Dave’s Cool Toys Blog

This morning, I had an IM discussion with my sister-in-law about Ultraman. Please tell me you remember Ultraman? She had no idea what I was talking about. If you don’t remember him, or would like to refresh your memory, there’s a good bit of information at Wikipedia. But my best recollection of the series is that an alien was traveling near earth, and crashes into Hayata, an Asian gentlemen, killing him. To save his life, he somehow joined with Hayata. He gave Hayata this thing called the Beta Capsule, that he could press if he needed Ultraman. Of course, these giant monsters would attack Tokyo every week and Hayata would drop the Beta Capsule just out of reach and eventually, he would get it, press it, and Ultraman would appear. Ultraman would wrestle and fight with the giant monsters (did I mention Ultraman was also a giant?) and use some sort of ray that he shot by crossing his arms (as you can see in the picture). I think Ultraman was basically solar and if his power got too low, he would die. Of course he would be just about to run out of power when he’d finally kick butt, kill the giant monster, then turn back into Hayata until the next episode. I seem to remember something about him flying into space to recharge as well, but I’m not so sure about that .

One of the things I remember most vividly about the series was the cool claylike swirly opening segment, which, I think they used at the end as well. On the right is a rather poor copy of the opening sequence.

I’d forgotten about the kinda funny silhouettes in the opening sequence. This video doesn’t do the swirly clay stuff justice. I don’t think it was that blue.

Well, when I was growing up, we loved Ultraman. I have looked for DVDs of Ultraman before and, apparently, due to a legal dispute, there were none available. However it seems that the legal disputes have been resolved and Ultraman: The Complete Series is now available on DVD.

Amazon also has A bunch of Ultraman items available including action figures, masks, video games, and the Ultraman Theme Song Collection. I kid you not.

Just as I was finishing this post, I found a website with full episodes of Ultraman. I would like to think that they do not violate any copyrights, but I can’t guarantee that, so proceed at your own risk.