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RainBot

RainBot's picture

Personal Information

Country
Canada

Collection

About Me :

It started in 1977.
I went over to a friend's house. His mother was Japanese, and his dad was Dutch. I had the Kenner Star Wars Early Bird kit still in its package, and was beyond excited to show him what I got. We both pored over the documents included in the package, and wondered what the final designs would look like. However, my eyes drifted over to the other side of the room where a giant black and silver robot stood, with a sleek fighter plane nestled in its "crown". Beside this, were toys of strange, multicoloured robots I had never seen. I was fascinated by their weight and dangerous eye-gouging gimmicks. We played for hours. In fact, due to the absence of Star Wars figures, oppotunistic toy companies, like Empire Toys sated my pangs with Star Wars-esque robots like Brain III from UFO Commander 7. As I saved up my allowance to get Valcan-1, my Early Bird figures arrived, and the focus was Star Wars for a good seven years.
However, anime had sneakily crept onto the scene with Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers, cleverly disguised as North American shows. And slowly, I began to take notice again. While walking in a fleamarket, I kept coming accross really cool, but expensive import toys from something called "Macross" and "Orguss". I loved the designs and they greatly influenced my budding artistic efforts at the time. I was able to pick up a small plastic transforming jet-robot (later to be identified as a cheap version of Hikaru's VF 1J from Macross).The suspicion that something cool was out there beyond my realm of experience became tangible when a toy called "Jetfire" appeared in the Transformers line. "He" was unlike any of the previous transformers, and looked, curiously, alot like that jet robot I had a few years previously.
And then, one day, in 1984, I walked in to the Silver Snail and saw a huge box - the VF-1S 1/55 Strike Valkyrie. It was Jetfire... but about ten times cooler.
I went nuts. I begged my parents for it. With birthday money firmly in hand, I started down a long road of toy design appreciation, and an affinity for Japanese aesthetics.
Much of my artistic work is strongly influenced by the designs in Orguss, Gatchaman and Macross, and to see those designs in the third dimension has been a constant thrill.

What is your all time favorite toy?
The 1/55 Hikaru Ichijoe type Hi Metal Strike Valkyrie by Bandai

History

Member for
15 years 6 weeks