Bandai America has set up a new unit, Bandai Creation, to create high end products for sale to toy collectors and avid fans.  The first brand created by the new unit is Bandai StudioWorks, which will produce highly detailed collector figures designed by Japanese artists based on classic Japanese live action and anime properties.  Bandai StudioWorks' first series of collector figures, based on the popular Japanese live action series Kikaida, will be released in the U.S. in the spring of 2003.

 

Although not as well known to the American public as Ultraman, Kikaida is never the less a favorite among collectors of Japanese toys.  The first issue of Super 7 (see 'Super 7'), a new magazine devoted to 'Japanese toy culture' features a major article about Kikaida figures.   The seven-inch Kikaida figures are quite impressive in design and attention to detail.  Three figures are available: Bijinda, Hakaida, and Kikaida.  Each figure comes in deluxe packaging accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and a price tag of $19.95 (SRP).

 

It will be interesting to see how Bandai Creation goes about exploiting the American collector market.  Although anime has become vastly more popular with more people of prime collecting age than the Japanese live action science fiction, there is still a significant base of hardcore collectors of Japanese toys based on the 'kaiju' live action genre that includes Godzilla, his many friends and foes, as well as Ultraman and Kikaida.  Thanks in part to Diamond Comic Distributors' aggressive importing of a large number of anime-based toys and figures, as well as to efforts by Toycom, Toynami, and Bandai America's own Anime Collectors Sets, the number of collectors of anime-based merchandise is growing very quickly.  The mix between live action and anime properties in the releases from Bandai StudioWorks may prove to be an interesting gauge of the collector market as time goes by.