What’s better than a toy robot? That’s right, a giant toy robot. From the unofficial homeland of robots—Japan—came the Shogun Warriors, guardians of world freedom. American kiddom was already primed by other Japanese imports, like Speed Racer and that noble monster, Godzilla, so the Warriors found a fertile ground in which to grow their giant robot seeds (No actual seeds or gardening was required).

Overuse of the word giant, you think? Not really, since the Shogun Warriors initially stood 2-feet tall, dwarfing other toys. These robots were already stars of manga (comic books) and anime (cartoons) in their native land and made the leap to American shores in 1979. The three robots—Raydeen, Dragun and The Great Mazinga—were joined by Godzilla, oddly enough, in an attempt to provide American kids with a familiar snout in the group of newcomers. As if their sheer size wasn’t enough to attract an instant following, the Shogun Warriors were veritable repositories of ballistic missiles, shuriken and battleaxes which could be launched from hidden places on their bodies. They didn’t take the defense of world freedom lightly, you see.

Mattel knew a goldmine when they saw one and it wasn’t long before more Shogun Warrior émigrés appeared on the shelves: Dangard, Zargon and Gaiking arrived to fill up the ranks. For those craving variety, the robots were available in smaller sizes (from 2 feet to three inches, that’s a lot of robot lost) and as a convertible edition, with two transformation modes. The discriminating robot must own a sweet ride: jets, helicopters, tanks, saucers, even a robotic dinosaur, called Cargosaur were included in the Shogun Warrior line.

Marketing of the toys was humming along just fine helped by a Marvel comic book about the ragtag bunch when Mattel lost licensing rights to the Shogun Warriors. A fledgling syndicated cartoon series—Force Five—languished without the aid of 3-D action figures and the Shogun Warriors surrendered the stage to similar franchises, like Transformers and Voltron. No toy ever disappears however, not when there are collectors out there ready and willing to pay top dollar to hold a piece of their childhood.