While I have more than a few defining traits, there are really two that tend to shape how things get done around here. First, I can procrastinate like crazy. My workspace is living proof: towering stacks of unreviewed DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, books and assorted media form a kind of record of good intentions. It’s not for lack of interest, in fact usually it’s the opposite. I want to give things proper attention, which somehow turns into putting them off until “later,” and later has a habit of becoming months.

The second trait is almost the exact counterbalance to the first: I have a major soft spot for strange, obscure or just plain unexpected requests. If someone asks for something off the beaten path, my curiosity kicks in immediately. Those are the kinds of emails that cut straight through the backlog and make me stop what I’m doing. Although sometimes the two do intersect, as is the case with what we are talking about here today where this request took months to fulfil, in part as my collection is scattered among locations (apartment, parent’s house, storage, etc.).

Anyway, reader “SM” (who asked to stay anonymous) wrote in asking if we could shine some light into the paper crafts that were included with the 2014 Shogakukan book Toho Special Effects: All Kaiju Illustrated Encyclopedia. The publication itself is well known among book collectors in the fandom, but fewer people talk about the physical extras it sometimes came with; in particular, the paper craft set themed around Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992). This featured Godzilla, Mothra and Battra, with Mothra and Battra represented in their larval forms. What makes these paper crafts even more intriguing is that they were advertised as limited bonuses. In other words, not every copy of Toho Special Effects: All Kaiju Illustrated Encyclopedia actually included them. So depending on when and where you bought the book, you might have gotten a nice surprise tucked inside… or nothing at all. That scarcity alone makes them a fun little footnote in Toho merchandise history.

Functionally, the crafts were printed on thick stock paper, designed so you could punch out the pieces and assemble small, free-standing figures of the characters. Tabs, folds and layered parts were meant to give Godzilla, Mothra and Battra a bit of dimension once completed. At least, that’s the idea in theory. In practice? I’ve always been too terrified to actually pop mine out. There’s something about limited extras in books that triggers a collector’s anxiety: once you punch them out, there’s no going back, and one bad cut can turn a “rare bonus” into a “permanently ruined bonus.”

So when “SM” asked about them, I figured it might be useful not just to talk about the paper crafts, but to make them usable for people who either didn’t get the inserts in their copy or, like me,  are too afraid to touch them. That’s where the idea came in to share a do-it-yourself version. I went ahead and scanned the sheets at very high resolution, preserving as much detail as possible. The goal is that if you print these on heavy stock paper, you can recreate the experience without risking the original materials. Of course, there’s a bit more work involved than simply punching them out of the book. Because these are scans, you’ll need to carefully cut the pieces yourself, and you’ll also need to align and glue or tape together the “front” and “back” halves of each figure. It’s definitely a small craft project rather than an instant build, and it’ll take some patience to make everything line up cleanly. The upside, though, is that mistakes are far less painful when you can just reprint a sheet instead of permanently damaging a collectible. So consider this a safer, more controlled environment for experimenting with those Godzilla vs. Mothra 1992 paper crafts. If you own the book but never dared to touch the originals, this gives you a second chance. And if you never had access to them at all, now you can see what those limited extras were all about… just with a little extra scissors-and-glue effort required.

Either way, I hope fellow fans and collectors get a kick out of this. Click the images below to get to the very high resolution version of the images.

Godzilla vs. Mothra Paper Craft “A”

Godzilla vs. Mothra Paper Craft “B”