Imai Arii Nichimo Vintage Ads

[Shawn]

Seeing the GTC project pictures has got me all nostalgic...so figured I'd break out some Model kit ads from various magazines I've been collecting since we did the original Model ads page on the legacy site from 2005ish. 
Hope you enjoy! I'll be doing some official scans in January

 

[Shawn]

some more!

[Shawn]

digging through more

[jvmacross]

Complete nostalgic OD....

I especially enjoy the vintage dioramas...nice stuff

[Shawn]

Yeah, the mecha factory ads are some of my favorites...just awesome
I bet they had a lot of fun building those!

[Shawn]

And this one from Imai...that AINT the released version of the 1/72 Gerwalk kit...I think it could be a prototype.
Check out the canopy and nosecone. Maybe they we not happy with it, so they decided to quick change it to the 'beak' version that was finally released.
 

 

vs the BEAK

[jvmacross]

4 minutes ago, Shawn said:

Yeah, the mecha factory ads are some of my favorites...just awesome
I bet they had a lot of fun building those!

It's funny how seeing these old school Macross ads triggers memories of stuff you have not seen in a while, but know you have...somewhere...

For example, I was just posting an old ARII catalog for the 15th Macross Anniversary and in in going through the "Magazine for Anime and Hobby Fan booklets thread, I came across some of those same images.....like this one...

 

...I think some of the others also were used in the old Hobby Books from back in the day....

https://macrossworld.com/macross/books/_books_models.htm

Cool stuf!

[Shawn]

Yeah good catch! That one in the booklet is literally the same one n the ad, very cool.
So the mai photographer/model builder team took a ton of pics of all the dioramas for various uses...and I'm sure those negatives are stuck in a box in someone's attic in Japan fading away  😛

[jvmacross]

14 minutes ago, Shawn said:

Yeah good catch! That one in the booklet is literally the same one n the ad, very cool.
So the mai photographer/model builder team took a ton of pics of all the dioramas for various uses...and I'm sure those negatives are stuck in a box in someone's attic in Japan fading away  😛

heheh....any day now you'll see the now typical listing about "selling dad's old junk from the attic" ...cheap! 

Time to cut back on sleep!

 

Edited December 12, 2022 by jvmacross

[jvmacross]

The other weird thing about those diorama shots and builds are the seemingly endless wave of merch and foruko with the very same images...especially from the merchandising geniuses at Ohsato and the publishing gurus at TV-Kun!

 

 

[Shawn]

Hey! That's the factory ad from above.

wild.

[Shawn]

I wondered what was wrong with the feet on this one

 

 

Then looking at another ad, it had a reflective base...someone missed that when they did the extraction from the original image

 

[Bolt]

Lol. That one has platforms!  Very cool stuff! I haven't seen some of those images before. Really fills out the catalog in my memory. 

[Chronocidal]

So I've wondered this for over 30 years at this point.

What does "Pitaban" mean?   Is that just some nickname they gave that line of kits?  At the time I got one, I thought it was some alien name for the VF-1.

[no3Ljm]

19 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

So I've wondered this for over 30 years at this point.

What does "Pitaban" mean?   Is that just some nickname they gave that line of kits?  At the time I got one, I thought it was some alien name for the VF-1.

Not sure if it's accurate. But probably it's called the model kit line that has these old Nichimo kits that has that 'soap-dish-looking-mounting-base' that has suction cups in them. It's consistent somehow in the cover box art.

Edited December 12, 2022 by no3Ljm

[Chronocidal]

Yeah, I know mine had that too, as well as some sort of little silhouette of the VF-1 that it was meant to mount to inside of that bubble.  Mine was reboxed by Testors though, I remember that much.

They were definitely a unique little thing, I was always a little confused why they included screws for certain parts, but still required you to glue it together.

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Yeah, I know mine had that too, as well as some sort of little silhouette of the VF-1 that it was meant to mount to inside of that bubble.  Mine was reboxed by Testors though, I remember that much.

They were definitely a unique little thing, I was always a little confused why they included screws for certain parts, but still required you to glue it together.

I think the screws were to help hold it tight for the glue to set. Some of those kits had wide gaps in the seams

[pengbuzz]

On 12/12/2022 at 4:43 PM, no3Ljm said:

Not sure if it's accurate. But probably it's called the model kit line that has these old Nichimo kits that has that 'soap-dish-looking-mounting-base' that has suction cups in them. It's consistent somehow in the cover box art.

I have the Destroid Defender Pitiban kit; those suction cups aren't all that great! lol

[SteveTheFish]

I have an old Macross pencil board that advertises Imai and Arii kits. Here are scans of the front and back.

That Macross fortress in Storm Attacker mode looks pretty blocky and dumb. 

[pengbuzz]

On 9/5/2023 at 12:03 AM, SteveTheFish said:

I have an old Macross pencil board that advertises Imai and Arii kits. Here are scans of the front and back.

That Macross fortress in Storm Attacker mode looks pretty blocky and dumb. 

You mean this one?

 

Yeah, but it can be modded to look much better:

Edited September 7, 2023 by pengbuzz

[SteveTheFish]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Yeah, but it can be modded to look much better:

Nice!