Another jumbo bootleg surfaces from Peru.

After I bought the strange King Of The Jungle knockoff Voltron, I'd hoped that a bootleg of the Tetsujin 28 jumbo would surface. Well, no such luck thus far, but I have managed to score a second Voltron knockoff that is quite different from the first.

As you can see, there are several differences between these toys, which are both from Peru, although not necessarily from the same maker. The company who made both are still unknown as neither has any markings. However, the seller I bought it from speculated it may have been from a company called "Basa". But I don't know that for a fact.

The first thing you noticed of course is that they are different colors. The new one on the left has a silver torso and forearms with black shoulders. And the colors of the legs have been switched back to the proper sides. For details, there are almost no stickers on the new one, just a little bit of residue on the arms. I'm not sure if there were ever more than those. The head is yellow and red and although the colors are very inaccurate to the show, I have to admit that I like them. It's a much brighter looking toy than any of the other Voltron/Golion jumbos and I think the color scheme looks nice.

Next, check out the comparison of the arms of the two toys.

I complained in the previous review about how you could not remove the launching mechanism from the arms and how that made the arms look too long and gangly for my tastes. But on this one, no launching mechanism is present so it looks much better. But both toys still use the arms from the T28 jumbo.

OK, now, speaking of arms... For some reason, although this toy does not have the proper arms on the shoulders, they are on the hips!

Yes, those are the upper arms from the Voltron jumbo attached to the hips. Why? Don't ask me. I'm not sure if they are supposed to have the lower arms connected here and they are just missing? I hope not, because not only would that mean the toy is incomplete, but well.. that would look just awful. Maybe they are supposed to look like some kind of cannons? You'd have to use you imagination a bit for that, but it's what I like to think. Either way, it's insane and thinking too much about it could make you insane too, so don't. I'm not gonna.

There's not much more I can say about this that you can't tell from the pictures. So I'll just leave you with a shot of all 3 Voltron Jumbos in my collection. Still missing 2 others, the Popy Golion and the Korean Super K. At least two others, I mean. Who knows what we haven't found yet.

There’s no getting around it: This robot is grotesque. But it’s not without charm. This is Frankenstein bootleg maximalism at its most psychedelic.

Super Combination Robot

There’s no getting around it: This robot is grotesque. But it’s not without charm. This is Frankenstein bootleg maximalism at its most psychedelic. Metal plating and questionable aesthetic choices abound. The Super Combination Robot B/O 17-in-1 (hereafter abbreviated SCR) combines parts from the DX Popy Dairugger XV, the DX Popy Golion, G1 Omega Supreme (or the Toybox Mechabot-1, if you prefer), as well as “original” elements (though it’s possible that I just don’t recognize all of the pieces) to knit them together. This toy is impressive in its audacity.

The packaging (measuring 15”x22”x4”) is faux-Popy DX gone disco. The top/lid features a photograph of the toy with bizarre lighting effects and clumsy typography. There’s a handle, and beneath the box -top the contents are framed with a Popy-style window cover, though the text is upside-down. The sides of the box feature photos of different configurations.

The combined robot is overwhelming. It stands at 13”, taller than most other Popy DX gattai, though shorter than Dairugger. One has no idea where to look: the shapes and colors all fight for dominance, and the scales of individual pieces are too similar. With its prismatic decals, chrome and gold plating, and multiple clashing colors, it’s exhausting to look at. By any standard apart from whimsy, this is just bad design.

The combined SCR uses the heads of both Omega Supreme and Dairugger (interchangeably), the heavily modified torso of Omega Supreme, the arms of Dairugger, the legs of Golion, and the modified upper legs of Dairugger as clips. Parts from, I’m guessing, a non-mecha based cheapo airplane toy have been grafted onto Omega’s chest. Boots of a new sculpt encase the lions. SCR wears an OS backpack, outfitted with a bubble and piston gimmick and rubber hoses. The set comes with Golion’s shield and sword.

Everything is lightweight ABS plastic, but respectable in fit and finish by bootleg standards, with the exception of the yellow lion’s head, which is poorly constructed.

The only limb articulation is in the shoulders, elbows, and neck. The shoulder rotors spin freely. The pistons in the backpack move up and down when activated. The tank is motorized, with two sets of articulated wings. The Dairugger components all roll on rubber wheels.

