In 1978, the Shogun Warriors toy line was in full swing. In addition to the main diecast and jumbo toys, Mattel licensed the Shogun Warriors for costumes, comic books, colorforms and coloring books.

This coloring book was published by Whitman, a popular children's book publisher in the 70s and 80s. It features Raydeen in a story called "Outer Space Zoo". It was 60 pages long and cost a meager 49 cents.

The story is pretty out there. Jenny and Jimmy visit a zoo, then they end up in a spaceport, boarding a Flash Gordon-like rocket. For some reason, there is a rocket failure, so the rocket parachutes down to the planet XTON. The kids begin to explore the planet, where they meet Raydeen, who offers to show them around the planet and look at the animals, who all are mixes of 2 earth species. They are attacked by a space monster and placed in an ice cave. Raydeen uses his "Cutting Fist" and "Delta -Winged Missiles" to save the day.

The art is a mix of classic pulp art with Raydeen thrown into the mix. It's obvious that the illustrator was only given a picture of the toy, and had no idea of its background or origin.

The thing I love about this book is it brings me back to the time when all I had was my Raydeen Shogun Warrior, and I had no idea of the back story. My 5-year-old brain made up stories equally as implausible as this. It is a reality check, that all these toys we now covet were really made for a much younger audience, in a much simpler time.