Tetsujin 28, Time Slip Glico, and Why Showa Fans Collect It

Tetsujin 28 Time Slip Glico Shokugan Figure in Gigantor Color

The Figure: A Flying Robot Over a Miniature City

This piece comes from Time Slip Glico, a shokugan series launched by Ezaki Glico around 2001 that brought Showa-era characters back as painted miniature figures packaged with confectionery. The sculpting is attributed to Kaiyodo — the Osaka-based specialist known for precise, detailed figure work — based on the visual characteristics of the piece.

The figure depicts Tetsujin 28 mid-flight, finished in the blue-and-red color scheme associated with Gigantor, the name under which the character broadcast in the United States. A semi-transparent yellow-orange effect piece represents the propulsion flame, and a black diorama base fitted with green skyscrapers recreates the city skyline below. The assembly is a non-articulated, pre-painted display piece.

Tetsujin 28 and the Origins of Giant Robot Anime

The character was created by manga artist Mitsuteru Yokoyama, serialized in the monthly boys’ magazine Shonen from 1956 to 1966. The premise: a giant robot secretly built by the Imperial Japanese Army as weapon prototype number 28 is discovered after the war by Shotaro Kaneda, the young son of its creator, who operates it by remote control.

The black-and-white television anime followed in 1963 on TBS, running 96 episodes. It holds a foundational position in giant robot animation history, predating Mazinger Z by nearly a decade and airing the same year as Astro Boy. What distinguishes Tetsujin thematically is that the robot has no will of its own — it obeys whoever holds the controller, making it a weapon rather than a hero in the conventional sense.

American audiences met the series as Gigantor, which aired from 1964 to 1967 in an English dub. That broadcast spread the blue-bodied, red-banded color scheme that became the character’s visual identity in the West. The 1980 Japanese color anime remake used a red body instead, which is why the blue palette here carries the label “Gigantor Color” — it specifically traces back to the American version.

Shokugan, Kaiyodo, and the Showa Nostalgia Boom

Shokugan had existed in Japan for decades before the late 1990s boom elevated the format. The change came from specialist sculptors: Kaiyodo’s collaborations with candy brands, most visibly the Choco Egg line with Furuta, set a new standard for detail and drew adult collectors to what had been a children’s category. Time Slip Glico arrived in that environment, built around a Showa nostalgia concept that aimed at the generation raised on mid-20th-century Japanese pop culture.

Tetsujin 28 fits that framing precisely. As a character with a 1963 Japanese broadcast and a 1964 American one, it connects Showa popular culture to a specific moment in Western television history. For collectors with an interest in the roots of robot anime, or in how Japanese entertainment crossed into American broadcasting during the 1960s, the Time Slip Glico Tetsujin 28 in Gigantor colors represents that intersection directly.