Head(s)
Omega’s head is the default head (at least based on the box art). The mold is the same as the original, but the gray plastic is now black, and the red turret is now gold-plated. The alternate Dairugger head actually looks pretty neat, having been cast in blue and nicely finished with a gold and silver paint scheme on its face. Unfortunately, the Dairugger head looks silly on the robot because of its ungainly neck, concealed in the original toy.

Torso
Omega Supreme’s tank forms the torso. As in the head, the original gray plastics are black, the red pieces gold-plated. The leg trim is red instead of yellow. The mechanics have been slightly altered to activate the backpack. The fuselage and wings of a jet have been integrated into the top of the tank. The arm joints have been totally reworked to accept the new shoulders.

Arms
SCR’s arms are straight from Dairugger, but simplified. The shoulders have different, smaller rotors, the paint apps have been eliminated and partially replaced by decals, and the pull-back motors has been removed. The fists each use the mold from the original red Dairugger fist, and have retained their rocket-punch mechanism.

The “boots” surrounding the lions are an interesting innovation for the SCR, and of an entirely new sculpt. Once the lions clip onto the tread stumps, the boots surround them, giving a better weight and scale to the legs. The boot shells clip together ala OS, but using a combination of (2)OS clips, (2)modified Dairugger ships, and (2)unique trapezoidal clips. The Dairugger clips are modified versions of the original XV red thigh ship, but with without the splitting feature and with a clip molded onto the underside. The unique clips on the front of the boots cannot attach as shown on the box, their clip interface is upside-down. I actually like the look of SCR from the waist down.

Back Pack
I have no idea where the bubble-piston comes from. The top of the bubble appears to have been painted by hand! The candy-colored pistons within move 1/4” up and down. The lower part of the back pack, here molded in white and black, is very close to Omega’s, but has been reworked to bee a static block rather than the original clamshell.

Summary
This toy is probably only appealing to most collectors as an oddity. I enjoy strange and ugly robots, and use them to liven up my shelves, but for most, getting past its ugliness will be a real challenge. The SCR isn’t especially rare or desirable, so you can probably find one in its box for fifty bucks.

More Peruvian Jumbo madness!

Getting a newly discovered toy from a place that you don't expect to find one is always exciting enough, but even greater than that is the potential that toy represents. After the first jumbo from Mexico was discovered, more followed. The first time a jumbo from Argentina turned up, it, too, was not the last. And now that jumbos from Peru have surfaced, perhaps the floodgates have opened.

Not long after I got the first Dangard Ace from Peru, another more interesting jumbo toy came to my attention. This time it was not just the same old Dangard Ace mold that we've now seen many times. Instead, a bootleg of the Popy Golion Jumbo Machinder came to light!

Now, as we know, this is not the first time the Popy Golion Jumbo was re-used in another country. Most famously, there is the LJN Giant Commander Voltron that was released in the United States and Mexico (and maybe other countries). Far less common is the bootleg that was released in Korea, called Super K.

But obviously, the thing that sets this one apart from those is the arms. They are clearly not from the original toy nor do they have anything to do with Golion or Voltron in any of his incarnations. No, these are clearly are from the Popy New Tetsujin 28 Jumbo Machinder!

This is pretty exciting to me because there is no other recorded New Tetsujin 28 Jumbo outside of the original. Yet, here are remnants of it on a toy in Peru. Could it be that there is a T28 bootleg Jumbo floating around somewhere in Peru? Or other parts of South America? The mind boggles.....

As you can see, this toy is not in the best condition ever and is missing one of the wings on the back. But I felt it was too important and unique a specimen to pass on. And at first, I was a bit skeptical of it. I asked the seller if he was absolutely sure it even had the right arms on it, since they look so out of place. He assured me that he'd seen the toy in the past and it always had these arms.

Ok, so let's talk a bit more about these out of place arms. As you can see, both fists launch with the help of an attached firing mechanism. This is just like on the Tetsujin 28 toy and my hope until I got it was the the mold was exactly the same. This is because on the original toy, the upper arm is hollow, which allows you to insert the fist, firing peg and all, into the upper arm. That way the arm is shortened to a more aesthetically pleasing length. Unfortunately, here that is just not possible. First, the upper arm does not have that opening.

