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How do?

Currently on my lunchbreak, and as usual my mind has taken a wander. This time to yesteryear, when I was young and you were even younger. Unless you're older than me, in which case you were less older than me than you currently are.

Anyways. I gots to thinking about one of my favourite periphery toylines. Tomy's Zoids. I was lucky enough to be in more or less at the ground floor. I remember when it was Zoid vs Zoid, before becoming Red Zoids vs Blue Zoids. And man, it's a property that just doesn't go away. Because it's great!

Small, motorised model kits one could freely strip down and rebuild to one's hearts content. Like a mash up of sci-fi stuff and Lego. I never had that many as a kid, as my main thing was Star Wars, He-Man and Transformers (great time to be a kid, I tell ya!). But every birthday, every Christmas, someone would get me a Zoid. Usually the diddier ones, but all were welcome because they were so different from the other stuff I played with.

Being a traditionalist, I'm mostly about the earlier ones, because nostalgia. But even those being produced in the present day are pretty spiffy looking.

But how about you? Did you have Zoids? Do you still have Zoids? Have I awoken a forgotten passion and sent you spiralling into a blackhole of Ebay and toy hunting?

I used to have some zoids (I think I still do in a box somewhere). I moved to them mostly for the model building, though only ever found the small ones worked; the bigger ones never seemed to quite move for me. Looking back on it chances are it was little nubs on the plastic that likely were bumping into each other that I never cleaned off.

For me they were far more a toy than warhammer was; just a cool war toy with an animal/dinosaur form to play with with the added fun of putting them together. Never knew if they had a TV series or anything (I don't think that made it to the UK if they did).

I also remember the TV adverts and the epic sized ones such as the brontosaurus with lights! Those were indeed to be envied though I never got one.


Going on memory I think I had a raptor, lizard, snail, spider, dragonhawk thing; stegasaurous. I think that was all there might have been one or two more but they don't jump to mind.

I had a few Zoids but my main motorised toy was Dino Riders.

I think I had one toy? Or maybe it was my brothers? Either way I was a fan of the animes at the time.

I did Zoids. I had the massive Brachiosaur and T-rex being a Dinosaur nut.

I had a few of them, but my main bag was Transformers or Star Wars too.

Think that I ended up with 3 of the big ones and a dozen small ones. Gore the Lord Protector was a great toy!

It helped that I had every issue of Spiderman and Zoids so I was well into the backstory; it was a mix of Aliens, the Terminator and a mecha story. The later iterations which resulted in a cartoon didn't do it for me in the slightest. I even managed to find a site that has all of the comic pages on it a few weeks ago!

www.zoidstar.com

I used to read SM+Z! It never gets referenced so I was beginning to wonder if it was a false memory!

I had a single one...got it in Long Island, it was an alligator zoid. I remember thinking it was cool. No clue what happened to it. Swallowed up in mom’s garage, I guess.

There is a whole new series of Zoids, along with a new anime on Saturday mornings, that my son is really into. The parts aren't interchangable at all ( we've tried), but the new thing seems to be modding them not unlike Gunpla models. We haven't gone there yet, but I suspect it's a matter of time.

I liked Zoids back when the shows were on Toonami, but ultimately I ended up sticking closer to Gundam for my anime mecha fix XD

I had some of the initial wind-up motor zoids (15-20mm scale gold pilots?) as a teen. They walked and fell over a lot.

They had a couple of the larger ones with battery powered motors back then (early 80s), too. There was no cartoon or any other backstory material for them back then. Just toys from "Tomy".

I had the big gorilla with the shoulder mounted canon. I had the black pegasus with the horn. I also had the Alligator. I only ever got the Pegasus and the Gator built, because I was super young at the time and really needed help. My Grandpa, who was helping me at the time, didn't seem to want to give the gorilla a try after the first two. lol

I was a huge fan of the shows, both Chaotic Century and New Century Zero. Even bought one of the games for the GBA I think... Shame it faded away, I would've loved more video games of it.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I used to read SM+Z! It never gets referenced so I was beginning to wonder if it was a false memory!

Revisiting it reminded me that there a lot of twists and surprises. Some of them were mildly disturbing when I first read them.

I don't think that it gets mentioned because it was a UK only release that pertained to the UK Zoids releases of that era (apparently different markets had different releases, marketing etc.)

The later generations with cartoons and more of an international release had nothing to do with it so it's not surprising that it's lost in the mists of time. Shame really, as it was really cool!

As far as Media goes, I remember the show with the tiger and all the different armor models you could put on it. I wasn't interested at the time as I was one of those weirdos that enjoyed wizards more than mechs. But looking back, it sounds pretty cool. What did that dude Pilot? The Liger or something like that?

I did really like the sniper raptors in that show. They were sweet as hell with their tail guns.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
As far as Media goes, I remember the show with the tiger and all the different armor models you could put on it. I wasn't interested at the time as I was one of those weirdos that enjoyed wizards more than mechs. But looking back, it sounds pretty cool. What did that dude Pilot? The Liger or something like that?

I did really like the sniper raptors in that show. They were sweet as hell with their tail guns.

That was the Liger-Zero, or one of its variants from the New Century Zero series.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
An the raptors were closer to weasels, known otherwise as gun snipers. The raptor-Zoid (Rev Raptor) didn't show up as much in that series as it did in Chaotic Century.

I was massively into Zoids and had loads and loads of them.

Then 40K came out and I remember going to games day in London in 1988 and the Rogue Trader display table had loads of really cool tanks and weapons platforms made out of Zoid toys that had been cut up and painted.

The first Warhound Titan models (built by Tony Cottrell and Guy Carpenter) were made from Star Wars AT-STs and Zoid parts.

So needless to say all of those really cool Zoids I had got chopped up, painted and made into 40K stuff.

Which I'm sad about now as they were great toys and I kind of regret doing it....

I loved the old British comics about the Zoids. I wish I'd been able to find more of those.

To be frank, I was much happier with the Starriors molds than with the massive Zoids stuff.

@StraightSilver

I did exactly the same thing to my Zoids as well!

Remember when a Rhino could have 10 hardpoints of weapons added to it? Gore the Lord Protector's shoulder cannon got repurposed into a Defence Laser for it. Such wanton destruction of a brilliant toy.

I had a black lizard, and the big gorilla. I think they are still in my parent's attic.

I vaguely remember Zoids, but only because I knew someone in primary school who had one or two. My main exposure to them was the parts being used in conversions in White Dwarf.

They where big for me. I love them as a kid and got tons of them. My favorite was the scorpion one and the mammoth one.
Those and bionicles where one of the reasons I play the games I do.

Were these much of a thing in Australia? I have no memory of them at all.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Were these much of a thing in Australia? I have no memory of them at all.

I feel like it wasn't much of a thing in the US. Zoids kind of came and went as a big craze in like, the early/late 2000s? And then after Fuzors they kind of died down. Fuzors wasn't very good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starriors

Like I said, these were from the Zoids toyline, but so much cooler.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Were these much of a thing in Australia? I have no memory of them at all.

Yeah, they were a thing, here.

Intermittently from the 80s. They got a resurgence (and battery powered motorised ones) when the animated series were shown early 2000s.
They were in toy stores and even target/kmart/big W stores had them (and ToysRus, at a higher price point).

There were motorized battery powered ones in the 80s too. At least in the U.K. I had Zoidzilla, a Mammoth and one other that I forget. Just about the only toys I recall that needed D cell batteries.

Most of what I saw were the smaller wind-up ones. I think there was a stegosaurus type with a battery-powered motor, and maybe a T-rexish one.

It would have been early 80s for those (I was about 15).