Your Free Door Prize: PYGMON GROWTH CHART

Hello friends.
It’s been a very long time. It’s good to see you. I hope you’re holding up well in this world-wide wildness. 

I come to you bearing a gift: a Pygmon metric growth chart. This beautiful bit of ephemera was included as a fold-out insert in a Japanese children’s magazine in the early 70s. (The artist behind the wonderful painted image is, sadly, unknown to me.) Several years ago, after some long searching, I obtained a copy in good condition, and engaged the services of a professional archivist to make a top-quality scan of the image at full size. 

At last, I offer this chart as a (huge) .psd file for your downloading pleasure here.

My sincere wish is that many of you will download it and have it printed to scale on some sturdy paper or cardstock, to actually be used for its intended purpose by your own family, or a family you know and love and would like to gift it to. (Or several families! Makes a great baby shower gift!) In this way, we will carry the magic of Garamon, Pygmon, and Ultra-kaiju in general, into the future.

IMAGINATION! CREATION! GROWTH! MONSTERS! FOR THE CHILDREN!

Peace!!

Monster Attack Team #1... it's GARAMANIACAL!

The new issue of Monster Attack Team (tenth published issue, but first under the auspices of Famous Monsters of Filmland, thus labeled #1 for this relaunch- available here) has eight big pages of Gara-writing by and about yours truly! My section kicks off with "RISE, GARAMON", a rather epic article on Garamon and Garamon toys which I originally wrote in 2006, then heavily revised and updated when MAT approched me about contributing. There's also an interview I conducted with Ultra-artist extraordinaire and Friend of Garamania, Alex Wald; my personal "origin story" of Garamon fandom; and an interview with me on the topic of Garamike, conducted by my sister Sara.

Check out the opening spread- Jason Edmiston was kind enough to let us use his jaw-dropping "Garamon At Sunset" painting from GARAMANIACAL!

I have yet to get my own copy in-hand- this is truly HOT off the press- but it looks like this mag is CHOCK-FULL of greatness... here's another teaser shot, courtesy of August Ragone:

Hello friends

Merry Christmas!

Well, well, well... the second half o' the year was rather light on Gara-posting, I know... and lighter than I anticipated on the (photographed and filmed) Garamike activity... but it's been heavy on the busy joy of having a beautiful baby daughter, and basically feeling so very thankful for all the amazing gifts in my life. I sincerely hope that 2012 was a great year for all of you, as well, dear readers!

I'll get back on the Gara-ball in a big way in the new year, so stay tuned; for now, here's an utter gemstone for the holiday, sculpted by the great Atom Gray of Maneki Nekro... this made my Christmas Eve Morning! Amazing, inspring work, Atom!

Words fail me.

LOVE.

Covered in Cordyceps redux

Remember this post?  It's the most-viewed Garamania post of all time; I can only guess that's because of the absolutely stunning originality and quality of the sculpt, and because many people land on the page unintentionally while searching for info on Cordyceps.

Anyway, I was looking at a selection of Ed Godzisewski's photos from WonderFest Summer 2012... when about halfway down the page I spotted a display featuring everbody's favorite mummified, mushroom-sprouting Gara-sculpt!  I had somehow not encountered this in all my various perusings of WF photo wrap-ups, several weeks back.  Ed's pic is captioned, "Truth Modeling 30cm resin Gamera 3 and Garamon, looking like they have a serious skin condition."  I hopped on Google translate and generated several forms of "truth" in Japanese, combined it with "ガラモン", and ran some image searches; hit paydirt on several Japanese-language blogs.  I learned that the sculpt is by longtime GK master Ryu Oyama (his Alien and CFTBL pieces are legendary on these shores); the modeling company reads as "Shin Kai modeling" in several translations.  Here are the pics- and a video!- that I was able to cull:
 

Another Oyama Gara-sculpt was displayed on the table, as well- this smaller, elegant piece depicting Gary either twisting out of the Garadama, or writhing in the earliest stages of the fungal death process.

Needless to say, if anyone has further info, please get in touch!  These are some of the most unique and intense Gara-sculpts I've ever seen, and I would love to know more- especially if these are actually going to be available as kits!

New Garamon figures from CCP and Billiken Shokai!