Furthermore, even if you were to remove the launching mechanism and pull out the pin in the hand to try to attach the fist to the upper arm, they do not fit. The end of the fist is too wide for the end of the arm and it would just fall off. So no matter how unsightly those long, gangly arms may be, you have to display it that way. That is, unless of course you are into actually modifying the toy, which just isn't my way.

Now, enough about those arms. What else is unique about this toy? Well, for starters, it's slightly smaller than the LJN version. That means that everything is scaled down including the wings and their connection points. So it's not possible to just get another wing from a common LJN toy to replace my missing one.

Other differences include the fact that the colors of the legs have been swapped. The left leg is blue instead of yellow and vice versa. All of the stickers on the legs are the same as the LJN version (sorry, I don't own a Popy version to actually make that comparison), but the ones on the torso are obviously different. The words "King of the Jungle" are on the upper torso and the waist sticker is a design wholly new to the Jumbos. It does look familiar to me, though. Maybe it's been on other Golion toys? Please comment if you recognize it.

I think the only other interesting notes about this toy that I can mention are that the legs still show the remnants of the missile holders that are present on the Popy Golion Machinder. So, this is clearly molded after that and not the LJN Voltron. The polyethylene body feels pretty solid for a bootleg jumbo, but the head is very soft and squishy. It feels almost like rubber more than soft vinyl. This has caused the paint to crack in many places.

So, overall this toy could be better. Those arms just look so out of place, even if they were a proper lenght. But to me, the appeal of this thing is more what it represents than what it is.

I'm not sure how this vintage US Jumbo eluded me when I was a kid, but I'm glad I have it now. It's a great toy and an affordable alternative to the expensive Popy version. It's always on Ebay and should be in every Voltron and Jumbo fans collection!

Voltron ruled the airways for me and my friends when I was about 10 years old. It was far and away our favorite show at the time and I had nearly all of the toys. But one that I never even heard of until I started collecting as an adult was this motorized version of the Popy Golion Jumbo Machinder that LJN released in 1984. Most people that I talk to now all remember it, but somehow it completely escaped me back then. Like most of the other vintage Jumbos released in the US, it takes the original Popy version (released 3 years previous in 1981) and modified it for the US market. And like the others, it was made worse than the original.

But that doesn't mean to suggest that this toy is not worth having. In fact, this one is probably closest to it's model than any other US jumbo. The sculpt of the toy is nearly identical to the Popy version. The only differences seems to be that the copyright stamp was changed and the missile launching mechanism and missile holders were removed (they used to be on the hips). But this is a real shame since the original gimmick was really cool. On the Popy version, when you pushed the levers on the red and green hands to open the lion mouth, it would press a button on the bottom of the hand and launch a missile out of the mouth! A great idea that I'm sure kids here would have loved, but I suppose it was removed for safetly concerns. But LJN did something to make up for it. They included a "blazing sword" that Volron could hold in either hand. This is something that the Popy version did NOT have!

Not only did you it have the sword included, but this version also came with a motorized base that you could attach Voltron to and move him around the floor. You could place Voltron on top of the base and use 4 included screws to make the connection. The screws would have to go up through the holes in the bottom of the base and then screw into the holes in the bottom of Voltron's feet. Insert two C batteries into the "remote" control, flip the switch and Voltron would roll back and forth. Most collectors think this is pretty lame, but hey, maybe kids got a kick out of it back then. And really, any extra gimmick you get can't be bad, can it?. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. Strangely, this is not the only jumbo to use a motorized base. The first version Famosa Great Mazinger also had one, though it's served a different purpose.

There is a downside to the base though, actually. I assume it is probably the reason why the weights were removed for this release. Usually the Popy jumbos have the feet weighted down giving them a very solid feel. This toy, while the quality of the plastic is fine, feels almost like a bootleg because it is so light.

One other thing that I don't like about this toy is the amount of stickers that need to be applied. I count over FIFTY stickers that had to be put on this thing. When I got mine, the adhesives on the back had all dried up, too, so I had to respray each one and then apply them. It seemed to take forever to get them all on. But the toy does look great when they are all in place.

Voltron has 9 points of articulation. The head turns, the arms raise and lower, the wings are adjustable and the red and green lion's mouth open. Also, the elbows are on a ball joint. The only problem there is that the levers of the lion's mouths can hinder the arms movement as they often bump into the waist.

