Two Unfinished Gaikings

For the uninitiated, Gaiking was a Japanese robot featured in the Shogun Warriors toy line, but not in the comic book.Probably referenced from some imported "Presto-Magix"-style rub-down transfers I got at a toy store in Wilmington, NC that I always visited when in town to see my grandfather. I used most of them on some cheap styrene plastic shoe-boxes I bought to store small toy parts (missiles, guns, etc.). Regrettably, they broke almost immediately, but I kept the cracked, useless lids for several years thereafter, purely because of the chipped, flaking images of Dangard Ace and friends still clinging to them.

ROM, Spaceknight

Based more on the comic than the actual appearance of the toy itself. I was so pleased with this colored pencil rendering that it's one of a handful of drawings that I bound together in a screw-fastened binder (originally a military operational manual) that I...er...kind of looted from a storage closet aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown on a class field trip (Please don't tell the authorities-- I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is for that sort of thing.). I'll be posting more of the stuff from that binder in the near future during Shogun Warriors Week, coming soon to this website!

Note with Incidental Colonial Viper

If I thought anyone would believe it, I would claim that the Viper was drawn specifically to illustrate the note. A (possibly) interesting side note: later that year, I would dream that I'd received a life-size prop Viper for Christmas (on my grandmother's front lawn with a huge bow tied around it), and the rest of the dream was concerned with the monstrous impracticality of owning such a thing, and my ambivalent feelings about this albatross of a gift. I believe this may have been prompted by an article in Starlog tracking the fates of a couple of similar life-size rockets offered as contest prizes in the '50s, but it may have actually been before I read that. It was perhaps my least fun toy-related dream ever.

Sketches Toward a Never-Realized Monster Suit

I was very interested in constructing some sort of monster suit for myself until I did further research into the price of "Fun Fur", which pretty much put the kibosh on the whole affair. I expect that the latex feet and chestpiece would have been beyond my 12-year old skills, anyway.

INSECTON!

I think that this may be in some way related to these drawings, in that it seems to be a design for a toy, and the lettering is not my own. On the other hand, it's executed in different media, and it's a different sort of figure, so maybe not.Our friend here is very much in the mold of the Micronaut Aliens, particularly Kronos, but I gave him magnetic joints, like these guys. I actually think this would make an okay toy.

Junior Toy Designers

If memory serves me, these were done at Camp Broadstone in the summer of 1980 in collaboration with a fellow camper, about whom I can remember nothing except that he was black and I think his name may have started with "E", because I believe that we derived the name of this from our initials. My memory of it is that we were imagining something along the line of the Mego Buck Rogers figures crossed with Matchbox MAC figures, but nicer. The vehicle seems to be inspired by the rare Buck Rogers Land Rover with a bit of a Micronauts flavor. As you can see, we were very serious about this.
As I think about this further, I'm actually less certain that these are the aforementioned collaborative designs after all, because I suddenly had a vague mental picture of characters that were more like rip-offs of Ferro Lad. Also, there's no evidence of another hand than my own on either page. I just can't say at this point. Memory is a wiggly thing. Anyway, two facts are known:I designed some toys with another kid once, and these are some toy designs that I drew. Whether there is any correlation between those two facts is anyone's guess.

Blood 'N' Guts

This is one of the relatively few pieces that I can date with any degree of certainty, as it's part of a sheaf of torn-out pages that I labeled "Camp Broadstone, Summer '80." It shows all the symptoms of the crappiness that infects kid's drawings around age 12 , but it still has a certain awful charm. I definitely advise clicking to enlarge this one...there are many nuances that reward close examination. I was clearly trying really hard to get this right...I reposed the monster's arms, erased unnecessary antennae, rendered shadows even! We won't discuss the fact that those shadows are running in opposite directions, or try to figure out the hapless spacemen's relative sizes, or even speculate why the prostrate gentleman's blood looks more like a necktie draped across him. Still, Rob Liefield has published worse.