Big Gara-news on the full-size figure front from two heavy hitters in the world of realistically-rendered kaiju sofubi!

First up- you knew they were going to do a Garamon at some point; that day has finally come, and CCP is ready to release a brilliantly-sculpted 30cm Garamon toy.

Dig the knock-kneed stance, faithful to a certain sequence in Gary's first, dam-smashing Ultra Q appearance ("Garadama", original air date 3/27/66):

CCP is also offering a dam accessory base which you can pre-order with the figure for an added cost (full product/ordering details here):
 

I gotta say, the face is eerily show-accurate on this one; CCP's blog entry on the piece features several shots from the colorized Blu-Ray Ultra Q set, and I have to think that stills from that edition were heavily referenced during the sculpting.


You may recall that I posted about the new Garamon by Billiken Shokai a little while back; more pics have since surfaced on their site:

Looks like there's no firm release date yet, and I'm still not sure if this will be released as a kit, fully-finished figure or both; needless to say, I will keep you posted.

Bob's Art du Jour: Eggleton painting from Garamania

Bob Eggleton's wonderfully ethereal-yet-truly-Gara-grody portrait from GARAMANIACAL is still available for your home gallery; check it out here.

Gary & Semi-Ningen ParaBabies by the DaiOni

Wonderful shots of these little Marmit fireplugs by the TheDaiOni:

Once again, friends & fiends, it's been too long; there are some truly incredible Gara-things to post about, and I plan on playing catch-up this week... please stay tuned!

Pygmon coin

***NOT LEGAL TENDER; may not be used to purchase sofubi.

The Gara-fishing lure

A perennial fave, the Garamon fishing lure.
I know you've been waiting forever for nice, clear close-up pics and to get a handle, at long last, on the exact measurements of this thing... so let's not delay another second, friend:

JM Rampage does Garamon

Toy producer and customizer JM Rampage recently completed this fan-freaka-tastic painting of Garamon, Jamila, and his own creation, Ugly Unicorn.  Whatta trio.  I think JM's vision of Gary could actually make a pretty fun toy...

The Nerdstrom Collection, Pt. 16: Post Monsters mini GK

Charming resin mini GK (built and painted by the estimable Thad Rhodes) put out in the early 90s by the mysterious company Post Monsters ("For adults with childlike eyes"), which produced a whole line of mini Ultra-kaiju in the super-deformed style... go ahead and embiggenate this mini pic:

The Nerdstrom Collection, Pt. 15: more mini magic from hustle55goodjob

Very happy to be welcoming another wonderful hustle55goodjob custom Gara-mini into the collection... this surly lil' sucker brings the smiles! 

Wish I was ocean size

Jesse Narens (Mr. Ghost&Flower himself, as well as the creator of the truly lovely Stegoforest resin toy) took an Eye Scream Garamon to the Oregon coast, and brought back this great pic.

The Proprietor would like to acknowledge the lack of new content here, of late; we have added a new full-time employee at Garamania World Headquarters, and her orientation is taking up most of our time (she is only four days old).


Thank you for your patience.
More to come soon.

Billiken Garamon vinyl model kit

Well, this came as a complete surprise to the Proprietor... Billiken showcased this amazing new Garamon vinyl kit on their SuFes 59 table: 

Word to Kaiju Korner and Kadomium Tank for their always-excellent reportage!

Pygmon egg... PYGMON EGG!

Coming soon from Bandai...

Want... WANT so very much...

New painted version of Marusan Garamon

Sorry, small pic is all that seems to be available at the moment.
I have a strong like of this sculpt, and I'm sure I'd be more impressed by seeing one in person (at 29cm, this is a BIG, chunktacular Garamon), but something has kept me from loving it... and I'm still not sure what that something is. 

Bored?

Visit this interesting fan-page and mouse over every pic of Garamon, Pygmon and friends.

Hartter Garamon

Sean Hartter's burly, simian take on Gary; be sure to check out his reimagined cereal boxes and movie posters, too. 

Built-up, unpainted VOLKS Garamon

This resin model kit, one of the many interesting versions of Garamon from VOLKS, is up now on YJA.

A fixer-upper to be sure, but at 2000 yen, it could be worth the investment, if you have the scraping/puttying/gluing/painting gumption.