Combattra
Review by Showapop
A close second behind Bandai’s Tetsujin 28 DX as one of the most sought after Godaikin release is Combattra from the anime Choudenji Robo Combattler V. Released in Japan as part of the Popy line in both a deluxe set and individual vehicles, it was released in the United States in 1982 and was one of the largest sets in the Godaikin line.
To many kids at the time these were considered Transformers and Go-Bots generic knock offs since American kids were never exposed to the anime and tokusatsu shows the Godaikin line was derived from. But there were some kids who sensed there was greatest associated with the Godaikin line even though they had no tangible evidence to support their hunch.
I do not remember any other kids owing Godaikin toys or bringing them to school but years later I was able to acquire a Dynaman in Junior High from a kid who really did not understand what he had.
My collection of Godaikin was very small, owning just Combattra, Dynaman, Laserion ST, Laserion DX, GoggleV and Gardian. Because of their lack of popularity and original high price tag, Godaikin were usually blown out at places like Playco and Kaybee Toy and Hobby for next to nothing. My Gardian for instance I bought at JC Penny at the Montclair Plaza for $10.00. In was in a master carton of ten other Gardians for the same price.
My Combattra was bought under similar circumstances. I was at the Toys R Us in Montclair with my Dad. This Toys R Us, which since has been demolished, always had that row where all the generic toys were stocked and that is where I saw the stack of Godaikins at clearance prices. Combattra had been marked down from $59.99 to $49.99 to $39.99 and to finally $14.99. The real crime of the day was leaving the Godaikin God Mars behind that was only $9.99! I went back a few days later to purchase it but it was already gone. One of the biggest regrets of my life!
I was just blown away with the beauty of the toy, both as a kid in the 1980’s and an adult in the 2010’s. The Combattra box is HUGE, and was released with a ton of parts for the five vehicles and Combattra itself.
Upon sliding the tray out the box you are a treated to a Styrofoam tray with an orgy of colorful parts, hefty die-cast vehicles and numerous accessories and missiles and a colorful Godaikin users guide.
Combattra is a combiner and in this case it has five main vehicles with their associate interesting names: Battle Jet, Battle Clasher, Battle Tank, Battle Marine, and Battle Kulaft. When pulled out of the box the vehicles are not complete but one has to add the included parts to make the vehicle whole.
The head vehicle is the Battle Jet, which one has to add the rear part of the Jet to make complete. Battle Jet even includes a tiny figure which looks like it scales out to be somewhere between 1/144 and 1/100 scale. When the Battle Jet turns into the Combattra head, an ingenious weight in the face tilts the head forward.
The Battle Clasher is the weirdest part of Combattra which I cannot seem to figure out if it's a tank or a jet or a little of both. First it has these huge arms that do not seem to hide anywhere and are very awkward and somewhat silly looking especially when the fists are on. But the piece is heavy die cast, probably the most rugged die-cast I have ever seen on any toy.
Battle Tank is a great looking vehicle with huge red claws that attach with magnets to the body. I also love the cool moveable treads and double turrets on the top of the tank with missiles that can launch. Together with the chrome radar in the back it is an appealing and colorful vehicle.
Many of these early Chogokins included legs that were submarines and Combattra is not any different with The Battle Marine being the leg portion of Combattra. Battle Marine is another excellent vehicle with funky, rolling wheels, four placements to launch missiles, and tons of die cast.
The Battle Kulaft make up the feet and this was my favorite vehicle of Combattra. The two halves fit together snug with magnets and two powerful jets fit above Battle Kulaft which attached to the two black hoses that attach to guns hidden within two doors. Heavy die-cast all around, it even includes two sliding magnets to “capture” other die-cast toys. I always thought the name sounded funny and Russian like.
To combine Combattra you have to take off the extra parts off each vehicle. Most of the parts slide into each other firmly with magnets holding the parts together. The only parts you need to add are the fists and if desired rubber suspenders are included to hold the entire Combattra together.
Fully combined, Combattra is a sight to behold. First this figure weights a ton, besides the forearms and upper legs its fully die-cast. It is the heaviest Gokin I have ever picked up. Second, there is practically no articulation, with some arm movement and some slight leg movement. Otherwise it is practically a statue but you know I still had a bunch of fun playing with Combattra when I was kid.
