Wonder Festival
Winter 2012 (Part 2)

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Part two of our Winter Wonder Festival coverage is up and chock-full of great pictures.  In fact, we have so many pictures that we’re extending our rundown of the event one more day.  Kaiyodo is our big focus of today’s article and their newest property, Monster Hunter!

Before we jump into round I need to again thank Kaiyodo for allowing us to cover this event and Robert Baldwin for the great job he’s done. If you haven’t already, remember to check out Robert’s article on the IAT Forum. He gives his view of the event and wraps up with a brief Q&A for the various companies like Kaiyodo and Good Smile!

Like yesterday, we’ve broken down the galleries by categories to make finding things a bit easier. Also, don’t forget to check back tomorrow for more updates!

Gallery G – Kaiyodo: Sci-Fi Revoltech, Revoltech Takeya, Real Action Heroes

Gallery H – Kaiyodo: Monster Hunter, Transformers, Full Metal Alchemist, Neon Genesis, Evangelion

Gallery I – Custom accessories for Revoltech, Figma, Shinki, etc.

Gallery J – Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventure

Gallery K – Misc. custom figures, Micro Man, and giant sized Kaiju.

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14 thoughts on “Wonder Festival
Winter 2012 (Part 2)”

  1. I see a lot of stuff that’s nicely done, showing a lot of care, but brother, 99% of what’s showing is just nothing to me. I’m thrilled to see Good Smile do some Tekkaman Blade figures (but I bet they don’t do more of the other Tekkamen, we’ll probably see Blade and Evil’s Blastor modes), the Revoltech ‘Starship Troopers’ Power Armor is sexy as all get out, and it’s always nice to see Space Battleship Yamato get representation, but overall? Meh.

    (altho is that a Big O cockpit/head in scale with the Figma Roger Smith?)

    So where is my SF Revoltech Moonlight SY-3? Where’s the rest of the Lupin Gang?

    Rargh.

    But, thanks for the reporting!

    1. That Big-O head is nice. If they actually made a complete Big-O at that scale, I would lose my $hit…. And a kidney to pay for it.

    2. I don’t think the Big O head is quite big enough to be in scale with the Figma, but it still looks good.

      Lupin is on hold due to slow sales. The general Lupin fan demographic doesn’t seem to coincide too much with the action figure collector demographic. Previously, the TakaraTomy Lupin, accompanied by Fujiko didn’t sell too well either, but Kaiyodo seemed to believe they had a better product and a better choice of secondary figure.

      Moonlight SY-3 – With Bandai muscling in on the Godzilla franchise, Toho has become a lot more hesitant to provide licenses to anybody else…

      @ TheBloodyAwefulPoet, The next time I meet these guys, I’ll let them know how much you’re willing to pay (how much does a kidney go for these days?).

      1. And yet they just recently had released the Goten-go (aka Atragon) which looks pretty awesome. Pity there’s not a big bendy Manda to wrap around it.

        I wonder, could the slow sales of the Lupin Revoltech figures be due to Japanese fans/collectors not wanting to be burned by an incomplete ‘Lupin Gang’ like what happened with the Microman releases? Every time Banpresto whips out new Lupin III crane game prizes they’re either the complete ‘family’ or just Fujiko, Fujiko, Fujiko. It’s a team dynamic.

        And the fact they haven’t done the obvious easy repaints (first series green jacket Lupin, just needs a slightly different head and hands for one example)to extend the use of the tooling is surprising.

        OTOH it may well be the choice of style. I’m pretty sure they used the first Lupin III movie (aka Mystery of Mamo, Lupin Vs. the Clone and various other names) as their stylistic guide base and while I LOVE that movie, that’s a hard sell as the second film (Cagliostro Castle) is much, much more popular.

        I dunno. Medicom managed to have a pretty good run with Lupin III but maybe 1/6-ish scale figures sell to a completely different demographic.

        1. The Revoltec version of Goten-go is not part of the Godzilla franchise. Godzilla had a completely redesigned version of Goten-go, but the Revoltech version is from “Kaitei Gunkan”. This version of Goten-go was also used in the Sazer X Movie, but it has never been with Godzilla.

          As for Lupin, I don’t have any official word, but the lack of sales appears to have halted any further development. Although it would be easy to do a variant of Lupin, Kaiyodo doesn’t have any guarantee that this would sell. The Cagliostro (Miyazaki) version is probably the most popular rendition of Lupin but the vs Clone version is closer to the original Monkey Punch version, which is considered by many fans to be the “iconic” version of Lupin. Also, (I’m just guessing here) the Cagliostro version may require licensing by Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli) as well as Monkey Punch while the Clone version wouldn’t require the notoriously expensive Ghibli license.

          1. Godzilla Final Wars does have a guest shot of the original Goten-go, altho as you mention there is some variation (the original ship didn’t have ballistic missile tubes).

            the ‘new’ Goten-go in Final Wars is more a tribute to the Goten-go from ‘War in Space’, which has it’s parentage tied to the Alpha from Latitude Zero.

            Not to be confused with the ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ flying craft from the Mysterians.

            heh. yes, I have some knowledge of the ‘super science’ weapons from Toho. 🙂

            I agree with the thinking of ‘Mamo’ Lupin being most close to Monkey Punch’s art. Kato-san himself said something similar when I spoke to him years ago. 1994. holy crap. anyway, Cagliostro is all TMS as far as I know, I know it’s not covered by the Disney Ghibli license and when they made that deal it was for all properties.

            (Kato-san dislikes Cagliostro Castle, says it’s just way too soft, but he appreciates that it brought Lupin to more eyes.)

            There are always options. Sadly, too many Japanese business people retreat to “It can’t be helped!!” instead of pushing just a little bit more. ah well.

  2. that mosnter hunter stuff looks good enough to display next to scarabus… no chance they’re scaling up just a tad from the revoltech norm, like the fraulein sub-lien did, is there?

    1. No plans for scaling up. The Monster Hunter figures will be about the same size as all other Revoltech figures.

    1. There should be a few pictures of Bumblebee, if you’re willing to settle for the movie version.

      From a business perspective, the movie version appears to be considered the most “current” and most profitable. The more “traditional” Transformers may have more releases in the future, but there are no plans for this at the moment.

      1. I may pick that up. Really liked BB’s design…not so much for the rest.

        Too bad about the classics though…much more interesting to me.

  6. Hopefully, that Iron Man won’t suck like War Machine does. I have the Revoltech WM, and it’s just poorly done all around.

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