I'd like to thank Felix of Fantasia Toys for procuring these hard-to-find figures. (Updated comments on this vendor are in the Info & Links section.)

It's a bummer not to be able to read Japanese. At least half of the material for this article could probably be devoted to the colorful backstory of this imaginative series. However, I believe the King Walder figures represent the bad guys ("warui" means "bad") in this universe; that should be pretty clear from the pic at the top of this page. From this picture (posted earlier), it looks like there are four of these guys in the series. My guess is that the pink and red guys are the first two released; the blue and black figures will probably be released later. Why? On the insert which came with the package, they were numbered 1 through 4.

This is how the figures come packaged inside the box. You get two sets of hands and two arm extensions, along with the tinted flexible head casting. This is the red version, with the fancy hair. The pink one has a more conservative hairstyle and a human-looking face. Mechanically, the figure is identical to the Cyborg 99 figure. This is one of the most articulated 12" figure designs currently available, due to the shoulder "turrets". Some folks may not like the magnetically attached arms though, since they do come off when you bend the arms beyond their intended range. (So don't do it, duh! ;^)

The inner head is made of soft vinyl and is organic/bug-like instead of mechanical like the Cyborg 99 model. This carries over into the interior body furnishings too. Instead of a chromed interior piece, the chest cavity contains painted organs (which look like the way I painted my "Visible Man" model).

The arm extensions are pretty wild too. With the red model you get (clockwise from top left) #3 (snake heads) and #6 (the organic suckered drill thing). With the pink model you get #4 (a green Sandworm (Dune) mouth thing with mechanical tubing & parts) and #5 (a pink translucent plume with embedded eyes and mouths-- weird!).

It's difficult to write much about these figures, since most of the points were covered in the Cyborg 99 review. The whole series is a kitschy acquired taste sort of thing, and may not appeal to many Joe fans. Unless you can read Japanese, the pre-fabricated world that is built around these guys is not available to you, and you'd have to use your own imagination to build one. You're probably not going to be able to use these in your WWII diorama. However, if you're interested in quirky Japanese sci-fi type stuff, you probably won't see this as much of a problem. After all, an alien with red translucent skin flashing his guts at you isn't that much weirder than a robot-looking guy wearing a red rubber or spandex suit, huh?