum. Or, the Nanchan Broadway Gaoki is a small shop that is very densely packed with vintage original wave soft vinyl, allowing collectors to spend hours hunting toys.
Danny Elfman is not alone. The American soft vinyl collection market has exploded over the past decade. This exploded with endless handmade offerings from dozens of online resellers and indie artists. But even with this expansion, it still feels like a niche and highly specialized subsection of toy collecting. You have to try to truly immerse yourself in the culture.
Wait – Backup… What is Soft Vinyl? The term is Porte Manto, taken from the Japanese term “soft vinyl” (soft vinyl). Soft vinyl is just a hollow vinyl toy. However, when using the term in English, it refers to Japanese vinyl toys based on Japanese pop cultural icons (monsters and wart characters) and indie art toys that mimic Japanese style.
It’s like the word “anime.” Japanese “anime” generally refers to “animation.” However, in English, “anime” specifically points to Japanese animation (or global animation that mimics Japanese style). The same thing as “soft vinyl.”
And without Age Tsublaya, the father of the monster, the entire soft vinyl market would not exist. For many Tsublaya, the legendary Japanese filmmaker and special effects artist, Tsublaya was more divine than humans. Tsublaya, creator of Godzilla, creator of Ultraman, was a creative genius and technical wizard. He pioneered the special effects approach that will affect today’s big hit.
By the mid-1960s, Zublaya had already contributed a magical touch to many feature films, but he was also about to crack the TV. Tsubraya had the idea for a horror anthology series that he wanted to call the imbalance in horror theatres an imbalance. He imagined it as a “monster of the week” style show in Twilight Zone and in the outer limit veins, but with a Japanese twist.
The idea eventually evolved into a creative Ultra Q. The show was like the Kaiju X-Files of the 60s, following a fringe team of paranormal investigators, investigating all the supernatural, including ghosts and aliens. The show’s network, Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), quickly claimed a more enormous monster. Tests showed that the child’s viewers responded best to those episodes, so that Zublaya leaned against the genre he invented. The show was a huge hit in an instant.
Tsublaya’s seventh Godzilla film, Godzilla, Ebria, Ebria, Mothra: Big Duel of the South Seas (released in the US as Ebria: Deep of the Deep) tore the theater, and Ultra Q was primarily responsible for kai booju intense and intensive and the kaiju intense.
(Side note: Japan’s “monster boom” took place around the same time as “Darekmania” were raiding the UK. This is a good time for being obsessed with monsters and their toys!)
But what does this have to do with soft vinyl? …At this time, Haruyasu Ishida, a toy maker, was looking for something. In the 1930s, Ishida’s father was a toy maker, but his father’s company was a victim of World War II. Just two years after the war ended, Ishida decided to start again. His new toy company, Marusan, was a way for his whole family to pick up the pieces and move forward.
Founded by Ishida, his younger brother Manor Ishida and his brother-in-law Yasuo Arai, Marsan initially managed to successfully retail Tin Toy from a store in Tokyo, but by the 60s it was crowded with competition. They needed something fresh. Something new. Something now. That’s when they saw the Ultra Q of Tsublaya.
Ishida thought: If the kids love giant monsters on TV, why don’t they love them in toy stores?
Furthermore, making Kaiju was a great way to explore the idea of making toys from a new material, vinyl. Since the early 1900s, Dolls and other toys have been manufactured in Japan with material called celluloid (the same material used in films projected in movie theaters).
In contrast to tin, celluloids could create more lifelike skin for dolls, and celluloids were superior to other common toy making materials. It was lighter than wood, more durable than wax, and was easily chipped or broken. But celluloid had one very big pullback. It was very flammable… practically explosive! This was not considered an ideal trait for children’s products, even when it was slowly regulated in the ’60s.
However, vinyl was derived from a more stable chemical (PVC for short), known as “polyvinyl chloride.” The synthetic material, PVC, was invented by German chemist Eugen Baumann and completed by Waldo Semon, an industrial and materials scientist at BF Goodrich. By 1948, using vinyl, he created gramophone music records that were much more difficult to scratch or break than early records (natural resin materials) made from shellac.
However, at his store in Tokyo, Ishida saw the future with a plastic toy. The low melting point of vinyl and its high plasticity make it ideal for production and the fact that it could not be transformed into an accidental Molotov cocktail (the potential for celluloid dolls) would be a major selling point for parents. And sofu vinyl was born.
The first soft vinyl to go to the market speculated it – Godzilla. It was released in 1966 in the same year as Ultra Q. It soon followed many creatures and characters from Ultra Q and The Godzilla Films. Soon, the successful TV rating for Ultra Q began the Ultraman TV franchise with shows such as Ultraman, Ultrasen, Ultraman Ace, Ultraman Saro, and literally Dozens.
Despite its six years of history, the soft vinyl market has never grown larger than today (if not market share). Currently, well-known Japanese soft vinyl manufacturers include Bandai, Medicem toys and Bullmark. But perhaps the most exciting part of the market is to sell by handcrafting a limited number of people and supplying them to indie artists who sell “sale” in comments on social media accounts, or to nearby stores like Little Tokio’s Monster Patrol in LA and Tokyo Toys in New York City.
The quaint, low retro feel of vinyl toys may feel like an explosion from the past, but if it’s still some indication that it will raise interest in fans, the silicone mold will drain vinyl toys for the next 60+ years.
Monstrous Books by Bram Stoker Award-winning editor and author James Aquilone celebrated the traditions of Pulp Fiction and Classic Movie Monsters with Monstrous Magazine. Currently, Monstrous Magazine looks east at the inspiration for the upcoming All-Star Anthology: Monstrous: The Kaiju Issue. We celebrate the legendary monsters from Japan in time for Godzilla’s 70th anniversary and ongoing global celebration. Monstrous: Kaiju Issue’s pre-release page is now live and readers can click to get emails when the crowdfunding project launches.
Just like the creature itself, the magazine (previously digested size) is expanded to the full size 8.5-X-11 inch format. “When I decided to do the Kaiju issue of Monstrous Magazine, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to do Kaiju-Size magazine, so I’m going from 5.5 x 8.5 to 8.5 x 11 inches,” says James Aquilone. “And that’s just the beginning. We’re putting Monstrous Magazine’s back issues into sizes, and now, a limited amount of time will be available in a new, collectible, oversized Kaiju format.”
Previous issues of Monstrous Magazine feature a mix of comics, prose stories and articles. The debut issue includes the following:
Other rewards for the Monstrous: The Kaiju Issue campaign include the debut issue of Monstrous Presents, the 32-page comic Rise of the Morlocks and Dead Jack and Oswald Meet Frankenstein.
The prelaunch page of the Kickstarter campaign, Monstrous Kaiju Issue, is now live.
