5/30/2007

Invasion: Japanese Robots from the Collection of Warren Schwartz

I finally got a chance to go to the LSU Museum of Art to check this collection out, and I've got to say, my son and I had a blast. The collection featured stuff from Tetsujin 28, Mazinger Z, Ultraman, Godzilla, Dougram, and others. I got a chance to snap a few pictures (with the museum staff's permission), so here you go (click on the photo for a larger picture.)

An impressive array of some (I assume) vinyl Hedorah (The Smog Monster) figures.

A Fire Godzilla figure. Even though this part of the collection was titled Godzilla vs. Hedorah, this Godzilla is from a later film. (Godzilla vs. Destroyah, I believe.) I really liked this figure, it was about three feet tall and four feet long.

Some Mechagodzilla figures. The largest figure in the photo was about 8 inches tall, so you can get a sense of scale for the Godzilla figure, that's its tail in the background.

Some Tetsujin 28 (Gigantor) figures. My favorite figure in the whole collection is the second largest figure in this photo. It appeared to be all metal, and had a great paint job.

And finally, some Mazinger Z figures.

This exhibit will be on display at the LSU Museum of Art until October 7, 2007. If you're in the Baton Rouge area, make the trip to check it out.

4 comments:

Evil King Macrocranios said...

When you first posted this I thought my initial reaction might be rude so I didn't write anything. But who cares, here it goes. I don't know anything about Gigantor or Tranzor-Z but most of that stuff looks like it could have been bought from HLJ.com over the last ten years. Is this really a museum grade collection? The Fire Godzilla especially stood out as something I swear I'd seen in Hobby Japan or Figure King within the past decade. I'm just stumped on what makes this stuff is worthy of a showing. It doesn't seem vintage to me. Is there someplace I can learn more about Warren Schwartz?

Heavyarms said...

Hmmm, let's see. There is a book called "Super #1 Robot: Japanese Robot Toys, 1972-1982" by Matt Alt (who writes for toyboxdx.com) and Robert Duban (available at your usual online book retailers). Many of the toys featured in this book are from Schwartz's collection. He is, reputedly, fairly well-known among people that obsess over older Japanese toy Super-robots. He is also in charge of design at Schwartz/Silver Architects in Boston which is the firm that designed the LSU MOA. (schwartzsilver.com) Google "warren schwartz"+dx and you can get a little more info.

The museum says that everything in the collection is from 1972-1982, and, not being an expert myself, I gotta go with that.

This wasn't the whole collection. I took pictures of these because I'm more interested in Godzilla and giant fucking robots than I am in Kamen Rider and Ultraman and the like. Everything els was either behind glass and I couldn't get clear pictures of them, or I just didn't care enough about it to snap pictures. There were also some old die-cast wind-up toys, Halloween masks, etc. It isn't a particularly large display, only about 200 peices, and was only one of about 5 exhibits in the museum.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps Mr. Schwartz could spend his time and money helping underpriviledged children or focus his attention on his architectural practice. Looks like he needs something meaningful in his life.

Roger said...

Warren Schwarz actually does run a non-profit organization that provides free psych meds to anonymous faceless nobodies who snipe at people they know nothing about via blog comments.