Round-up: The Softer Side of Garamon

Let me kick this post off by letting my preference-cat outta the bag: I tend, greatly, to prefer suit-faithful, highly detailed sculpts of Garamon and Pygmon to softer, more interpretive pieces. Softer sculpts are a very hit-or-miss affair for me, and I can say within a second or five of looking at them whether they do anything at all for me (there are rare exceptions to this; I didn't think much of the US Toys minis when I first saw them, but eventually came around to be crazy about them). Speaking just in terms of what I'll actually put in my collection (it probably goes without saying at this point that I get a kick out of looking at any and all Gara-sculpts), I can say that I dig interpretive sculpts which boast detailed, very thoughtful designs that capture some essence of the character (the Yamanaya or the Marmits featured in earlier posts are perfect examples), or those that fall somewhere in the general realm of super-deformed. As they get further afield of those qualifiers, my interest wanes.

The wee duo below is a good example of nicely detailed sd-type Gara-sculpting. The in-the-garadama guy on the right is a one-piece resin kit; I’m not sure who makes it, but several fully-painted copies have popped up on YJA of late. I believe that the full-figure version on the left may actually be a conversion of the standard kit, with the garadama cut away and the lower body sculpted from scratch. Mebbe.

A couple o’ super-strange takes on Gary, here…first, we have the offspring of Garamon and a lemur:


Kawaii. I could actually see this one on my shelf.

Continuing the blank-eyed motif, we have an even more Harold Gray-ish interpretation from M1-GO:

Really does look like a Gary that might have been featured in some early 20th century advertisement for fruit or tires. An entertainingly curious piece, but not one I’d chase.

Here’s a vintage Popy Kingzaurus* piece, currently up on evilBay. I kinda like this sculpt, with its weird paint and its non-spiny, hairy-puffball look…and dig those soles, dad! If I ever ended up with one of these, I’d be tempted to display him lying down, soles-out, as in the second pic…


This one...what the hell’s mounted on Gary’s shoulder?
An oscillation overthruster?
The baby from Eraserhead?


Lastly…and, oh yes, very much leastly…there’s this utter mess (sorry for the imprint on the photo, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time hunting pics of this abomination):


Blecchhh.
I rebuke thee, sculptor!

*UPDATE: Alex Wald swoops in to make up for my rather lazy research...just shows to go ya how lax my focus gets when dealing with the Softer Side...thanks, AW!

"The "evilBay Marusan" is actually a Popy Kingzaurus (a Bandai company) and hails fromn 1978. All the figures in this series have sculpted kaiju ashiato (footprints). Each figure came with a black and white sticker of the footprint which one would add to a brochure-like coupon; a completed set of the stickers when mailed to Popy headquarters would win you a special edition monster cast in clear glitter vinyl! Peguila, Garamon, RedKing, Icarus and King Joe comprised the special edition set. The green keshigomu is actually of "Pygu"--a Pygmon-like monster from the 1979 animated "The Ultraman" series.

Last, the "utter mess" is by Nostalgic Heroes (Ed: Ah, yes...I kinda knew that, at some point...but I was made too queasy from the pic to do any verification...) and that's their company logo. I believe--though not certain--that this is a repro of a vintage bootleg from long ago. Nostalgic Heroes does many excellent new and truly obscure repro figures."