Mazinger Z

Review by NekroDave

Sometime last year there was a sudden appearance of large bootleg toys originating in Taiwan calling themselves Jumbo Machinders. Three robots were included in the set-Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger and UFO Robo Grendizer. Before reviewing the toys themselves, let's look at the packaging.

Each toy is sold in a bag with a colorful header card. The header cards may be the most interesting thing about them. The say made in China, by a company called "Boby" ("Popy? Never heard of 'em") which is written in Japanese on the lower right-hand corner. The upper right-hand corner says "Jumbo Machinder Power Punch Model" in English, even though no power punch feature is included. Below that it says "Jumbo Machinder" misspelled in Japanese. Lastly each card says "Grendizer" on the front, regardless of which robot you are actually buying.

As for the toys themselves, they all share the same generic body slightly modified to suit each robot. The red ornamentation on the chest of Mazinger Z is a separate piece of molded plastic and he features his name on a sticker on his waist. The silver on the legs, arms and waist are also just stickers. Mazinger Z's head is a pretty well-done mold and the paint job is more than passable with just some slight overspray on the Hover Pilder, which is fixed in place. Probably the worst part of the toys is the tops of the fists. The mold here is very flat, which is a shame because the fingers on it my be the best part of the body.

The toy is made of both hard plastic and polyethylene and stands at 18", not the 20" that it is often listed as. Still, these things cost less than $10 and are a great way to add some sizable toys to your collection for short money.