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] mainly 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 may 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 in future. 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 I strongly recommend when doing research like this that you actually acquire the items you are writing about, if only to physically inspect them – almost all my moments of sudden realisation have happened when handling a newly acquired item fresh from the shipping box). If photographs are reproduced from an online sale site, or record of one (such as Worthpoint) I will fully cite the source (but perhaps without a URL if such webpages are prone to deletion, such as Vinted or eBay). Those on a private Instagram or Facebook account or similar, have a greater expectation of ownership, and I try to only reproduce them with permission. Here, I follow the line that publicly viewable images on a commercial sale need only have their source accurately cited, while those on a private Instagram account to similar should be reproduced with permission where possible. I do not reuse images where the owner has asked us not to, or refused their permission for their 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 are now old, and were not kept by me. 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 I will think of them as a party pooper – this is not a commercial venture and intended only for educational purposes).

PPS: I believe passionately that labours of love like this blog work because collectors and other interested parties freely share information and images – and I am indebted to many collectors here for their enthusiastic allowing of the reproduction of their images. So if any image here which is mine (i.e. has no credit line beneath it) interests you or would be useful in some way, please do use it. All I would ask is that you shoot me an email telling me (as I will be fascinated in what you are doing), and credit this blog as the origin point (perhaps in a weblink or credit line).

PPPS: I am European, and so spelling of words here is British English, except the word ‘mold’, which for anyone collecting vinyl toys might have horrible connotations in the British English version: ‘mould’. In the same line, I will at some point add measurements in inches alongside those in mm. – but that is a slow work in progress as there is so much else to do, other than get every figure down from the shelves and remeasure them all 😉

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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, calcified 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 mid 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).

*** Mold and Mold marks – these are the metal hollowed-out containers or matrices, that contain the shape of the toy in reverse, and are used in a heated state to form the vinyl, rubber or similar material into the desired solidified form. Many of these molds leave marks on the bodies of the toys that can be used to make connections (or establish differences) between surviving examples of the toys.

*** ‘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 have been deduced these move into an official-production category, but they often continue to be called pachi for tradition’s sake.

*** Sculpt and Resculpt – this is the act of carving the original version of the toy in a soft medium, such as wax, resulting in a model from which molds can be cast, and thus vinyl figures ultimately produced.

*** ‘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 year (mine once being before 1980, but that abandoned when I started to hunt European-made Godzillas and kaiju, and now for those I would go up to about 1990).