Toys

My other favorite toy is the great Godzilla. It’s hard to describe my exact relationship with Godzilla, but for starters we are the same age, so I guess we grew up together, separately. There is an ambiguity about him: he is sometimes bad, sometimes good, and a visit from him always involves a certain amount of mayhem and sadness. In questioning why he doesn’t destroy them, a character in Godzilla 2000 says “there is a little bit of Godzilla in all of us”.

This is Rex. While technically not a Godzilla, he does seem to be related, perhaps a grandfather of sorts. I worked at a toy store when I first moved here. I bought one of these for my friends’ dad as he loved mechanical toys. It was so cool that I had to have one too. Rex is about 30 years old and has gotten rather creaky in his joints.

The first Godzilla I bought is Japanese. He’s a tiny thing, but I love him.

This one is my favorite, the classic, original Godzilla. I love the expression of his face.

I also have the newer Millennial Godzillas. I don’t think that they really capture the essence of his appeal. CG is not nearly as interesting as a person in a monster suit.

The European premier of the latest incarnation of Godzilla took place when I was in London, so I went over and and saw some of the movie stars, but Godzilla was a no-show. (After seeing the movie I understand this, after all he had hardly any screen time.)

There are lots of Godzilla blogs and I ran across two that I like.

http://godzillahaiku.tumblr.com/ and

http://blacksun1987.blogspot.com/ who did an entire year of blogging pictures from previous movies. While I’m not completely obsessed, I do have a special place in my heart for the big lizard.

My father had a love of robots. I’m not sure if it was driven by science fiction movies, or the idea that robots are invincible against us puny mortals. Since it wasn’t very fashionable for adults to collect toys, he would buy robots for us, and these robots were not particularly invincible against young children.

About 37 years ago, I bought a wind-up toy as a birthday present for a child of a friend. It was so delightful and cleverly constructed that I had to have one for myself, and that was the start of my collection. The toys have to be wind-up toys, although I have allowed a few of other sorts to slip in because they were so irresistible. I go through spurts of buying, and manufacturers are always coming up with new designs as well as repeating older ones. Here’s a some of the toys from this year.

These are walkers, side movers, hoppers and spinners and were purchased locally.

I bought these in England, but they are from the same manufacturer as the others. That’s globalization for you, and they were more expensive since I paid in pounds. These are flippers, a walker, roller, and a swimmer.