📚 Book Club/Retrospective: Super7 Magazine Vol. 2 Issue #2 (2004)
Back for another write-up as we keep working our way through the archives!
To keep a long story short for anyone jumping in for the first time: I’ve been collecting sofubi for a good number of years and love digging through resources across the web, but I never quite got around to reading the physical Super7 magazines. To celebrate their 25th anniversary, they highlighted these 15 back-issues on IG, and in my never-ending quest for sofubi knowledge, I’m sitting down to read them cover-to-cover. We have officially made it to Volume 2, Issue #2!
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Ooo a nice little double-header editorial to open by Mark Nagata and Bryan Flynn. You know what, when I've done these retrospectives, I kind of go in between being intentional about figuring out interesting questions for discussion at the end and being lazy. Well, I'm glad Mark and Bryan helped me do my job a bit here lol.
I love Mark’s reflection on secondhand vintage vinyl; wondering about the journey a 30-year-old toy took, from battles in a sandpit to mothers writing their kids' names on the bottoms of the feet, before eventually crossing the ocean onto our shelves. I won't claim every toy on my shelf has a deep backstory, but there’s something special about pieces that show a little love and history. Brian then follows up with a sentiment that hits home for sofubi: the sheer freedom of being a loose collector. You rip the bag open, save the header card, and let the toy live on the shelf. Unlike other lines I dabble with (mostly Spider-Man action figures, which I swear I don't have a massive problem here like sofubi though), where saving blister packs and window boxes ends up eating your entire closet space, sofubi keeps it simple.
As usual, perusing the opening ads and toy news is a reminder of cool stuff we missed out on in 2004. Seeing a Toygraph 1964 Godzilla (complete with mini Mothra larvae) offered for $42 + $6 shipping (?!) or a Dream Rocket Gumous for $55 (wow…) is crazy; I know, I know, inflation. What also caught me off guard was seeing Mike Becker's Spastik Plastik "inaction figures" under his company, Funko. Funko honestly didn't cross my radar until the massive Pop! boom in the 2010s, so seeing this early era of their designer vinyl history was a cool surprise. Right after that, there’s a fun feature on the grand opening of the original Super7 retail store in San Francisco's Japantown from June 2004; squinting at the background photos, you can spot Jumbo Machinders and Godzilla silhouettes lining the shelves.
Even though this is a sofubi subreddit, I can't help but touch on the sections highlighting the broader designer vinyl world. Knowing what was blowing up back then shows so much as to the artists and makers who drove the scene into what it is today. Tying right into that early-2000s indie maker energy, it was fun seeing an interview with Steve Forde about his company GoHero and his Mechabot line. I actually ran into Steve at SDCC a few years back and chatted him up when he had the US license for Marusan, so reading about his early indie days channeling vintage tokusatsu here was a great flashback.
One of the standout deep dives in this issue for me was Alex Powell’s article on Korean Bootleg Robots. The bootleg oddities that came out of that era are hilarious to see in the included photos; a transformer camera, tall Astroboy, and a pretty accurate looking Robocop. It provides a fascinating look into South Korea’s 1970s–80s manufacturing boom and how it helped to spawn an original creation, Robot Taekwon V, becoming a genuine national icon. How sought after are these toys today? I'm now curious and will have to do some digging.
On the kaiju and tokusatsu side, Mike Johnson's deep dive on Angilas points out that despite being Godzilla's very first onscreen foe in 1955, it took until 1970 for Bullmark to finally release a standard-sized vinyl toy. That 15-year gap eventually gave way to a flood of Marmit and Bear Model sculpts decades later. Right alongside it is a feature on Mirrorman by Chad Hensley and Mark Nagata. I don't know the property deeply outside of the toys themself, but the standout highlight has to be these Yonezawa giant-sized walking vinyls of Mirrorman, Kittyfire, and Aian (which had internal counterbalances built into the legs that allowed kids to "walk" them down ramps). A vintage mechanical gimmick I'd love to see in person.
Closing out the issue is a massive write-up on Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. Battle of the Planets was before my time, so what I actually remember catching on Toonami back in the day must have been the later adaptation, G-Force: Guardians of Space (and most of my connection to Ken the Eagle comes from playing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom). Seeing the vintage Bullmark, Bansoh, and Popy vinyl checklists was awesome, but what really surprised me was an interview with comic legend Alex Ross. Knowing Ross primarily through his Marvel and DC covers, it was cool to discover he’s a massive Gatchaman fan who spent the late '90s scouring early eBay for Popy toys, filled an entire display cabinet with vinyl, and even commissioned a life-sized statue of Ken the Eagle!
Anyways, of you made it all through that, a few questions for the sub!
- Going back to the editorial: Are you in Mark’s camp of appreciating well-loved toys or do you prefer it pristine?
- How do you feel about packaging when it comes to sofubi vs. other toy lines? Are you purely loose-on-shelf, or do you still find ways to display packaging?
- Have you ever stumbled across any obscure Korean bootlegs in your collecting travels?
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Link to Issue Vol. 2 #1 write-up.
Link to Issue Vol. 1 #4 write-up.
Link to Issue Vol. 1 #3 write-up.
