Kaijyu Toys Labo

In mid-spring, 2004, I caught the first cryptic whisperings* of a Garamon sculpt that was unprecedented in its physical enormity and painstaking attention to detail. Apparently, a tiny work-in-progress shot had been published in Hyper Hobby, with little info attached. No one seemed to know which company was behind it, but the rumblings held that it would soon see production.

Needless to say, I was a tad excited…

Months passed without a scrap of news...a year came and went, then another. I had begun to think that this supposed mind-blower would never see production, that the project must’ve dead-ended…or was perhaps a cruel hoax all along, a red herring dragged across the trail, to the great frustration of Gara-toy hunters everywhere…

A muggy June afternoon in ’06 found me conducting one of my regular Garamon Google-siftings; it was during that session, to my astonished delight, that I came across this pic:



…on a blog maintained by one Temma Sakamoto. I dove right in, and found that Sakamoto san had been keeping up-to-the-minute tabs on the development of this toy. The blog had shot after eye-popping shot of the sculpt in various stages- even a couple jaw-droppers of a fully-painted proto!
YESSSS!
At long last!

Such was my very memorable intro to the great Kaijyu Toys Labo, a site I have checked on a weekly basis since. Sakamoto seems to share a terrific enthusiasm for all things Garamon and Pygmon, and can always be counted on to highlight upcoming releases as well as share pics of his latest collection scores. He’s also a wonderful artist- check out this page, chock full of cool and comical kaiju portraits, including these three of ol’ Gary:



*By cryptic whisperings I mean, of course, an email from the estimable Mike Johnson.