Bandai Ultra Hero & Ultra Monster Series (2013+)

[Mr. X]

Hopefully somebody will snap a few closeups of the new ones.

[Mr. X]

Ok, NOW I see Muruchi, but he's hidden behind...the black guy in the cape. What's his name again? LOL

Good eye! (Empera, BTW) What genius put him there?

And who is that guy at the top-left (next to the spiky thing)? WoO?

[PopInPicsPresents]

Ok, NOW I see Muruchi, but he's hidden behind...the black guy in the cape. What's his name again? LOL

Emperor Seijen

[Orgasmatron]

And who is that guy at the top-left (next to the spiky thing)? WoO?

thats snowgon from jack, and whats with the top row of paper ultras? how dumb do they think we are!!

[Mr. X]

Snowgon, got it. Just to clarify, I was thinking of Bio Planet WoO, not Woo from Ultraman.

and whats with the top row of paper ultras? how dumb do they think we are!!

I thought they were real! I mean, don't the figures have a big white outline?

New pic:



http://p.twpl.jp/show/orig/0g94Y

[Orgasmatron]

i think the spark thing is actually pretty cool

[Mr. X]

http://p.twpl.jp/show/orig/ZOvzr

You're welcome.

[Petezilla]

Why does Doragory have a clown-colored face and why is Fire Golza only half-painted...? I really hope the actual production pieces of these look better...

[Primevalgodzilla V2]

Yeah, these things look really cheap (okay, they are cheap, but still) and they aren't that much smaller than Bandai vinyls. They may be really affordable but I want my figures to be at least of a certain quality before they feature on my shelf. I can see real craftsmanship in every 6' Bandai I own, which I don't see here. Gan-Q, Doragory and Golza in particular fare pretty poorly.

That being said, some of these (Red King, Baltan, Zarags, Bemstar etc) look great. But I'm just not feeling alot of this line.

[Mr. X]

All the figures from wave 1 look just about as good as the 6" ones.

I doubt Fire Golza, Doragory, and whoever else has a half-assed paint job will look like that on shelves.

[Plexton]

Awesome, thanks Mr. X!

Yeah, for what they are, I think they look fantastic. This is really the kind of range I've been hoping for in an Ultraman line (as opposed to what we have in, say, the Ultra-Act line), and given how affordable these figures are for the kids, we may even see many more figures produced in short order.

It's also the perfect line to take chances on; have an obscure monster or hero in mind? This line could very easily feature that character, thanks to how cheap the figures are to produce.

[Primevalgodzilla V2]

I'm also going to point out, again, that these are 500 yen figures. Hell, many of us have been able to pre-order these for as little as 365 yen. We were paying more for those unpainted, boxed, PVC "Super Godzilla" series figures in the '90s. I'm not expecting these to look as good as the standard 6" line, and I think it's wrong for anyone else to be either. The quality and variety of what we're getting in such a short period of time is astounding, and it's really terrific that Bandai is paying so much attention to Showa-era characters we've never gotten before in the standard line.

I'm sure that's not going to stop the inevitable bitch-fests come September: "The legs don't move!" "The detail is too soft!" "These are too small!" "This one doesn't scale with that one!" Yadda yadda yadda. The best so far was over at Club Tokyo, where someone considered it an insult how long-time collectors waited so long for obscure characters only to get them in a smaller scale.

I don't consider it an insult and am glad folks like Baraba and Bemstar are finally getting decent vinyls, and Mochiron and Snowgon are getting Bandais at all, and these are definitely worth the money, but I do want my figures to be of a certain standard before they go on the shelf (unless its a really old one). I realise this differs from collector to collector (ie;Some only collect X-plus and Model Kits, some are okay with BCs), and I probably won't be able to resist grabbing a few of these if they turn up in the collector's shops, but I that's my current stand on things.

[Petezilla]

On a japanese Ultraman-related blog it was stated that in the japanese Tsuburaya Shops they shell out all the 6" Ultra Hero & Monster Series figures (which have been restocked there for ages, literally) to be ultimately replaced by the 500 line(s) from now on. That basically means that, yes, the 6" line(s) will be abandoned by BANDAI. Or at least put on hiatus for a long(er) time.

[Primevalgodzilla V2]

Now that I'm peeved over. I don't care for 5' or 4' figures- nowadays I collect mostly 6' and 8' figs. This...doesn't bode well.

[Orgasmatron]

i know some of you are probably going to disagree, but we would be saying the same thing if the original line we knew and loved first was the 4-5" scale figures and they were replaced by 6" figures

[Plexton]

Changing the scale of the line does make sense; with the rising cost of materials, and consumer space at an increasing premium, North American toy makers switched from a standard 6 inch scale to a smaller standard 4-5 inch scale a number of years ago. In Japan, where space is even more of a premium, smaller toys have already been popular for decades, and so this line fits more naturally into the current market.

Of course, much as certain North American companies still make 6 inch figures for adult collectors, so too does Bandai produce the 6 inch Ultra-Act line (remember that the Ultra-Acts are actually fairly inexpensive, before their outrageous secondary market prices).

[RedZillaKing]

I'm seriously considering quitting while I'm ahead here. I was interested because these were only gonna be 0.5 inches shorter than the former standard. From recent pics some don't even look like they clear the 5' mark. No thank you.

[BandaiBandit]

From what I read these figures are 140mm, which 5.51 inches in height.
I'm going to stock them, they look good to me!

[Petezilla]

I was interested because these were only gonna be 0.5 inches shorter than the former standard. From recent pics some don't even look like they clear the 5' mark. No thank you.

Yes, it's quite a lewtdown for me, too...
It's seemingly an unwritten rule that we just can't have any in-scale BANDAI vinyl figure series, unfortunately.

However, I'll still get them since i own a lot of the roughly 4" Hyper-sized figures from the PHVS sets and stuff. At least the small-sided 500 monsters seem to scale way better with these instead.
I just noticed that that's actually a smart move by BANDAI since that way they might get people to collect all three scales (6", 5" & 4"), just to be able to disyplay screen-accurately scaled characters on your shelf...

[Petezilla]

^ We didn't at all expect them to be in scale this time. We just simply hoped they were for the very first time...

However, I can live with it. I have many 6" and 4" BANDAI vinyls to satisfy most of my accurate scale needs ~