VST / SH – Shigeru Giant Laser Robot.

Limited run of only 10 Robots in this configuration !

Here is the story…………..

This crazy project started in fact a couple of years ago when I can into contact with Shigeru from Japan. Mr Shinji Miyazawa had passed away and I was asked if I was interested in tools, parts, robots and projects from the workshop of Shinji.In the month that passed ( I believed it was in 2014 or 2015 ) a lot of big boxes with interesting stuff entered the Dutch Caves ( my workshop ) and filled my life with knowledge and a lot of works to sort it all out. New insights and many things to learn those days.

Years later… recently in 2019 Shigeru contact me again and showed me pictures of at least 15 BIG boxes filled with robot parts… Huh ! ? how could I miss that back in 2015…. The pics showed fantastic new ( vintage ) parts of Horikawa’s Giant Robot, all tin heads, feet, bodies and legs…really a big lot… Turned out These parts ended up in a factory of a friend of Shigeru and stayed there for a couple of years… Never been touched.

The parts came from Shinji’s final project.. a remote controlled Giant Robot of which he made only a few ( I still have the prototypes in my collection ) with mechanism gears and motors inside the feet and a complete different custom made mechanism to drive the robot remote controlled.

When Shinji passed away the parts remained but… only the exterior of the robot… no mechanism, no gears, no motor rods or whatever… only ( most ) of the tin exterior remained Parts to build up about 80 robots but only one part of the head ( no neck or base plate , no mouth or eyes, only the base head) arms, shoulderparts and body ( but no battery compartment or battery cover ) The body base bottom ( but no gears or driving mechanism for the legs ) The legs and feet
( but no wheels, internal system and driving rods ) and no motor, case and no gears or whatever…

With the tin parts you could make lets say about 85 % of the robot exterior but not working or whatever… IN short a LOT was missing to build up these robots and bring the back to life..

I was offered the parts but shipping of so many big boxes and heavy tin parts was expensive… way to expensive and should be at least 2000 usd only for shipping..I thanked Shigeru for offering the parts to me but told him it would all become to expensive even to get it all here… about a week later he contacted me again and told me he talked to the owner of the parts and they decided to repack everything, have it ground shipped and reduce the price for the parts…I decided to buy the parts, pay the shipping and started to think what the hell on earth I could do with all those parts..

In fact I saw only one solution and that is to “fill in the gaps” with the knowledge I gathered for the past 10 years and the past 4 years of 3D printing…. I decided to go where nobody ever went before and started to create and copy the robot’s gears and mechanism from scratch… 3D created and 3D printed !

In the many pictures I added you can see the result of the 3 months of continues working and testing on this project. The biggest challenge was to create the gears for the walking motion ( the so called helical gears ) and the gears for the main mechanism.. Took me for example a full day to figure out the exact brand of motor that was used in the original robots and to find them on ebay ( yes they still make those ! ) So i ordered 100 motors and started to create a complete new mechanism in 3D printed Pla around it and I wanted the new mechanism to be exactly as the old one.. same size, gears, working etc…

Also the mechanism for the feet was not present so I had to make this and also the wheels… I made them in experimental flexible pla so they work the same as the original wheels. this turned out perfect so I could copy the original mechanism also in 3D. the internals of the feet are also exact the same as in the original robot… no compromise there either. I was lucky the guns assembly was also present in the lot ( about 80 tin parts with guns complete )

The head however was far from complete.. only the head and top of the head were present in tin. the bottom of the head, ears, eyes mouth and even the base plate of the body on which the head is mounted I had to make 3D printed. For this series of blue Shigeru Giant Laser Robots I decided to make them in metallic blue with black feet. A series of 10 limited made in this configuration only with special designed ears and lighted + Glow in the Dark eyes.

Further the robots has normal walking action and shooting lighted guns. Every robot is stamped ” HORIKAWA ” in the tin body, VST marked under the feet and numbered. A fantastic project to do.. I had a lot of fun bringing this robot back to life with my knowledge, glad I could rescue all the original tin robot parts and bring them back to live in some awesome creations.

This is the first series of 10, the next will be in different colors & configuration of the head and…… you will see ! 😉

I will NOT create a box and artwork for this robot this time… Its making the robot only much more expensive and I want to keep the price as low as possible to make the robot accessible for all you collectors out there !

Price: 499 USD Incl shipping costs worldwide !  Contact me with all questions you may have…

Marco