Auberon Waugh described himself as a ‘great jumper off of bandwagons’, and like him I tire easily of anything that is already studied in detail and neatly referenced in a series of glossy hardbound volumes. The research is part of the excitement in itself, and the sudden moment of realisation during a discovery as sweet as any long-hunted for acquisition.

That is what unites my twin interests as a collector in this field: in vintage Pachi (unofficial and often unlicensed productions of sofubi [soft vinyl toys] for the Japanese market, or toys produced by official producers but without their usual marks) and bootleg Godzillas (toys produced without license or the official stamp of Toho or similar, in many sites across the world). The collecting of these requires careful research to understand them and their context, and this is often far from easy as many of them were produced illicitly and the original manufacturers of these usually did as much as they could to cover their tracks.

That research, plus an obsessive personality and occasional insomnia, will eventually breed results, and then after some time has passed, you should have a good number of discoveries, all detailed and documented. This, however, is unlikely to bring you mental peace, and instead you will find yourself screaming in frustration at the errors of quickly dashed off ebay listings or the casual but ill-informed responders to appeals on social media for help with identifications. The slow drip of those frustrations leads to the conviction that you must attempt to get some of this out there, and hope that google image searches will at least lead interested parties to your images. That is the genesis of this blog – as much therapy as a wish to share some of my thoughts in the hope that they help others in similar hunts.

Happy hunting!

The Kaiju Hunter

PS: All images used here are ours, usually of items in our collection (and we strongly recommend when doing research like this that you actually acquire the items you are writing about, if only to physically inspect them). If reproduced from elsewhere we will fully cite the source, and/or state that permission was given, when such permission was given (we follow the line that publically viewable images on a commercial sale site need only be cited in full, while those on a private Instagram account to similar should be reproduced with permission). We do not use images for which the owner has asked us not to, or refused their permission for the use here. However, any such undertaking like this, in an attempt to be comprehensive, needs to use a few images for which permission has been sought, but not expressly given (if the page they come from is decades old, or the owner is ghosting any attempts to make contact, for example), or where the image comes from a commercial sale site or similar but the records of where were not kept by us. These are given here with clear statements that they are not ours, and if the owner wants them removed, please get in contact and we will do so asap (but, privately we will think of them as a party pooper – this is not a commercial venture and intended for educational purposes).

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A short series of definitions may be helpful here for the uninitiated (and we do welcome the uninitiated here warmly – they frequently bring perspectives and research ideas that are long beyond us hoary, old, calicified pond-turtles). This list will be added to as the terms crop up, or occur to me:

*** ‘Bootleg’ – an illicit or unlicensed copy of a thing or idea. I take it here to mean the same as ‘knock off’, but I just don’t like the second term. The production of these can be for financial gain (and thus a ‘forgery’) as well as not (a ‘copycat’).

*** ‘Godzilla’ – if this one is new to you, this site is not for you. Also where have you been since the 1950s?

*** ‘Kaiju’ – meaning ‘strange creature’ or ‘giant monster’ in Japanese, and undoubtedly popular as a term as it’s much cooler than plain old ‘monster’ in English. Typically fantastical, giant-sized, and often radiation-mutated monsters that threaten mankind in TV series such as Ultraman, Mirrorman, Spectreman and Ambassador Magma (all Japanese, with last rereleased in US as The Space Giants) or in the numerous Godzilla, Gamera or related films, as well as their character spin-offs such as Gappa (Japan), Varan (Japan), Gorgo (UK), Yongary/Reptilian (Korean), Pulgasari (North Korean), Reptilicus (Denmark) and characters from other films on the same theme such as Daigoro vs. Goliath (Japan) and The X from Outer Space (Japan).

*** ‘Pachi’ – easy to define vaguely, but hard to define precisely: Pachi is a Japanese slang term coming from ‘pachimono’ (fake or forged things), and forms a specific subgenre of sofubi (see below) that were produced without license in either Japan or the Chinese region for the Japanese market. Usually these items were produced in the Showa era (roughly 1950s–1980s). However, these items are not now considered fake, but form a category on their own between real and fake, as things which were once fake but are redolent of their time like real sofubi, and thus worthy of recognition alongside real sofubi. Tricky, isn’t it! In addition, there are many smaller sofubi related items (such as mini figures) which were produced by official Japanese toy makers in Japan but without the addition of any maker’s marks on them, and these have been traditionally described as pachi. As the identities of their original manufacturers ahs been deduced these move into an official-production category, but they often continue to be called pachi.

*** ‘Sofubi’ – Japanese slang short for ‘soft vinyl’, and meaning hollow soft vinyl toys typically made by the rather unappealing-named slush-molding process, and usually depicting Kaiju (monsters) or tokusatsu (superhero) figures from Japanese popular culture. Usually produced in Japan, and made there from the 1960s onwards. Google the term – you will find a LOT written on it, and many to buy.

*** ‘Vintage’ – a tricky one, probably best taken to mean before the year 2000; but everyone has a preferred cut off layer (mine once being before 1990, but that abandoned when I started to hunt European-made Godzillas and kaiju).