The Great Mazinger!

Toy Joy strikes again! On one of our trips to Austin I picked up Mazinga, Mazinger, or whatever you prefer from my favorite toy stops Toy Joy! This trip I knew I was getting a windup robot from their awesome selection of windup tin men, I just didn't know which.



So I dug and dug through the stock on the shelf until I produced some likely candidates and lined them up for some final inspection. This seemed to amuse one of the shop keepers as he was stocking the section next to the windups. He asked if I was a fan of Windup Robots, which I responded with an enthusiastic "Hell yes!" and a smile. He said he was glad to hear, that he was a fan as well, that not too many people dig them around the shop.



I told him I was narrowing down today's purchase from the three I had lined up n the shelf to one, since I was also planing on picking up a few other odds and ends, and asked for his input as well. While I valued his opinion I decided to go with Mazinga here and left the others for another time. He got a laugh when I told him I would be back for the others, months later I did return and pick up one of the others, that's for another post.



Mazinga is from a family of Windups released from Marmit. They come in a little coffin style box with a photo of the toy on the front and the text in Japanese. The body is made of Tin with a print of the character design on it, the head is a roto molded plastic. Marmit produced several properties including among others Ultraman and Getter Robo. Oh and Toy Joy is the kind of shop that lets you look at the toy and try them out. They had several open robots for you to see and compare before purchasing!

Windup Thing

I just love the head sculpt on this little wind up. When the Thing here gets all wound up he walks and smashes his fist together! Part of the Toy Biz Twist Em's, I'm really surprised at the amount of characters, and for that matter the characters chosen to get this treatment. I mean you expect to see Spider-man, Captain America, Hulk, but the Thing, Dare Devil, Nightcrawler??? Don't get me wrong, I think it's really cool when other characters besides the flagship ones are given time to shine.

Wind-Up Spider-Man

A few weeks prior to the great flood of 2007, I was waiting for my car to get serviced at the dealer and I walked over to a nearby Big Lots. As I usually do, I wandered up and down the toy aisles just looking around. Now I'm not sure how everyone else's Big Lots are organized, but in Texas it's sort of like a big Flea Market, so you have to look down almost every aisle because stuff is jammed in there with no thought of organization.

That trip yielded several little goodies to add to the collection, one being this crazy little Spider-Man wind up. I'm pretty sure I can speak for most of the older collectors out there when I say that it's the off the wall stuff that is really the coolest. I happen to also believe that sometimes it's the simplest of toys that are the best, wind-ups being near the top of the list.

This wind up is no exception to that rule, give him a wind and Spidey "crawls" into action! Look out for big headed, crawling Spider-Man!