There are a few rare Pachi that I always have one eye on the Japanese market for – and by a strange stroke of fate both this exceedingly rare Taiwanese tortoise and his bull associate recently appeared in sales in Japan in the course of a single week. The bull was unidentified there, while the tortoise had its label still attached and so had the details written there repeated for the sale listing. Of course, I bought both, and then waited anxiously for the three weeks or thereabouts for the items to arrive at the Japanese remailer, be packed (glacially slowly in the case of the tortoise) and sent to me in Europe.

Interestingly, as it speaks to the rarity of these figures – my purchase of the tortoise in public auction in Japan, brought to light another there a week later, which was briefly listed in Japan and internationally on eBay (but outside of Japan for multiples of the price in Japan – a practice I find extremely irritating). That was taken down from eBay a week later having found no buyers, but may still be rattling around auction sites in Japan. Another turned up with a European toyseller about a year ago, and has since passed from hand to hand, ever increasing in asking price, and now sits with a Californian dealer, advertised on eBay. My purchase of the bull from a Mercari listing apparently produced no further discoveries of others among Japanese sellers, but another (also unidentified in detail) did appear in a Mandarake listing a year or so ago.

Somewhat oddly, almost all examples of the tortoise known to me have labels, while none of the bulls known to me do. The labels show that these figures were produced by the dual-language-named Taiwanese company ‘Keio’ in Chinese and ‘Kingdom Toy Co. Ltd.’ in English, and marketed under the tagline “King of Fighting” in English and “戰鬥王” (‘Fighting King’) in Chinese. I can trace nothing for this company in either version of their name, and the label adds only the fact that they were based in Taipei City and gives the briefest of company information. The labels show three characters: a turtle, a horned creature and a large Gundam-like robot with red symbol on his chest. Of these, only the first two have come to light.

The tortoise figure is named ‘Turtle Shell Beast’ (龜甲獸) on the reverse of the accompanying card, where in addition to various snippets of information about the character’s attributes, it also states that the figure retailed for 100 New Taiwanese Dollars.

He is made of hollow hard plastic, not soft vinyl, and stands 150mm. tall, and weighs 82g. He articulates at the arms and legs and base of the tail, but not at the neck – and these joints are stiff and often set at slightly awkward angles. I have yet to see one whose feet both meet the floor equally. He is a remarkably chonky boi, and his body is basically a sphere.

The soles of both of the feet have what is probably a crudely executed “CTC” mark at the edge of the heels (probably for ‘Copyright/Trademark/Company’).

His bull associate was made in the same hollow hard plastic, stands slightly taller at 175mm., and weighs 73g. He has the same foot marks on both feet and in the same place. I urge collectors with hard plastic robots to turn them over and just check if these same foot marks are found on any robot in their collections.

These two have already been the subject of a brief, but informative, online note by the prominent pachi collector and scholar, ‘Pachikaiju’ in an Instagram post. As one of the comments left on Pachikaiju’s Instagram post states, these were bootlegs based closely on two of the kaiju (or ‘megabeasts’ as they are called there) of the Japanese metal hero show, Juspion (also known by the rather more exciting names, ‘Megabeast Investigator Juspion’, and ‘Space Wolf Juspion’) produced by Toei and broadcast in Japan from 1985 to 1986. The lines on the tortoise-creature’s shell forming interlocking triangles allow us to easily identify him as the megabeast Marigos from the first episode of the programme:

(Image from a fandom webpage on under rated kaiju)

Following that, the, as yet nameless, bull here can be recognised as a bootleg of another megabeast named Tetsugoth (or Tetsugos) from episode 2 of the programme:

(Image from same webpage)

Sofubi of Marigos and Tetsugoth were made by Bandai in 1985:

(These images from eBay listings)

and these must be the models behind our bootlegs, fixing their production years to 1985 or immediately thereafter.

I think we can take the prominence of the Chinese and English on the label, and complete absence of Japanese there, to mean that these were marketed outside of Japan – in Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong (a seller on Yahoo JP notes that he acquired his about twenty years ago in Singapore) and perhaps also in the West, most probably in the US.

Despite the misaligned leg angles of the Turtle Shell Beast and use of hard plastic not soft vinyl, these have enormous appeal, and I have had to retrieve the Turtle Shell Beast from my young daughter’s room several times since his arrival (I am assured he likes it better in there, and has made more friends among her toys, than mine). They are of value as rare examples of pachi made in Taiwan, almost perfectly echoing Japanese sofubi, and it is possible that the third figure (the large robot) may yet come to light in someone’s collection. I do hope so, and wait eagerly to hear from any readers who have their own examples, or just perhaps one of the robots.