The proportions are a bit off with the legs being slender, but again the art design works great and comes off as a great charming 1970’s Japanese robot. Combattra has issues standing by itself since it weighs so much and very top heavy.
The details are excellent and contain all those touches that I love in vintage Japanese robots. I love the Japanese Kana on a chrome sticker stick across the belly, and clear yellow plastic gems are beautiful, especially the huge dome on the body. This is one attractive figure. All the Japanese labels throughout look great and gives a nice hint of the toys origins.
The only real issue is the scraping of die-cast of the vehicles when parts are put together to form Combattra. Although the paint is thick and of great quality, the metal wear out the paint where parts combine. Also the chrome on the legs have worn away on my example. Keep in mind I rarely played with it and after I was through I put it away neatly in the box. If you ever come across a NOS Combattra be leery of combining the figure least paint might wear out when assembled.
Last but not least is that Combattra also transforms into a huge tank. Yes, it is awkward but cool nonetheless.
Combattra is one of the finest and much sought after releases in the Godaikin line and another example of an excellent Japanese toy that was available to kids in the USA.
©2011 article and pictures by Leonardo Flores and CollectionDX.
Comments
14 comments postedoh man, those prices. I too have passed on these prices as a kid although not because I didnt want, but didnt have the cash since I was too young to be making my own money. I could have begged for em but that would never work. Great review by the way!
stories like that hit home...had my mom talked me out of a grandizer shogun warrior for 5 bucks and always regret...think I remember goggle V at Toy-r-us....asked for a voltes V for x-mas but it was actually like 85 bucks...was my main x-mas present. Great Review BTW...
Thanks for the replies. Yes, there are more than a few regrets of items I didn't buy when I had the chance. My biggest loss was when I saw the Sear's Exclusive Cobra Cardboard Missile Base at Sears Surplus for $7.00 in Upland. I begged and begged and begged my Mom knowing this was perhaps the only chance I would be able to get it. My mom said no and that was that. 30 years later its an around $400.00 items for some pre printed die cut cardboard. $7.00 was the better deal!
Cheers!
LF
Really nice write up. I love your stories about the prices. As a kid my folks bought me a godsigma and it was like my only big gift but in the catalog that came with it I saw combattra and fell in love. Sadly I never could find one in a store. A friend of mine had some beaten up pieces of one from the u-combine shogun set. I traded him something for the pieces. Man, that kid also had no idea what he had. Anyway That was as close as I got to having a combattra until the late 90's when I finally picked up two of them. One was loose until I mentioned it to this guy Steve who worked at a place called outer limits in NJ. He GAVE me a gold box with some fists, drill and other stuff in it. That guy was amazing. Too bad that store closed . Just the greatest toy ever. Boxes with handles rule :) Again great review!
Bewitchery and wonderment.
Ah, Combattra...
It's a toy I have a long history with...
It's important to realize WHY kids and parents weren't so keen on Godaikin in the US around the line's original release in the 80's... my father worked as a manager of a toy store here in NJ, so I clearly remember why I wasn't allowed to own all the line, only a few here and there... we haven't talked toy since the early 90s so if my memories are hazy forgive me...
Combattra was one that I always wanted, was always denied, and one of my 1st gokin purchases in the early-mid 90's when the prices were fair and there wasn't such a huge scalper-scene with vintage diecast or Popy in general... also one of the 1st toys I sold for a serious profit.
They cost so much versus Hasbro's Transformers, plus they broke when you played with them. At $50-100, these things weren't cheap and guys like Combattra and Gardian were pretty quick to break in kid-hands. They break easily in adult hands! These things were pretty quickly returned to the store, and parents would get rowdy looking for money back. The store wouldn't get credit for the busted toys until they were returned to distro, which could be months later... for small stores like the one my father worked for, this was poison.
