A Brief History of FEWTURE Robot Figure Design

When exactly Fewture was spawned as a subsidiary of Art Storm Co. Ltd. I'm not sure, but Fewture has been around for at least a decade or more, and for most of this time they were relatively unnoticed by the robot collecting community, unless you happened to also be interested in macabre horror figures. For years Fewture focused almost exclusively on creating highly detailed resin kits and limited cast figurines with extreme gothic and/or violent and twisted content that embodied a shocking sort of flair as their trademark. The closest thing Fewture had for mainstream figure collecting was perhaps their Devilman action figures, which aren't anything close to being "normal". Along these lines Fewture also made figures featuring edgey pop culture icons such as Alien movie casts and Marilyn Manson sculpts among others, but all these were extremely gorish and awesomely detailed, not something the average toy collector would be apt to buy.




It was fairly recently that Fewture propelled itself into the gokin collecting scene when they released their first venture into die cast robots with their Black Getter Ryoma about two years ago. The Ryoma figure was almost an instant classic of gokin robot figures. It's extreme attention to detail and quality made it an overnight sensation with market prices doubling on Ebay within its first month of release, and this gave Fewture instant credability with hardcore robot collectors. The Ryoma was large at about 10" tall, and very heavy in die cast metal content. It also had a super cool exo-skeletal design with removable parts and awesome accessories. There wasn't anything bad that could be said about it, right down to the awesome packaging. Even the most harcore critics were admitting that it was a masterpiece of gokin. It looked super cool and had Fewture's uniquely sinister trademark written all over it. Taking it out of the box, feeling it's weight and seeing the incredible detail, you knew it was a serious piece of artistry.

The Black Getter Ryoma was was designed by an almost completely unknown freelance sculptor at the time named Taku Sato who also helped with the Mazinger 1901AD figures and later designed the Getter 1,2 and 3. There had only been a couple of promo pics sent out of the Ryoma a year or so before the figure was actually released and the Ryoma didn't get a whole lot of buzz generally because nobody knew anything about it or about Fewture. There was no info or track record to give it any status or preconceived knowlege in terms of quality or features. So the Getter Ryoma popped onto the scene like a suprise attack on collectors and the word of mouth on collector forums spread like wild fire.



In a sense there were predecessors to the Getter Ryoma. Roughly a year before Fewture had tried to get a new line of large and intense Mazinger family figures to catch on with the mainstream public. These all plastic figures were based upon the classic Mazinger robot characters but with the familiar Fewture twistedness. They were labelled as the "Mazinger 1901 A.D." line, perhaps vaguely attributive to Frankenstein (in my mind anyway), and kind of spooky. Fewture had even lined up some big name accounts to distribute the line, like Toys R' Us of Japan. Unfortunately, the line failed miserably. The figures looked great and had a lot of accessories and cool gimmicks, but the aesthetics were just too extreme for the mainstream public and certainly not for kids. The low grade plastic didn't help their street credibility either. Retail prices were slashed and the entire line was discontinued and liquidated. The Mazinger 1901 line was interesting and edgey unlike anything that came before it, but the sinister and spooky personalities and frightening weapon accessories were not what parents were willing to buy for their kids. Fewture had miscalcuated who they were trying to market to. They were too "Fewture-esque". In fact my wife has commented how eerie the Garada figure is, and the Aflodai figure with her prominent breasts and nipples wasn't exactly Pokemon.



As soon as the Getter Ryoma figure was released to grandiose acclaim, there was a renewed curiosity about the Mazinger 1901 A.D. figures. At the time they were selling at about $20 apiece on Ebay which allowed for curious collectors to see basic design elements of a Fewture figure without having to shell out hundreds of dollars for the Ryoma. In retrospect the Mazinger 1901 figures were archetypal designs of the Getter EX Gokin line.

The release of the Getter 1,2, and 3 in the EX Gokin line firmly solidified Fewture as the new rock star in the contemporary robot collecting scene. Collectors were freaking out when they saw the promo pics. All three of these Getters were excellent examples of what Fewture had to offer with top of the line designs and high die cast content, and of course the gimmicks, accessories and super cool details were second to none. For the doubters who thought maybe the Black Getter Ryoma was all hype and a little bit of luck, the early reviews confirmed that Fewture was real and they meant serious business when it came to making gokin. Of course there are always collectors who won't accept that anything new or different is good, but these are the same collectors who are now kicking themselves for being so stupid as they try to buy the figures in the secondary market for hundreds of dollars more than the initial retail prices.




In a bizarre turn of events, the relatively young Taku Sato died shortly after the Getters had been released. This was a hugely unfortunate day for gokin collectors worldwide. And at least we have been priveledged enough to have his robot designs that we have, and we continue to enjoy them as the rest of his designs have continued being made by Fewture to this day.

Now we've seen Fewture move forward with the Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger 1969. These Mazinger figures sold out almost as quickly as they were released, once again establishing Fewture's popularity with unique vision in rock solid gokin design.