Got it from XOfacto, the company that specializes in selling rare Japanese godzilla models. Sakai is apparently involved somehow or other with the design of the godzillas for the movies, and also sells a small number of his own model-size sculpts of Gojira and friends.
The latest is his second appearance of Godzilla kit from the movie Godzilla Mothra Kingghidora – the first appareance is when Goji comes out of the sea and sends that fishing boat flying. (Sakai did a kit of that too.) The second appearance is when he arrives from the other side of a hill and crushes a bunch of annoying picture-taking tourists. (Even the Japanese are annotyed by the Japanese obsession with taking pictures.) He then goes on to kill the ridiculous-looking Baragon.
Here’s a url to a scan of the ad run in a hobby magazine announcing the kit:
http://www.xofacto.com/preview/sakai_godz.jpg
You can buy it with the mountain side, but that cost a total fortune. I just bought the goji himself. This is my favorite recent design of godzilla, and the movie has a special place in my heart, as it was actually half-way decent as a movie, a rare thing, and godzilla actually kills the other monsters – blasts them to pieces with his death ray. In other words, in this movie, they actually remember to have things happen.
The kit itself is very nicely cast in the following pieces:
- head
- lower jaw
- teeth and inner mouth for upper jaw
- tongue
- body
- left arm
- right arm
- left leg
- right leg
- lower tial
- upper tail
plus the normal assemblage of death-ray fins for his back and upper tail.
One remarkable thing is how waxy the resin is. This sounds bad, but I really like it! It’s firm, but not brittle, so it was a snap trimming off the very modest amount of excess resin from the join areas on the legs, which I tried just to see how it would go. Or I should say, it was not a snap! We all kow that’s the biggest problem with resin – losing parts of the piece you need when you are trimming parts yo do not need. Anyway, a big thumbs up for the resin.
The goji appears to be a bit bigger than the small gojis that Kaiyodo released, and a bit smaller than the next bigger ones. – I estimate it will be around 9-10" tall.
All told, a great kit. I think 75 were made, altogether. All have been sold, but many of those will have been sold for resale. If you want one, remember that these are hard to find, and are generally pretty pricy. You can find them on eBay, though, or try xofacto, as john often snags kits here or there and posts them for sale. The Sakai’s go fast though. If you are loopy enough to collect them, John’s website is generally the way to get them, as he advance orders the annouced kits and has Sakai ship them direct to him.
http://www.xofacto.com
Cheers!