Heyas Woodsy,
We all know of Japan's love for Thundbirds. We've seen tributes, reuse of the models in other shows. The latter is what kindled a start of an idea.
In October of 1972, Warrior of Love Rainbow Man debuted on Japanese TV. It ran until September 1973, giving us 52 episodes about Yamato Takeshi who was a former college wrestling champ with the "Jiyotoko" College Wrestling Club. He also fought in underground fight clubs under the name of "Shitamachi No Kuro Hyo" (The Black Panther of the Underground". More info than you probably would ever want can be found at
Of course any superhero show has to have bad guys for the hero to triumph over. The ones in Rainbow Man are the Die Die Gang. Besides using elite mercenaries, cyborgs, wizards and supernatural monsters, they used "jet fighters". Their planes are actually models of TB=1 with some pieces left off and other pieces put on, giving it a different scale which helped disguise the source.
There are lots of good angles of them in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kby4i2lEpi8
Cheers!
Lance
USA
Wow, great find! The only similar one I know of is in 1973's Ultraman Taro where the ZAT hero team has a drilling machine caled the Pelucidar that has two Imai/Bandai Thunderbirds Mole kits - one at either side at the front on the studio model. You can see a picture of it here (top right) - https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ultra/images/f/f4/ZAT4.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20191121051434
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