Mighty Jack
Mike Pigott continues his series on character toys with a look at a rare model based on an obscure Japanese sci-fi espionage programme.
Mike Pigott looks at an obscure Japanese TV diecast.
Mighty Jack was a JapaneseTV series, first shown in 1968, involving a topsecret peacekeeping organization and its amazing flying submarine.The programme ran for a single season of 13 one-hour episodes and was created by Eiji Tsuburaya. Mighty Jack is an example of tokosatsu drama, a word that has no direct English translation, but means a liveaction film with special effects created with models or actors in monster suits. British equivalents would be some of the later Gerry Anderson TV programmes such as UFO and Space:1999. In fact,Tsuburaya was heavily influenced by Anderson, and Mighty Jack has elements of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and UFO, together with a touch of James Bond.
The Mighty Jack squad was founded by a prominent politician, Mr Yabuki, in order to combat a high-tech terrorist organization known only as ‘Q’. His team is composed of 11 elite agents, each with specialist skills, who are summoned from their day jobs to the secret headquarters, hidden behind a bookshop.Accessed by a secret lift and an underground monorail is the subterranean base of their mobile headquarters, Mighty Jack – a huge battleship that can fly and travel underwater.
Mighty Jack is very similar to Anderson’s UFO, in that it features real actors, but with the vehicles and special effects done with models.There are episodes available to view onYouTube, but in Japanese without subtitles, so it’s hard to work out exactly what’s going on.The show generally starts out with a mysterious crime, like an assassination or kidnapping, which one of the team investigates.When the crime is linked to the mad scientists of Q, and its location is discovered, the other team members are summoned from their regular jobs. One woman on the squad appears to work as a geisha girl.The team climb aboard Mighty Jack, berthed in an underground dock which is then flooded with water.The ship exits through a huge secret door, before crashing through the surface and continuing by air. Mighty Jack was a multi-purpose craft, able to operate as a battleship, submarine, bomber plane and aircraft carrier. On board were a fleet of smaller submarines and aircraft that could be used for fighting or espionage.
Although a well-made programme – despite the special effects being less professional than Thunderbirds – Mighty Jack did not prove popular with the viewing public. Japanese audiences of the day preferred heroes fighting against aliens, monsters and giant robots, which were not featured in espionage-based Mighty Jack, and the series was cancelled after a single season.The following year the show was re-formatted as a half-hour programme called Fight! Mighty Jack, which did feature monsters and aliens.This sequel ran for 26 episodes, and was so bizarre and surreal that I am not certain whether
it was intended as a comedy. Like many Japanese programmes, Mighty Jack had an English-sounding title, which was locally pronounced as “Maiti Jakku”.
IMAI ‘GOOD MODEL’
A model of Mighty Jack was built by Japanese company Imai in its ‘Good Model’ range. Imai was predominantly a plastic model kit manufacturer, and is best known in the UK for construction kits based on Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, which were widely available in the UK during the 1990s. Imai made a huge range of licensed kits, including ones based on Japanese giant robots, plus plenty of normal subjects such as fighter planes, ships, cars and motorcycles. Imai went bankrupt in 2002 and much of its tooling was acquired by rival Aoshima.
During the 1970s, there was a boom in licensed diecast models in Japan, led by Popy, which produced a large range of model robots that were billed as being made from ‘super alloy’, like the robots on TV. A huge number of toy manufacturers got in on the act and introduced diecast lines based on characters and vehicles from TV shows and comic books. Some of the leading companies like Popy and Eidai Grip were able to acquire the rights to the most popular properties, such as Ultraman, Mazinger Z and Gatchaman, as well as very popular international programmes such as Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and
UFO. Other companies were late on the scene, or could not afford the top franchises, and had to make do with second- or third-rate properties. Or, in the case of Shinsei, it made up its own characters and passed them off as licensed properties!
Imai introduced a range of small diecast models based on some of the less-popular franchises.The series was rather immodestly titled ‘Good Model’! This small range included five sub-series, each based on a different TV show or manga comic book. One of these was a single model of Mighty Jack, which was around five years out of date when this model was produced in 1974.
IMAI MIGHTY JACK
The Good Model version of Mighty Jack was very typical of smaller sized Japanese diecast of the era. Generally, the shape was very accurate, but was somewhat marred by play features and incorrect colour schemes.The real Mighty Jack was shaped like a modern submarine, with a pointed, aircraft-style nose, delta wings with weapons pods on the ends, and a tail fin.A large bridge and conning tower structure was mounted in the centre of the fuselage.
The model was quite heavy and consisted of three main diecast parts - upper fuselage, lower fuselage and the wings, which slotted in-between them.The bridge area was in chrome plastic, as was the tail and the exhaust jet, which had a red plastic ring around it. The nose was also red plastic.The model was painted metallic steel blue, instead of the correct grey with yellow stripes.There were triangular metallic stickers affixed to the top of each wing, in silver with red borders. However, the most glaring issue was the fact that the model was fitted with oversized diecast dumbbell-style wheels…something that a flying battleship would definitely never need!
Although not immediately obvious, this Mighty Jack had an action feature – firing missiles.The chrome plated bridge area was hinged at the rear, and lifted up to reveal a spring loaded slot underneath. Included in the box were two tiny red missiles that could be loaded into the slot.There was no trigger - the missiles were pushed into the slot and the bridge pushed back down, and the missiles fired when the bridge was lifted again. The firing mechanism was very crude and the little projectiles were no doubt easily lost.
PACKAGING
Imai Good Models were packaged in a typical style used by other manufacturers, such as Eidai Grip and Shinsei.They were mounted on a colourful card base and held in place with an elastic tie.This was mounted on a card sub-base which incorporated a header card with a backdrop.A clear vac-formed cover was put on top and taped in place.The Mighty Jack box was very attractive. It had a base with an ocean scene and secret island, while the backdrop had a colour illustration of the craft.The reverse of this had a schematic diagram of Mighty Jack.
Imai diecasts are very rare, given that they are over 40 years old, and not generally distributed outside of Japan.While most readers have probably never heard of Mighty Jack, this model exudes character and makes a great addition to any character toy collection. DC