Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Inbas Seijin [インバス星人]

Kaijuuken x Dream Rocket - Inbas Seijin set (WHF15 ltd 12-06)

Today's article is kind of an odd one. I am going to talk about a packaging variant that only about 0.01% of toy collectors will even know or care about. If you fall into that category, by all means, read on.

At the end of 2006, Kaijuuken [怪獣軒] and Dream Rocket [ドリームロケット] collaborated to release a figure set of Inbas Seijin [インバス星人] and Chiguris Seijin [チグリス星人] from Silver Kamen [シルバー仮面]. I still don't know the details of the collaboration, but suspect that Dream Rocket was responsible for painting this particular version. The set was sold at the now-defunct World Hobby Festival's Sofvi Matsuri.

Kaijuuken x Dream Rocket - Inbas Seijin set (WHF15 ltd 12-06)

Anyway, so the point is that this toy was somehow sold with two different types of packaging. One (more common) version uses the normal Kaijuuken header.

Kaijuuken x Dream Rocket - Inbas Seijin set (WHF15 ltd 12-06)

The second (seen above) uses a Dream Rocket header AND encloses an unfolded Kaijuuken header in the bag. In addition, the Kaijuuken header has an interesting stamp in old-style characters. Until I bought this one, I had only seen this packaging variant in photos. Now we know it exists.

Kaijuuken x Dream Rocket - Inbas Seijin set (1-07)

There do not seem to be any differences between the two figures other than the packaging. It is an odd little mystery as to why they were sold in this fashion- maybe some were packaged for sale at the show and some sold through mail-order? No matter which version you may find, however, it is undoubtedly a stunning and memorable piece.

No comments: