My trip to the Bandai Museum in Japan (circa 2005)

[cjefferys]

I was going through old vacation photos and found some pics I took from my visit to Japan's Bandai Museum four years ago (wow, time sure does fly!). It has since closed down and I think moved to a smaller location. I was disappointed that many of the photos I took look really crappy for some reason (I'll blame it on trying to get used to a new camera), but I found a few that weren't too terrible. I thought that folks interested in vintage Japanese character toys might be interested to see these.

Here's the outside. You can kind of see that there are actual statues of characters like Ultraman, Kamen Rider, Mazinger Z, etc. in the windows:



These shots are taken from a big cabinet display in the lobby. The first shot includes the impossibly rare Garada K7 Jumbo Machinder on the far right, one of only possibly three known to exist, and probably one of the most expensive toys period. Many diehard collectors made the pilgrimage to this place just to see this legendary toy. I took a lot of pics of this guy.





At this point we had to pay a few bucks admission to see much more.

Big cabinet of Ultraman and Ultra Kaiju vinyls:



Here's me geeking out in front of a huge cabinet of Jumbo Machinders (24" tall robots, Mattel released a few of them here as part of the Shogun Warrior line). I'm probably standing in front of maybe $50,000.00 or more worth of toys in this pic (it would be even more money if there were more of them MIB). This is probably one of the most expensive toy lines to collect in the world, but it's tragically one of my favourites (#2 probably only to Megos).



A couple more Jumbos, Kamen Rider and a very, very rare Lensari Jumbo villain:



Some cool old Mazinger Z toys:



Popy Godzilla Jumbosaurus (cooler than the similar Shogun Warrior Godzilla. This one actually roars!)



One of the largest Godzilla vinyls made (the Final Premium version) and the same with Gamera. I'm in the pic to show how big these boys are.



One wall of Godzilla toys. I took more pics including close ups, but they all turned out kind of bad.




Anyway, this gives you a small taste of the wonderful world of old Japanese toys. And it was the best museum I've ever visited.

[Mikey]

Cool pics !!!

I used to love their Thunderbirds vehicles line.

Quality was killer

[saucerful]

HOLY WOWZERS@!!
Great photos, mister!
And great to see you in there, too. Always fun to see the real person behind the drunk posting alien avatar.

[rche]

that wall of machinders is awesome!!

[Tothiro]

Oh my ever loving God.

[toysrus]

Awesome!!! 2 years ago my son, then 5 got totally hooked on the old school Godzilla movies when i put on Godzilla vs King Kong! Anyway, now he has a massive collection of the bandai Godzilla toys! Recently i just picked up the hard to find -Bandai Vinyl King Kong, Mecha King Kong and the super rare bandai Praying mantis!!

[AcroRay]

Very nice! Thanks for sharing those - some really amazing pictures!

I was so surprised that Bandai closed it.

[MIB41]

WOW! What great pics! Question - What does a trip like that cost? I heard there was also an Ultraman "mall" or superstore out there. Is that correct? I would love to take my family.

[Orion]

Very cool pictures. I really like the vinyl Bandai Godzilla figures. It seems that the line has really slowed down although they had some Bandai US versions that may still be on Toys R Us shelves. The Machinders are awesome - I just can't afford to go down that road and would never have room for such wonderful figures.

[Sowth]

Awesome pics! I'm very jealous, would love to have got there before it closed. As a wannabe Jumbo collector that shot of you in front of the Jumbo cabinet is a killer :-)

I love the stories behind the discovery of the Garadas, you don't have to have an interest in Jumbos to enjoy the tale.

Awesome post, thanks for taking the time to share the pics!

Cheers,
Will