Jeez, this is kewl!!! I guess this is one of those cases where you really had to be there to properly appreciate this figure. Ultraman was one of my favorite TV shows during the '60s and I can still name every monster and alien he fought... and that was true even before I found videotapes and rewatched the series back in the '90s. My very first custom Joe was a monster named "Jamila" from that series. He was created using plasticine and papier mache over one of my Joes, so he wasn't terribly articulated (like...not at all), but he was painted and had cracked skin and looked pretty cool (I thought at the time). Even back in the late sixties it was true: If they don't make it for you, you can do it yourself if you want it badly enough. When I got my Marmit Ultraseven (the TV series following Ultraman), I was disappointed that they didn't make a plain old Ultraman too. In hindsight, I guess that's okay because I ended up being disappointed with their Ultraseven. While it was incredibly faithful to the TV show's hero, their effort didn't translate very well into a poseable doll. One of the problems was that it needed to be painted. The suit was made of rubber (just like the "real" thing), but rubber is quite difficult to paint. Or rather, it's difficult to make the paint stay on the suit unless you use an industrial quality balloon paint. Forget that! The other major deficiency was that it wasn't really poseable. The figure was poseable and the suit was flexible rubber, but the two didn't work well together: The armature wasn't strong enough to counter the memory of the rubber. Arrrgh. Recently, I heard about Bandai's new Ultraman figure being available at Hobbylink Japan-- 1:6 scale, poseable with light-up eyes and color timer. From the pictures there, it looked promising. The pictures showed him in all sorts of poses-- ones which would require some degree of genuine poseability. I was still skeptical and it was an expensive figure too (12800 yen)... but then I saw that it came with a Jet VTOL and Beta Capsule and I knew I had to get it. After suffering HLJ's current backlog of orders waiting to be shipped, Ultraman finally arrived... and I'm not disappointed! The figure is genuinely poseable. This is due to his vinyl & rubber (-? cast vinyl?) suit being more pliable and having a looser fit. It zips up the back so you can reach the lights on/off switch or undress him (...why?). The interesting-looking armature (which you can see in the pic at the top) is tight and holds poses. Wow. It's prepainted. Wow. What more could you ask for? How about three sets of hands in classic Ultraman poses, a Beta Capsule and a Jet VTOL? Wow. The only gripe I have is that the shoulder joints exhibit some of that posing memory problem on the shoulder sweep arched/crouched because of the thick seam that joins the sleeves. The figure's shoulders have great articulation there but it's not enough to counter the material. Also, you never know about flexible suits. This one isn't made of regular rubber-- it feels like vinyl-- but I wouldn't be shocked if it gradually lost its flexibility. That would be a lot more painful if this were a figure I'd spent a month making. Even though this is a neat figure on its own technical merits, it probably won't appeal to most USA Joe collectors unless they have that special nostalgic connection (the show was picked up by United Artists, dubbed and broadcast here), which would put them in their forties-- an age where spending 12800 yen on something this probably doesn't seem terribly outrageous. Oddly enough, the original TV series still hold up well today; similar to the way the B&W Outer Limits and Twilight Zone do. As for the more recent incarnations of Ultraman-- Tiga... Dyna... Zearth... uhhhhh... It just hasn't been the same since Eiji passed away. Hey Bandai! How about an Ultraseven figure? --03/14/02

Can a 12" Ultraman whup a 6" Gomora?