Another pre-BOTP, pre-Star Blazers show, broadcast here around the same time as Speed Racer and the like: “Marine Boy.”
I know I watched that show as a really little kid, but it has been so long that I’ve forgotten every detail about it but one: One of Marine Boy’s companions is a guy named “Bolton.” (And I only remember that because I remember being corrected when I kept saying “Bulletin.”)
1 Like
On a related note, I thought it was both funny and intriguing that many of the Micronauts had buttocks.
1 Like
I liked the show a lot as a kid, but when did they ever think little kids could be fooled by such blatant knock-offery? Even the opening credits were insulting to sophisticated 7 year olds. That said, my all-time favorite remains Starblazers. The live action was a huge disappointment. But I’m surprised no one has mentioned Force 5, which included Danguard Ace, Starvengers, (which may have the greatest anime opening theme ever?) Spaceketeers, Grandizer and Gaiking.
And did not anyone see the the Gaiking trailer that was out a couple of years ago?
How has this not been made yet? (so that I may point out all the things wrong with it?)
As much as I liked Battle of the Planets I preferred the Force Five shows as well. And being a non-English speaker Goldorak (AKA Grandizer) which was released prior to the Force Five shows. I still have the diecast toys!
I like that they’re Science Ninja Team. The world is in dire need of more science ninjas.
Anyway, several of the Gatchaman characters were recently featured in Tatsunoko vs Capcom for the Wii, which was probably the first exposure to the characters for a lot of people. BotP was just a little bit before my time.
You’re a true fan if you have original die-cast toys (I only have a couple of revoltek versions) For Gatchaman you can drop 300 bucks for the phoenix die cast model on Amazon. I remember the Mr Big Toy land here in New England carried them (We could never get anyone to take us out that way). I think Force Five was mostly a North East thing here in the US. It’d be great to see these all released on disk. There was a guy over at MIT a few years back that hosted a fan site with bunch of clips, images and history. Super robot Grendizer/Grandizer/Golderak was an absolute badass mecha, and I was shocked to see how many countries that series was adapted for: http://youtu.be/uQERjZOCtvM
There were some hardcore fans there that were for a while putting together their own live action. Click over, the trailers are great fun…
http://www.theufo.net/maingoldrake5.htm
When I was 5 I peed behind our sofa so that I wouldn’t have to leave the room when Battle of the Planets was on. I blamed the cat, who got hit.
1 Like
Trust me when I say those 40 year old diecast robots are not New In Box / Mint! My young son quite likes them and they are remarkably sturdy for their age.
As for DVDs, there was a French DVD release of Goldorak / Grendizer a while back but it got pulled due to copyright violation. As for the rest of the Force Five stuff, some of it has been coming via Shout! Factory in the US edited into feature length films - Gaiking, Starzinger (Spaceketeers), Danguard Ace. Starvengers might be available under its actual title of Getter Robo G.
Star Blazers was roughly time congruent, original US broadcast was '79 to '83 iirc, though of course Star Blazers was the Americanized version of Space Battleship Yamato from '75 and SBY2 (comet empire) from '78. And now I feel old 
For some reason I recall it was called G-Force when it screened on free-to-air TV here in Australia in the late 1980’s. I think on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) - our state sponsored station. It was part of the 30minutes of ABC only television we were allowed to watch per day by parental decree.
This topic was automatically closed after 4 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
