User talk:Alpha Trihard

Space Explorer release date

Hey there, do you have any links to the Yonezawa catalogue that shows Space Explorer was definitely released in 1968? I've read a lot of different dates for his release on the internet, so it would be good to have that on a citation in the pages that mention him (he's also brought up in Pre-Transformers and Eletrix). Thanks! (FortressMaxxing (talk) 17:15, 11 April 2026 (EDT))

Okay, sure. Here you go. If you want to double check them, the “AcroBot” robot on the opposite page appears in the 1968 Montgomery Ward Christmas wish book (page 278).

Outside of that, ‘68 makes more sense when you look at Yonezawa’s other robots from around the same period. It’s far more advanced than what they were releasing even through most of the early ‘60s. Smoking Robot in 1960, Modern Robot in 1962, these are all very basic walking robots with features like a flashing light. 1959 is closer to when this Space Explorer robot came out though, which is properly simple for its time.

I think that might be what you ran into trying to find the date, “space explorer” is the name of three or four different walking tin robots, all designed by Marumiya (now Metal House), then released by Yonezawa. Marumiya was the designer and manufacturer of tin robots across all of the major toy distributors, it’s why so many releases from the period look similar and share parts. It’s much like how Takara started as the vinyl manufacturer for Tsukudaya.

Space Explorer was also in an advertisement from December 1967, for an Australian department store called “David Jones”, but I don’t think I have a copy of that one. Either way, it wasn’t in Yonezawa’s 1967 catalog, and it was no longer listed “new” in the 1969 catalog. Hope that helps. Alpha Trihard (talk) 11:51, 12 April 2026 (EDT)

Hot damn, that's a pretty comprehensive response, thank you very much! I honestly thought that the citation would have to be something the likes of "He came in the 1968 Yonezawa catalogue but other dates are cited online so maybe he released earlier?", but I think you've given very strong reasons for us to settle on 1968 without any ambiguity. I will proceed to edit all the pages that mention him with a reference link to the catalogue, then! (FortressMaxxing (talk) 10:57, 13 April 2026 (EDT))

And on a sidenote, I guess I assumed that the 1950s date made sense because, as someone who's not very well-versed in vintage toy robots, it just seemed intuitive to me that a robot that old-looking would be from that era? Guess it's just kinda crazy to think about the fact that a tin box with arms and legs was still the standard robot design form by the late 1960s, and yet, somehow, by the late 1970s we already had Combattler V and Gundam, haha. (FortressMaxxing (talk) 11:02, 13 April 2026 (EDT))

It’s the same reason stuffed bears haven’t changed a ton. There’s a role they fill, which ties you to the form factor. These early robot toys weren’t supposed to be a toy representing a robot character, they were trying to get as close as they could to actual robots you play with. Robot toys were made of metal, used gears and motors, and were always advertised by all the stuff they could do on their own. This sharply constrains the design, and for a very long time, made them all look pretty similar, just because of what was possible from an engineering standpoint.

Different mediums have different constraints, and it’s usually technology setting the limit, not imagination. You could draw the Maschinenmensch, but that’s not what the toy was going to look like. The very first Clover Gundam toy looks a lot more like Space Explorer than Gunpla. Alpha Trihard (talk) 16:02, 13 April 2026 (EDT)