Inventor Action Toys Country Hong Kong, Japan | Company Action Toys, Art Storm Availability 2009–Present | |
Type SD Robot Die-Cast Figure Materials Plastic, Die-Cast Metal | ||
ES Gokin (ES合金) is a joint collaboration toy line produced/manufactured by Hong Kong Action Toys and licensing/distributed by Japanese toy company Art Storm. The line consists of SD (Super Deformed) Die-Cast robots which mainly focuses on mechas. It was first introduced and released in the year 2009. Though the line is in the SD family, Action Toys/Art Storm has made each robot (released so far) differ in size to make it look realistic. One of the selling points of the figures/robots is the articulation design. Despite it having limited mobility, they are still considered rather flexible enough to evoke some of the memorable moves and attacks seen in each of the robots respective series. Each of these figure/robots come with a stand and some of them even have neat featuring gimmicks implemented in them. Though the ES Gokin are SD's, it is targeted to a mature demographic.
Delays/Issues with Productions
Action Toys/Art Storm has become rather notorious for their delays with their products. With most of the blame goes to Action Toys; since their the ones responsible for manufacturing. Art Storm has been blamed also for releasing the delay news late to the public as well. Series.3-5 - Getter 1,2, and 3 was supposed to be release Feb 2010. However, it was delayed well over a year before it hit stores. Action Toys has claimed and blamed production problems in China and stated their original mold had issues and needed to be destroyed; and making new ones furthered the delay. The impact created a lot of tension; and during that time a lot of customers which pre-ordered the items cancelled them. Not to mention Action Toys & Art Storm had kept on giving false new release dates that didn't manifest. Series 07 Baikanfu too shared the same fate and was also delayed yet again for a couple of months. It was supposed to be released in August 2011 and ended up being released in Nov 2011. Recently the Series 08 Mugen Calibur which was supposed to be release December 2011 has been pushed back to January 2012, and then February 2012; and it was 'finally' release in late April. Again another delay without any announcement.
[Series No.9] Gaiking & [Series No.10] Raiking & Balking were both pushed from June & July releases to November 2012 & December 2012. [Series No.11] Yusha Raideen was also postponed from June 2012 to January 2013. Another postponement without any official announcements again.
More delays have been made while new announcements were continue to be done. Tekkaman Blade was supposed to be out in November 2013 and it has been delayed; and once again Action Toys has proven to be unreliable with their release dates as well as productions.
Yet again both ES Gokin ES-12 Mazinger Z & ES-13 Great Mazinger were delayed well over a year. It was only released in June 2014.
The most recent delay was with [Series No.15] Gordian which was originally scheduled to be release in 2013 and was released in July 2015. A two-year delay with the QC being in question.
Another latest delay was [Series No.19] Dancouga. It was supposed to be released in 2016 summer but got shifted to 2016 Nov. Last check, it was pushed back to 2016 Dec.