The roughly mid-90's and earlier (generally pre-Toonami, pre-anime boom) era of anime & manga fandom: early cons, clubs, tape trading, Nth Generation VHS fansubs, old magazines & fanzines, fandubs, ancient merchandise, rec.arts.anime, and more!
In 1985, Bandai released the magazine "B-Club" which was dedicated to garage kits. During the popularity of "Mobile Suit Gundam" in the '80s, models were a hit and so the publication wanted to create a magazine that would show people how to build Gundam models and many other models/resin kits. Among the popular kits were outside of Gundam were "Dirty Pair", "Sukeban Deka", "Creamy Mami", "Heavy Metal L-Gaim", "Sailor Moon", "Appleseed", "Godzilla", "Zeiram", "Super Machine Metalder" to name a few.
The magazine would also manga and video new releases, tokusatsu, interviews and more. But the magazine would eventually cease publication in 1998.
Model building and garage kit culture were on a steady climb from around 1980 onward. Bandai was still stuck in making kits that were more 'play model' than scale model but Space Battleship Yamato taught them that anime/SF kits that respected and recreated the original object without compromise for toy action could be successful and have a sales life long, long past the mayfly window of a series/movie original release, paving the way for the RELAUNCH of Gundam kits. A massive publicity push by Fuji Film and Bandai for the MSV contest (Tied to the re-edited/reshot Gundam theatrical releases) finally started to move product.
Meanwhile competing model maker Takara was constantly raising the bar on that detail and accuracy issue. To the best of my knowledge it was Takara that introduced the concept of the 'poly cap' (A staple of Tamiya's military models since the '70s) at joints and movement points which allowed free posing without fear of the joint wearing down and making the limb floppy.
Hobby Japan and Model Graphics were both doing quite well, altho anime/SF modeling was not a main, key cover feature focus for some time.
Then Takara came out with Dual Magazine. It was a stunning publication, focused on pimping Takara's kits and the attached series
B-Club was designed to compete with Dual Magazine. It had a broader mandate as Bandai was doing more, toys and models, than Takara. And like with the model kits, sadly, Takara gave up some time after Galient crashed and burned. Dual Magazine ceased and Takara got out of the anime/SF kit business. Mostly. They had a few kits from some of the 'Brave' series in the '90s but really, just dead and gone, leaving Bandai with no real competing force.
I REALLY loved Dual Magazine and would gladly dig thru boxes in Japan to find the missing issues I need. I liked B-Club, it had value, it was a decent 'general nerd culture' magazine.
Model building and garage kit culture were on a steady climb from around 1980 onward. Bandai was still stuck in making kits that were more 'play model' than scale model but Space Battleship Yamato taught them that anime/SF kits that respected and recreated the original object without compromise for toy action could be successful and have a sales life long, long past the mayfly window of a series/movie original release, paving the way for the RELAUNCH of Gundam kits. A massive publicity push by Fuji Film and Bandai for the MSV contest (Tied to the re-edited/reshot Gundam theatrical releases) finally started to move product.
Sorry about that, I was taking info. from what I saw from the B-CLUB Japanese wiki page. It didn't mention anything about Yamato but Kidou Senshi Gundam. But I can't confirm the validity of the wikipedia entry as I started reading B-CLUB in '93.
As for "Dengeki Hobby", the last one I purchased was the "Figure Mania" issue #42 back in 2011 and despite the cover price set at 1,680...purchased it from Kinokuniya and it cost me nearly $25. Granted, I understand the Bay Area has high taxes and they have to markup for shipping...but that was way too expensive.
hey, hey, not a problem. Isn't that why we're here? ACTUAL knowledge, first hand, what was seen and heard and touched. Tim can probably speak more completely on the wonder and joy of both B-Club and Dual Magazine.
At a time when the publishing of books about an anime series had suddenly and surprisingly died out, B-Club in particular was quite a useful resource.
New to the board, so forgive me if I am breaking etiquette. Any one have a copy of B-Club issue 10 from 8-30-86. Looking for a scan of the article about the Zaku Tanker scratchbuild. Any help is appreciated. Cheers.
