Bullmark / Vintage Fever !

[Dead Presidents]

Well, As of late it seems more and more people have come down with "Bullmark Fever" . I figured this would be a good time to put down the airbrush and show off just a snapshot of what makes me tick :) Pictures to follow soon.

Everyone feel free to post your haves,wants,& needs regarding the mighty Bullmark !. I'm looking to gain from this thread some more knowledge of the toys ,etc.

Good Luck !

[Sanjeev]

Matt, you might not have seen these yet, but here're some shots I took of my Mechanikong this past weekend. Bullmark toys and outdoors...GREAT combination!

[alex wald]

Where to start? Sanjeev's Mechanikong photos reminded me of some shots I never got around to posting. Not Bullmarks but following the "back to nature" theme.

But if it's Bullmarks you want, well...

[Dead Presidents]

Wow Alex ! Thats what I'm talking about !. Can you school me/others on the blue ultraman & Red head Ultraman ?

[alex wald]

Sorry I don't have closeups ready! The two you mentioned, and the gray head Ultraman immediately to the left, are from M-1gou and were released around '97. The gray is M-1gou's original sculpt based on the standard size Bullmark Ultraman; the red is the same sculpt but with colors reversed (more on this later.) The blue one is actually "Nisei Ultraman (Enemy Ultraman)--long time fans know that Zarab Seijin transformed himself into a lookalike Ultraman to create panic and basically slander Ultraman's reputation! The red one is a tribute to a figure that uber-collector Mark Nagata reckons to be one of the Holy Grails of Ultraman collectors. Let's let Mark tell it in his own words: "Ultraman is usually molded in grey vinyl with red paint. Red Ultraman is molded in red vinyl with grey paint. The story behind the Red Ultraman is that the vinyl toy market was pretty saturated at the time so Bullmark wanted to try and appeal to different markets. In this case, the girl market-which was a terrible idea, but it made for a very rare figure. They thought: “Let’s make an Ultraman to appeal to the girls. What color do girls like? Red! Let’s make a Red Ultraman!” It was a complete marketing flop. Girls don’t really like Ultraman regardless what color he is including red. We think a very small run of less than 100 Red Ultraman were made back in the 60’s and to the best of my knowledge, only five (5) exist in the world today." So M-1gou, or its owner, Mr. Yuji Nishimura, in his zeal to cover every niche of Ultraman toy, issued a new figure to honor this Ultra-rarity. You can probably still find the M-1gou red Ultra for reasonable prices---whereas the original Bullmark that Mark owns---well, I'm sure it's anything BUT reasonable!

Dead Presidents said:

Wow Alex ! Thats what I'm talking about !. Can you school me/others on the blue ultraman & Red head Ultraman ?

[Dead Presidents]

Yeah, I have been to Nagatas new set up. Impressive to say the least. However at the time we were preparing for a show so I couldn't focus on them like I should have. Lets see if he posts some of his lovelies :) .

[Shane Haddy]

I want to get a very large bullmark, what is the largest size they produced them at? What would be the cheapest? I would love old ones but am happy with new releases.

[Sanjeev]

Alex, fantastic stuff! I know a friend who'd kill for that Guiro-seijin! :P

That M1 Nisei Ultraman is wierd: in the show, he wasn't blue--he was the same color as Ultraman...but he had narrower, pointy eyes. Well, I guess if you're gonna use the same mold, might as well change up the color!

But yeah, the red Ultraman (the original) is such an amazing story!

Anyway, Shane, Bullmark is long-since outta business. Fortunately, a few companies are reissuing toys made from their molds: M1, Yamanaya, Popy/B-Club (Bandai!).

Your best bet is to troll eBay or Y!J for the Popy/B-Club reissues--they're the cheapest. They also reissued some of the giant-sized (~14")Bullmarks in glow vinyl, too: Pegassa-seijin, Bell-seijin, Ragon, Windom, Twintail...maybe some others I'm forgetting...

[Shane Haddy]

Oh! I had no idea they they wrapped up!

Are there any Bullmark bootlegers out there? I do have a few bullmark minis, they have the logo imprinted and they came in a small bag with a header.... so I can only assume they are originals or re-casts.

Also, last year/start of this years there was a really cool boxed set of bullmark prints and advertisement catalogues. Does anyone have any idea where I can get one?

[Sanjeev]

Well, I'm sure there are some bootleggers out there, but I don't think the problem is particularly widespread. It's somewhat easy to tell a genuine vintage Bullmark--in person, anyway--simply by smelling it! There's a very distinctive odor (kinda like melted crayons) to their vinyl. No modern reproductions have any such smell.

Anyway, all the reissues I mentioned before are exact recasts, so they have the Bullmark logo imprint on the bottom of their feet. That's normal. Most of the Popy/B-Club reissues also have "POPY" in black ink stamped on the bottom of their feet.

And, yeah, I think last year, M1 released the Bullmark History boxed set. That ship may have sailed, though...I haven't seen those available for a while. Still, there are other books out there that are pretty essential. "A Bullmark Story" features a ton of Bullmark-related stuff (tin and a little diecast, as well as vinyl). Also, the more recent "Beautiful Book of Monsters" showcases super-collector, Kazunori Saito's Toho and Ultra kaiju Bullmarks. And I think there was a really killer book/magazine (mook?) that featured M1's Yuji Nishimura's collection...but I forget what it's called...

[Shane Haddy]

Cools, Yeah I mostly buy books to avoid becoming addicted :P I already have Beautiful book of Monsters, got it when it came out, well worth it!

I will keep my eye out for the A Bullmark Story book.

I might just wait till me venture to Japan next to a large bullmark. I saw a few in the mandrake stores. My brother lives there.... I will try and convince him to send one over :D

[Sanjeev]

Heh...I think a Bullmark giant-sized Godzilla covered in paint rubs just went for either 30k or 40k on Y!J. Anyone see that? Damn...getting pricey...

[mark nagata]

oh boy a Bullmark thread ;-) ha-ha ... ok well one thing i would like to point out especially about paint variations is that even talking to the top collectors in Japan, they do not have definitive info on alot of this stuff .. mostly because Bullmark was a toy company, and as such was not concerned about preserving info for future collectors .. heck this is during the 60s and 70s .. none of them thought these would be bought and sought years later by us Gaijin ! anyhow, the thing I took away was that most paint variations happened when a factory simply ran out of paint or mixed a wrong batch, when trying to replicate the figure .. also the work of painting the figures was spread out amongst many small Mom and Pop factories, so mistakes could happen in production .. sometimes even just arms or legs would be done at one place, only to be sent to another place to be fully assembled as a complete toy.. to us may seem weird, but they had their system down ;-)
Yuji Nishimura ( owner of M1 Go ) is probably the most well known for not only owning crazy original props from Ultraman etc .. ( think Famous Monsters Forrest J Ackerman of Japan ! ) but he was also one if not the only one early on to actually interview and track down original Bullmark / Marusan workers to find out about their working methods and such ...sad to say most of the older guard have passed away ;-( so some explainations can only be best guesses ... in fact one time i asked him a question about paint variations and he just shrugged his shoulders ;-P like I don't know !
ha-ha ...

picture here is some of my Ultraman figures ...I started really collecting in the late 80s, once the internet kicked in there was no going back ;-)