At the end of 1971, Toho and Tsuburaya Productions organized a program called "Kids' Monster University". This was done in cooperation with the Seiyu Group, who operates and owns supermarkets, shopping centers and department stores located in Japan. It ran up until January of 1972, and a key element of the program involved children submitting monster designs. The hook was that one of the designs would be selected as the mascot for the program and, more enticingly, would be given a starring role in an upcoming Godzilla film.
Eventually the program found a winner from a design submitted by Masaaki Sano. This depicted a creature with dragon-like wings, large compound eyes and a beak. The beast was quite colorful as well, with a torso that was red, yellow and white while the hands were green and its neck blue.
The design was quickly adapted into a suit, a photo of which appeared on memorabilia created for the program that included a pin. The creature, called Red Alone, also appeared on an episode of The Afternoon Show, which was called "The Katsura Koganeji Afternoon Show” at the time.
As Toho began to prepare Red Alone to appear in the 1973 Godzilla film, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka had a larger plan for the character. He envisioned the 1973 Godzilla movie as being a vehicle to launch a successful television show that would star both Red Alone and the King of the Monsters as they battled creatures in an episodic format. Tanaka’s plan was aggressive, as he wanted the show to debut a month after the movie in order to best capitalize off the film.
All of these plans grossly changed. Not only did Toho totally retool Red Alone from its initial design to a robotic character for Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973), basically only keeping the torso and neck of the original design, but they would also eventually abandon their aspirations of turning the character into a TV star. The latter was actually done after meeting with the advertising firm that was promoting their television output at the time. They advised that the show would be more successful if it featured an original character as the lead, rather than an offshoot from a movie.
This led to the TV concept being reworked from the ground up. While Godzilla would still appear, although as a guest star, the show would focus on an alien family located on earth. This would result in the show Zone Fighter (1973), which would release in September of 1973 rather than the April timeframe that Tanaka had envisioned for the initial pitch that was to be a spinoff from Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973). |