One quick note about the wings. They are a very similar mold to the wings on the Popy Robot Factory God Sigma Jumbo. And the Giant Commander Voltron has two different versions of wing connections. One is like the God Sigma jumbo and they fit over a rounded peg on the back. The other version has a plastic covering that pushes through the wings and into the back. This version does not appear to come off like the first.

Voltron comes in a large box (25.5" tall by 14.75" long and 6.5" deep) with a cellophane window in the top half that allows you to see the robot inside.

I recently came across a very cool related item, a giant 5 foot tall standee used to promote the show and the toy at Spencers. One collector remembers only seeing this toy at that store. Since I never saw it at all when I was little, I have no idea if it was sold only there or in regular stores as well. If anyone has any info about that, please leave a comment.

The motorized Giant Commander Voltron is a pretty cool toy, one that I feel doesn't get the respect it deserves. If it only shot something, I'd say it's better than all the Shogun Warriors. It's certainly the nicest looking, in my opinion. Furthermore, it's a cheap grab for a vintage Jumbo. I can see not getting one if you aren't into jumbos. But if you've even got a passing interest, there's really no good reason not to have this one.

LJN was not the only company to copy the Popy Golion Jumbo. In Korea, there was a bootleg version that was called "Super K". (Click the image for more information about that toy.)

Voltron combination sequence (I never noticed the "War Of The Worlds" sound effect!)

Each arm has a firing fist, but if you notice they are both red. Victora was so cheap they didn’t even bother to mold the second fist in another color.

Victora (ビクトラー) was a sub-company of the famous toy company Popy. Popy wanted to move into the cheap toy market, but they didn’t want to associate their brand name with crappy toys. Thus the sub company called Victora  (or sometimes Victorer) was born.

Victora toys could mostly be found at train station kiosks, and near cash registers at stores. They were an affordable quick fix for kids, and for parents they wouldn’t break the bank. They were nothing compared to their parent company, Popy, but for what they are worth they are pretty cool.

This Golion toy was part of Victora’s “Victora Gokin (ビクトラー合金)” line. Basically, it was just cheap toys that had a little metal in them.

Of course, we all know Golion as Voltron III or Lion Voltron. Does this little toy look familiar to you? It might, it was highly bootlegged in the 80s, and showed up in America as carnival prizes, at flea markets and discount stores.

The toy stands just a few inches tall, and has a solid metal body. Articulation (if you want to call it that) is limited to the head and shoulders. Each arm has a firing fist, but if you notice they are both red. Victora was so cheap they didn’t even bother to mold the second fist in another color.

Golion comes with a shield but no sword. Also included are two wings that need to be attached.

The toy is packaged in a Styrofoam tray that sits inside a nice window box. The box art is really nice.

Victora toys are not essential pieces unless you are a fan of a particular character. I love Golion, so I had to have this as part of my collection.

The GB-35 ST Golion toy is one of the best representations of this character to this day. I, like many other Americans, grew up owning the stripped down version of this toy put out by matchbox in 1984. I would play with it, knowing that there had to be something more. The fists looked like they should fire, but they don’t. Where was the sword and shield?

If you have been a reader of CollectionDX for some time, you probably know that Voltron III (the lion one) came from a Japanese show called Golion. It should be no surprise then that the US miniature Voltron III toy is largely based on a Japanese toy.

The GB-38 ST Golion toy is one of the best representations of this character to this day. I, like many other Americans, grew up owning the stripped down version of this toy put out by matchbox in 1984. I would play with it, knowing that there had to be something more. The fists looked like they should fire, but they don’t. Where was the sword and shield?

It wasn’t until I was an adult collector that I found out about the original Japanese toy. There was a certain satisfaction realizing that the original toy DID have all those gimmicks, that I was right all along.

The ST Golion is essentially the same mold as Voltron, but different enough to be worth getting. The toy is almost all metal, save for the arms, wings and head. Each arm fires a lion-headed fist, and each fist can also hold the included shield and sword (the Blazing Sword and Shield were sold separately in the US). The feet can also be fired off by pressing buttons behind the legs.

There are some subtle color and mold differences as well. The teeth on the head of the Matchbox version aren’t as sharp as the teeth on the Popy version. The blue paint on the leg is darker on the Popy version as well.

When Popy released their toy, it was made in Japan, and had the appropriate Japanese stickers under the feet. By the time Matchbox wanted the license to the toy, Popy had been folded into Bandai. All of the Matchbox toys have ©TOEI and are made in Taiwan by Bandai.