1974
He's short, goofy looking, and has a retarded missile launching mechanism, but he's just so damn cool! (Before this goes any further, I have to say that the way I managed to get ahold of him restored a lot of my faith in humanity. I want to say thanks again to CW for making the trade, and to ToyboxDX.com for being the glue that holds us crazy collectors together.)

The missiles. What's so crazy about how they shoot, you ask? Well, instead of the usual push-button method, Getta III has these little plastic clamps that wrap around the missiles, and you have to squeeze them together to get the mechanism to release the missile. If I didn't know any better, I would think the guy who designed it must have been suffering from an epileptic coma from a Pokemon episode when he thought this up -- but I guess that's about 30 years out of the question. Regardless, it's absolutely, insanely primitive.

As the side of the box proudly announces (and as you may have read about in the Getta I profile), G-III can combine with the other two Gettas. These pics are sans Getta II, but they should give you the general idea. If you've ever seen an episode of the Getta Robo TV show, then you know that the actual combination-transformation defies all rational thought, so it's really cool that Popy came up with this feature so the kids could at least pretend to mimic the scene in the show.

Getta III also happens to be the perfect example of a character that wasn't all too popular in his day. As super-collector Kanzunori Saito said in his Encyclopedia of Jumbos, "sometimes mecha which were unpopular when originally released end up becoming rare in the present, and consequently become must-haves for collector maniacs. An excellent example of this is the Jumbo Getta III. There's probably quite a few readers nodding their head in agreement as they see this picture."

Sean Bonner