Where there is a great success story, imitators usually spring up looking for a free ride like Star Flies on a Space Battleship. On the upside, it does take a creative (if misguided) mind and a sort of endearing chutzpah to push these things out into broad daylight, and it can be great fun to examine them with a trained eye.
Created by model and toymaker Aoshima, the Redhawk line is worthy of respect for sheer volume if nothing else. As silly or eccentric as they may look, they were wildly inventive to the point where they quickly moved past the source material that inspired them. See the entire almost-but-not-quite Yamato lineup here.
Bandai Character Plastic Model Chronicle is a 2007 book that covers Bandai’s prehistory in 1958 all the way up to the present with many photos of the ‘breakthrough’ kits that pushed the company into the realm of giants. Presented here is a chapter on the Yamato models that made the company an industry leader.
Yamato toys exploded like shotgun pellets past the model kit revolution and peppered the Japanese “play” culture with whole new categories. This article gives a broad overview of the toys made by Popy, Nomura, Mimuko, Liberty Planet, Megahouse, and many others from 1974 to the present day.
When a Yamato sequel was announced in November 1977, Nomura decided to get involved. By the time pre-production for Yamato 2 began in May 1978, Nomura had signed on as a key sponsor, gambling on the notion that they could deliver what the fans would expect. Fortunately for all concerned, they were right.
The depth of Bandai’s involvement in Yamato goes farther than is immediately apparent, due in most part to their pantheon of sub-groups that have names and specialties of their own. During the golden age of the Yamato production years, the most visible of these was Popy. This article covers their output as a sponsor of Yamato III.
Before the Yamato boom of the late 1970s, the closest thing most kids could get to an anime game was a set of Menko cards with TV or manga characters on them. Then anime proved itself a mainstream medium with Yamato leading the way. Here are the games that built the bridge from Menko to Machines…
In 1981 and ’83, Bandai released two Yamato games unlike any that had come before. Between them, both games gave players the opportunity to recreate all the saga’s major space battles using cardboard chips, a space backdrop, a set of rules, and a pair of dice. See these games in all their boxed-up glory here.
