Ultraman

Disappointing A Loyal Fandom

Tsuburaya and Bandai, 1990

Recently, I’ve gotten some correspondence from people regarding my grading methods as well as my selection of toys, both of which seem to be a source of some confusion and/or consternation. That’s an issue for another posting, but I wanted to mention it here to help explain why this particular toy was chosen.

To start off, I love Ultraman. I’m kind of a nerd for the big rubber suit monster movies like Godzilla and others, so it was only natural that I would be a HUGE fan of the Ultraman: Towards The Future series in the 90s. The series ended too quickly for my tastes and the lack of a DVD release is a shame. But there were some toys and they were, in a word, awful.

Background

Ultraman is the Dr. Who to Godzilla’s Star Trek. Back before computer graphics could make a giant monster out of thin air, the only way to make such monsters was to build a miniature of a city and then have a guy in a big rubber suit smash it to bits. Hence the genre of Daidocugi movies, or ‘big rubber monsters’ movies. After Godzilla hit it big, a host of imitators and innovators appeared, including Ultraman (created by the same company as Godzilla).

The plot of Ultraman varies from series to series, but it generally involves Ultraman, the benevolent alien from Out There, bonding with an equally altruistic human in order to defend the earth against a weekly onslaught of giant monsters. The series that inspired this toy however broke from tradition and was set not only somewhere other than Japan, but starred a mostly non-Asian crew. Ultraman: Towards The Future (or Ultraman the Great for some audiences) was filmed in Australia and contained a pretty diverse cast who belonged to the Universal Multipurpose Agency (or UMA). They dealt with a variety of problems that always ended up with their maverick agent, Jack Shindo, calling upon Ultraman to fight a giant monster.

Ultraman: Towards The Future lasted one season in the United States, but legends abound of a second season that was filmed but never released. The season itself was divided with the first half of episodes following what was known as the Gudis story arc (Gudis being the over-arching bad guy) and then a series of misadventures with a different monster/threat each week. The toys to support the series appeared quietly and disappeared about as quickly, possibly due to their overall substandard nature. There were five toys (four monsters and Ultraman) along with two vehicles (for the UMA agents) and a playset. The vehicles were, by and large, leaps and bounds superior in their construction…or at least appeared to be on the back of the packaging because so few people ever found them to buy them.

Appearance – 2 out of 5

The Ultraman figure looks good and is a dead ringer for the character from the show. They do a pretty decent job of matching the colors and getting his overall proportions correct (action figures are notorious for beefing up their heroes), making him look fit and strong but not turning him into a muscle-bound he-man. The Jack Shindo figure that comes with Ultraman is generic at best, with almost no remarkable features. The only outstanding praise is to the weapon Jack Shindo carries being quite impressively molded to look like the weapons from the show. Otherwise there’s nothing outstanding about either character’s appearance.

Construction – 1 out of 5

The figure isn’t particularly rugged or heavy and the plastic that it is made out of is a bit on the sturdy side, but not remarkably so. Imagine the arms from the He-Man figures, only if they were hollow, and if they were the entire figure. The figure is about as heavy and feels about as sturdy as a bottle of aspirin.

Movement – 1 out of 5

The damn thing can barely move! It has two linear shoulder joints and a linear neck joint and that’s it. Yes, TECHNICALLY, is has hip joints, but about the only thing they’re useful for is changing his stance from a martial arts horse stance to doing the cha-cha. And his waist joint, assuming that’s supposed to be a joint, can’t rotate at all. I’m not kidding when I describe this thing as a semi-poseable statue. The Jack Shindo figure has linear shoulder, hip, and neck joints, giving it pretty rudimentary movements. But that means that the little toy accessory is more mobile than the main toy itself!

Extras – 2 out of 5

I will give the toy some credit that it comes with the Jack Shindo figure, which is superior in just about every fashion. Ultraman doesn’t have any tools or weapons, so it makes sense he wouldn’t come with such, so they had to do something. Unfortunately, their plan to ‘do something’ was to upstage their own figure.

Packaging – 3 out of 5

The packaging for the figure was possibly the best part. There was an exceptionally generic explanation of who and what Ultraman was (that read like it was ripped off from a Voltron toy) and a list of every toy in the line, basically giving you the entire catalog in one go. The packaging was brightly colored and it showed you the toy inside through a plastic window.

Overall – 1 out of 5

Normally toys of this ilk (ie semi-posable statues) are not something I review. But I wanted to do so now to illustrate just what ranks as a One in my book. And as much as I love the Ultraman Franchise, and the Towards the Future series that inspired this toy, it doesn’t change the fact that this figure is so disappointing, it barely counts as a toy at all.