The second Robot Factory jumbo, Daltanious, is one of the most beautiful Machinders I've seen.

Future Robo Daltanious (未来ロボ ダルタニアス) aired for 47 episodes beginning March 21, 1979 and ending March 5, 1980. I'm a huge fan of the jumbo, which was the second in Popy's Robot Factory line of toys. It's one of the few hero jumbos that I had a strong desire to get, even though I had no previous knowledge of the character before seeing it. This one has a really great design that somehow has alot of personality to it. There's probably several reasons for this. First off, anytime you have a giant lion head on your chest, you're going to be noticed, but when that lion head can shoot a missile out of it's mouth, well, you just can't beat that. The missile is operated by a red plastic peg that sticks out of the top of the lion's head. Put the missile in place, push the peg down and the missile will fire.

When not in use, you can store the missiles on the outside of the toy's legs in the traditional Machinder fashion. Each leg holds two missiles and the clips are much thicker and sturdier than your average missile clips. While many jumbos can be seen with broken missiles clips, I'm not sure you could break these ones if you tried.

Another great feature on this robot is the head. For some reason, I've always liked robots with a smiling face and Daltanious definitely has a distinct grin. His eyes are also surrounded by a stylish, black, almost mask-like visor that looks very cool. But best of all are the horns. Protruding up from where the ears would be and extending just above the top of the head, there horns are just the right size and are distinctly different from many of the horns you see on other robots.

Furthermore, you can actually remove these horns from the head by simply sliding them out of the back of the head to reveal it is a separate ship!

As with the Battle Fever jumbo, most of the color details on Daltanious are from a sticker sheet. I wish this wasn't the case, but they do make a huge difference. Daltanious without his stickers applied just doesn't look nearly as cool, as you can see from this picture I received before buying mine.

Another thing you might notice from that picture is that the box image is different from the toy. The box shows a Daltanious that comes with a white shoulders instead of black. I would assume that this was the prototype and I'm glad they made the change. The black shoulders look much better, in my opinion.

Daltanious stands 23.5 inches (60cm) tall. You can raise and lower his arms, as well as bend them at the elbows. The head also can be turned side to side, and both fists launch.

Daltanious is not impossible to get, but it also doesn't show up often. I honestly cannot remember the last time that I saw one for sale. I think it was about 2 years ago. Price-wise, you can expect to pay at least $1000 for one and perhaps even as much as $2000, for a really pristine example. Something in the middle is most likely though.

Among Robot Factory jumbos, the Battle Fever is definitely the easiest one to find.

TV Asahi aired the 3rd Super Sentai series, Battle Fever J (バトルフィーバーJ), for 52 episodes during 1979-1980. While a new element was being added to the series, namely a giant robot, Popy was also trying something new with their series of Jumbo Machinder toys. Gone were the large boxes containing one piece toys that had been the norm for 6 years. In their place was a new system of unbuilt robot toys that had to be assembled using a simple series of plastic nuts and bolts. This allowed for smaller boxes, which in turn likely decreased shipping and storage costs. Battle Fever was the first jumbo released like this, followed by Daltanious, Gordian, Daidenjin and God Sigma.

The original design for the robot is quite appealing and most toys of it are as well. The jumbo is no exception with a beautifully rendered head sculpt and nice proportions on the body. The red shoulder shields can be raised and lowered to allow the arms to be posed.

Both fists can launch and there is a single missile launcher located in the stomach as well. Three short-vaned Machinder missiles can be stored on either side of the legs. The "BF" insignia on the chest is molded plastic but all the other ornamentation is from stickers. I think this is the one complaint I have with the Robot Factory jumbos. Although the finished products look great, I'm not a huge fan of applying stickers. I get really picky about having them placed just perfectly. On Battle Fever, every single yellow stripe on the stomach and chest is a separate sticker that you have to apply, as is the red on the legs and arms. The waist sticker with his name is pretty easy to apply but I had a really hard time with a red sticker that is supposed to go on the mid-chest area. No matter how I tried, it just didn't want to stick on there nicely and I eventually decided it wasn't worth it and placed it back on the sticker sheet. I think it looks just fine without it anyway.

Assembly of the toy is pretty self explanatory, but there is an instruction sheet included as well. One thing I would recommend is to pay attention to which bolt goes where. The bolts that are for the arms are longer than those for the legs and it's easy to not notice if you are in hurrying to assemble the toy. Also, don't tighten the back nut too much or you might bend the insignia on the front.

The artwork on the boxes are ok, but honestly they pale in comparison to the traditional jumbo boxes. While each Robot Factory jumbo is nice in it's own right and the unique assembly system allowed for some different looking toys, as a big fan of boxes, I would have preferred the old style boxes to go with my other jumbos.

Among Robot Factory jumbos, the Battle Fever is definitely the easiest one to find. It is most often priced at roughly $1000, but if you are patient and keep your eyes peeled, you may be able to get one cheaper. There is also a bootleg version of this jumbo that was released in Italy. It is called "UFO Robot" and says "UFO" on the chest, in place of "BF". It is pretty rare, though.

Here is the very very odd opening sequence to the show. No time to show the robot, you gotta see the stock footage of animals instead for some reason...