As a kid my father worked as a manager of a toy store here in NJ. His only memories of Godaikin were the returns... how they would break either in shipping from the NJ warehouse (these things would break in the case on a 50 mile trip, I can only imagine some further stores and what they got!) or parents would come with crying kids the next day wanting a full refund or a new toy. Apparently, it was so bad, and so constant an issue, that these were his only memories of the line, how much of a problem it was for the store, and how much his little son wanted them all... When I bought Combattra in the 90's he quipped that his store made so little money from Godaikin and Gobots that the "robot fever" craze was a profit for toy makers and not stores... The manufacturers took advantage of the craze to charge big bucks to the wholesalers. The store's markups on Godaikins was only 10-20%, which is a tiny, tiny profit for toy buisness, especially in the 80s. TF was a bit more, but not much. His store made so much more money from other toys that they stopped stocking them. Not because they didn't sell, but because of how much Bandai, Hasbro, and Matchbox wanted per case. If you make a 90% profit off of hula-hoops, 80% profit on hong kong knockoffs like Lionbots, and a 50-60% profit from GIJOE toys, why would you continue to stock toys that break that you make only 15% profit on? Rest assured chains like TRU and Kay-Bee took a massive hit on Godaikin, with them probably breaking even ...maybe... on the $50 price discount.
We now know that Bandai's NJ Godaikin operation was not super-profitable anyway due to the repacking, shipping the heavy toys from Japan, and US labor at the time, so these numbers make sense.
I think some of the confusion was also from Bandai's representatives, who sold the line as "new shogun warriors" to stores, and played up the quality and die-cast... far more complex toys than Shoguns, and way more fragile. Shoguns were something that buyers knew from the 70s as opposed to using the "Transformers" name and giving Hasbro more word of mouth. There was also a language-barrier issue; many of the reps from Bandai weren't from the US and had trouble explaining some of the concepts in English, or would miss appointments picking up damaged toys from retailers.
The impression kids my age had of these were the same as Lionbot... "Fake Voltrons." Kids didn't want them because it wasn't Voltron. Add that the 2nd series window boxes weren't as attractive to kids as the picture-boxes (hence the difference in price and rarity), and the lagging GoBots were shelf-warmers... "Transformers" and "Voltron" were brands sold to kids daily via TV - Godaikins were, due to no prominent "branding," relegated to 2nd tier with Gobots.
This all created a perfect storm, which partially put my father's store under in the 80s after he left, and put Godaikins into the deep discount bins, creating a deep prejudice against larger diecast robot toys with retailers, much how Star Wars: Episode I did for carded action figures in the early 2000's.
Sorry for another long comment, but maybe this will shine a light onto the history of the toy and the line in general, and maybe explain a little history of gokin in the US that people don't know!
This is the kind of insight I like when writing, no opinion but hard facts on the business side of toy manufacturing and retail! Excellent, this cleared up a lot of questions I had concerning the business side of selling these.
Thank you for taking the time out and writing this!
Cheers
LF
Yeah that's some great information. Thanks for sharing.
great comments, help shed light on a history steep in children (us) feeling ignored and slighted and parents actually doing what makes sense...thanks.
In my country, The poor combattler always under the shadow of Voltes. Many people thinks that Combattler is rip of of Voltes. I don't blame them because combattler videos never sold here.
They have the same creator, so it's not surprising...
Great review, and backing story Mr. Mod!
Beautiful pics of a classic toy.
I'm sure eventually all the old school DX sets will be reviewed, and cataloged here on CDX.
I'll echo my thanks to BigR and the rest of you for your backup stories. Like most of you , my family didn't have the funds with 4 kids, to justify big, expensive sets like this, so didn't get them until much later when grown up.
In the U.S., the Shogun Warriors version was offered by Mattel in 1978 as five individual Shogun vehicles or as a single large boxed set, both under the moniker "U-Combine". This was a full 4 years before the Godaikin. I believe the vehicles listed for $10 each. $50 at the time would have been a week or two of groceries, during a time when food prices were a much higher ratio of household earnings compared to today.
With no electronics, lights, sound or motorized action to justify their steep price (even Biotron was around $12), Godaikins were a puzzling toyline with a steep price point. These toys are 100% about the robot anime boom, which wasn't happening in the U.S. until well into the 80s, and tepidly at that.
Interesting to hear about the fragility and frustrations of shop owners - just adds to the downfall story. But still, there were so many pieces that made it into Godaikin boxes. One would think that a failing toyline would have died before so many products got out?
Very informative
I am talking about the comments posted
Economics 101 for Plastic/Metal Robots Fans everywhere.