In 1983 My father came home from national guard duty with a present for me. I actually don't think it was a present for me. It was something he bought for himself and ended up giving it to me. I don't blame him. I would've done the same exact thing, except I would not have given it to my kid. In retrospect, I believe he bought it for himself because it was a toy that you had to put together and he gave it to me already assembled and stickers applied before he gave it to me, and I was one of those kids that loved putting things together by myself. The building and sticker application gave me a feeling of accomplishment and that I had a hand in its creation even though it was made by toy company overseas.
I didn't really care though. I was just happy to receive a cool looking toy that I had never seen before.
It was a toy from TOMY called a Zoid. The toy's name was Elephantus and had a windup motor that moved the ears and legs. I absolutely loved it! The colors, the little blue rubber pegs that kept the bits in place, the white cockpit with the shiny gold pilot inside. I was immediately hooked on this toy line and needed more.
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| Original box for Elephantus |
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| Elephantus |
Elephantus's aesthetics are so charming that it pushes aside its scant details and makes us fall in love with the overall simplicity and functionality, sure it has armaments, but they blur into the figures being. The whole line had that going for it. TOMY had thought they dropped a dud with toy line in Japan. Over there they were called by Mechabonica. It wasn't until these pre-hysterical monster machines made their way over to America that the name was changed to Zoids. Even back then though these would be Proto-Zoids. They didn't have any enemies to battle, they were just roaming around the plains of our imaginations like giant metal nomads.
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| Garius |
This newly discovered toy line was something my father and I had bonded over. I was finally getting some attention from him and I was loving it. He and I were always on the lookout for more of the toy line out in the wild. We were able to find several more that summer at the local toy store Toys by Roy, it was the T-Rex robot called Garius that very much resembled a pseudo-accurate (at the time because of its upright gait) Tyrannosaurus skeleton that had been made into a robot and the skull replaced by a white cockpit.
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| They were a good price back then! |
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| I could look at this pic for hours! |
Being from a small town, meant that you didn't have a lot of choices when it came to hobby stores and places like that. So you usually had one toy store and a couple of department stores that may carry toys that were up to date and were not full of a bunch of shelf warmers. Needless to say, the original line up of Zoids were very hard to find, but somehow he found the Spider Zoid. This guy quickly became my absolute favorite toy of that time! I mean what's not to love about this toy! It's got 8 legs, two blasters and it crawled around like a quasi-real spider!
In the summer of 84, I went to spend a week with my aunt and brought Spider Zoid with me. Little did I know, she had a deep deep seeded fear for anything with more than four legs. She saw it on the floor of the spare bedroom and stomped it.
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| Poor Spider Zoid. *plays taps* |
The toy line suddenly disappeared from the shelves of all the stores that I frequented. Until what seemed like much later, I saw a random, lone Power Zoid at K-mart. I saw tank first and he was misplaced with the He-man figures, Tank was kind of interesting but it and then around the corner, I saw Giant Zrk! Both of these new Zoids were battery operated which made me conflicted. I liked the idea of it but I liked the wind-up toys a little more because you'd have to replace the batteries sooner or later.
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| Power Zoids Tank |
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| Giant Zrk |
I found out later that the Starrior toy Runabout, was originally going to be released as a Zoid at first. In the picture below you can see the Helic republic stick on the side of the head. Its name back then was Bigmanks. Which sound like an 80's rapper.
Those years, I felt like I was the closest to my father that I had ever been. We kind of felt like a team and thinking back on those memories. I really wished that feeling would have stayed around a lot longer.
I found out today that my father had passed away. I felt like it was kismet that I was thinking about him. I wondered what he was up to today and how this blog post started about Zoids but veered over to his direction. I thought about the parts of our past, like our love for movies, cartoons, and toys. He would never complain about any cartoon that I watched no matter how silly. He was a big kid in that aspect. I remember wanting to rent Thundercats on VHS and he was totally fine with it, in fact, he watched all with me. He did the same with G.I. Joe and Transformers as well. We'd talk about what we liked and didn't like about the episode that we watched.
My relationship with him as an adult was volatile at times and I had not talked to him almost two years because of an altercation. I felt like trying to reconnect with him again recently. I am filled with regret now and am plagued by all the "what could have beens". I feel guilty for not trying harder with him. I have a feeling that even if we were on good terms at the end, I would still feel this way.
It's the nature of things I guess. I will have those good memories of you with me until I'm gone from this Earth. I love you dad, thanks for memories and the Zoids.
"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new." Ursula K. Le Guin
