When I first got the collecting bug around 1989 I bought my first toy reference book, Kitahara's monsters, rockets and robots or something like that. A totally fabulous book about the foremost collection in Japan. I still have it.
This picture I saw online reminds me of that collection - it could well be Kitahara's toy cabinet - so I posted it again here. Bristling will tall ships, it was always the huge X-7, which caught my eye the most, the big green one at the back.
What a gorgeous space plane!
Here's a closer look at the X-7 in two different colours, an image again I've borrowed from Alphadrome online. I'm not entirely sure how tall these tin toys are but they look massive!
Have you got one or anything similar readers?
Teruhisa Kitahara is perhaps THE premiere archivist of glorious tin toys from yesteryear. A great guy and totally dedicated to the field. I had the honor a few years back of donating a few of my Japanese (plastic) model spaceships to his Tin Toy Museum, as he said that he has spent so much time concentrating on tin toys, he had neglected to collect plastic SF models from "the early days" (i.e. the 1960s).
ReplyDeleteA fabulous gesture Zigg! Do you know if your models are on display?
DeleteOut of curiosity Zigg, which Japanese plastic models did you donate to Mr. Kitahara's museum? Wish to make a visit there one day.
DeleteI love old tin toys, with their inventive mechanisms and bright themed lithograph designs. So difficult to find in good condition. I guess they weren't designed to last?
ReplyDeleteI agree, there is something about tin Tone that endures in the mind. I had some special to me as a kid, which I now call the big 3 [4 really] and was so pleased to replace all of them when I was old enough to spare the cash.
DeleteGreat to hear you managed to replace your original Big 3, Woodsy. What a great feeling when we finally manage to track down these old childhood friends.
Deleteit is Tone. One , the 4th, will be out like every year on Halloween. Its the Franke Drops His Trousers Stein aka Mod Monster! What a character!
DeleteAlphadrome gives the height of the X-7 as 60 cm. Apparently too tall for the cabinet pictured as you had to leave the tip off!
ReplyDeleteWhat a whopper Arto! It blew me away when I saw it so long ago in Kitahara's fabulous monsters and rockets book, the first collectables reference book I ever got.
DeleteMust be enormous Woodsy. The tallest one I have is the Yonezawa Moon Rocket XM-12, which measures "mere" 40 cm and seems huge at that.
ReplyDelete