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SDCC Special: Mechs!

Last year I posted a blog about all the Sonic Hedgehog Comics I owned during SDCC. I figured I’d try to continue the trend this year but I’d share something a bit different. Sadly it won’t be another blog about new comic purchases this time around. The only comics I found interesting enough to buy was a box of retro “weird tales” comics at one of my local flea markets (almost bought it because the first comic visible was a Nazi zombie coming out of a U-Boat on the cover) but I passed on them not feeling the mood to comic buy. I didn’t even get around to the “Walking Dead” comics despite many people telling me to give them a try since I enjoyed (up to a point) the TV series.

Instead I thought I’d share another aspect of my character by showing another collection that’s stayed with me off and on over the years: Mechs! I know they‘re not exactly SDCC material but I really haven’t bought any comics since last year’s blog. And as much the Sonic/Megaman crossover series is tempting, I’m not sure yet whether to dive into them. And since “Pacific Rim” is the big thing right now when it comes to giant robots, having a mech collection blog isn’t that far off the mark.

Unlike comics, giant robots have fascinated me ever since I saw my first robot cartoon back in the 80’s. You can count me among the rest of the kids that got into the mainstream shows like Transformers or other obscure shows like Mighty Orbots and Voltron. Yet despite enjoying those shows, the “big robot” crazy didn’t really hit me till I was introduced to my first anime: Robotech. It was from there that I gravitated away from the giant, transforming sentient robots to giant, transforming mechs that were controlled by human operators. From there you can probably guess how things went with my interests since video games and anime have a huge number of various robot/mech offerings.

Though I didn’t get as far as buying/collecting/building model robot kits like Gundam (mine was Star Trek’s Starships) I did end up buying various types of mechs over the course of my life. It was my hope one day to have a room where I’d have displays showing off all the various mechs I owned from the few shows I watched back in the day.

 

Oddly enough the main collection for this would be the Exo-Squad line of action figurines I got interested in back in the late 90’s. Though the show was okay, being billed as the “American Anime”, I was more taken with the exo frames (dubbed E-Frames) complex design and builds when their first batch came out. They had actual working knee/elbow articulation yet where sturdy enough to be able to stand on their own, unless you loosened up their joints that is with constant movement/play. Their next series releases kind of went on the cheap side when their knees wouldn’t bend at all and limited their arm movements probably due to the last series loosened joints issue. I still thought they were nicely well made despite them being intended as a kids toy than actual robot collection item.  Their “special mission” E-Frames were a nice attempt to help compensate for the lackluster build of the next series E-Frames but I’d rather have multi-articulated body joints than interchangeable parts/battery powered walking features.

 

 

Though not really robots/mechs per say I also bought all four of their Jumptroopers (not to be confused with Halo’s ODST’s) since they were part of the series. Think of them as augmented soldiers that don’t use full e-frames but add-on attachments like Iron man, but not as cool.

 

I even went out of the way and bought one of their mini eframe playsets, theexocarrier Resolute II. I mostly bought it since it was part of the Exo Squad series not thinking it anything special. Besides the mini eframes that come with it, it also has spring loaded missiles and sound effects.

 

Now why do I mention Exo Squad when technically they are not giant robots? Because that lead me to the next thing I ended up buying during that time. For reasons unknown to me playmates, the makers of these action figurines, decided to buy the rights to re-issue the old Robotech mecha plastic molds. This brought along the Exo Squad/Robotech series line of E-Frame class “attack mecha”, that generally meant that the plastic characters could fit inside these new “attack mecha” style E-frames. I’m not sure if they are the exact models as the original matchbox molds but they were convincing looking enough when you looked at them. They made reproductions of both Zentradi Officer’s and Tactical Battlepods, non-transforming veritech fighter (unless you count the booster pack add-on to make it a super veritech hybrid), and the somewhat transformable veritech hovertank, even an Invid Shock Trooper that were able to house any plastic character from the Exo Squad toy line into them. But they didn’t stop there.

 

 

 

They also re-issued other classic mecha from the Robotech series like the Zentradi Power armor, the Invid scout and the non-transforming destroids used by the RDF in both standard size and miniaturize models (not to be confused with “chibi”) Though not made to fit any Exo Squad action figure, they were more of a stand-alone to the main toy line.

 

 

 

Later on another mech series tried to make a break into the mainstream. Battletech had come out with an animated TV series and tried to capitalize on it by releasing some toys based on the mechs from that series.  Though not as neatly built as the Robotech line, they served their purpose well by giving us close enough replicas of the mechs of the battle tech universe. I was a bit late to the part and was only able to acquire these three from the series. They’re really poorly made with hardly any arm/leg articulation in their knees/elbow joints but tried to make up for it with super-strong spring action missile launchers (I swear they left a welt on my skin when shot at me). This was mostly due to that the rubber tipped missiles could hit hard enough on certain vulnerable points on the mechs to cause body parts to spring off or head modules to eject from their respective mechs body. It was a shame they didn’t do better or else they could’ve had a decent toy line on their hands.

 

From there I branched out into Gundam territory by collection some of their plastic replicas models that also had fully articulated elbow/hand/knee/ankle joints and interchangeable weapons. I mostly stuck with Gundam models I was familiar with than buying every single model I found. They mostly consisted of the Gundam Seed series with a couple of classic gundam models that I thought looked cool because they came with extras like modular battle armor and ships. I saw the battle damage models from the Gundam Wing series but I didn’t buy them.

 

I eventually took the next step in mech collecting buy getting into the Robotech Masterpiece Collection series with the purchase of my Veritech VF-1J and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA  Armo-Fighter AFC-01 Legioss. I had intended on trying to collect the whole Masterpiece series along with their add-ons but by then my interest in mechs had waned a bit. Plus the prices of some of the collection pieces were out of my price range. Even now they’ve almost doubled in price. I mostly bought them because again, I found their builds to me remarkable with complete transformation abilities and fully body articulation. The downside to that of course was they were more complex to transform than a regular transformer action figure.

 

 

So where are these mechs right now? Like my comics they are mostly boxed away in my dungeon, hoping to one day be opened up and put on display. Sadly the chances of that happening are slim to none the last time I broke them out. But my “Little One” was fascinated enough with them to want to have both the Invid Shock and Scout Troopers as her own. (She calls them her “Cute Crab Robots”). She also took it upon herself to “test” the spring loaded missile launchers and battery operated features on them to make sure they still worked. Thankfully she didn’t poke anyone’s eyes out with them.

Perhaps one day I’ll put them on display, sell them, hand them down to my “Little One” or perhaps to a future son/daughter. Till then I guess they’ll stay down in my dungeon for now. But it’s good to see that giant robots/mechs still hold some relevance today with the release of “Pacific Rim”. Now if they could get back to work on that live action “Robotech” movie. I’d pay money (and try to get a bit part in that movie) to see that.

Ta-ta

“N”