Dougram
We generally love cheap-o toys on CollectionDX, but I tend to avoid them, preferring quality over quantity. I’m a big fan of Dougram, however, and the wonky style and great box attracted me to the Seven-made Core Brook version of the Real Robot. Seven has a great legacy as a maker of the some of the cheapest impulse-buy toys. The fact that vintage toy sage Matt Alt described it in the ToyboxDX Datafile for Dougram as the ‘sleaziest, cheapest Japanese toy ever made’ only added to my curiosity. For 1000Y on YJA, I was willing to give it a shot.
The Core Brook Dougram comes in a functional box with some pretty nice artwork and a big clear window that allows you to see most of the toy. The box is actually only a five-sided lid, with directions printed on the sides, a hole-punched header for hanging (likely at the ubiquitous train station kiosks), all taped to the Styrofoam tray, which is hanging in the breeze on the back side.
Inside, the package contains the figure, a backpack with separate long gun, arm cannon, sprue with three missies, and a cardboard target depicting the Blockhead enemy machine.
Everything is made out of cheap feeling, but surprisingly sturdy plastic in either dark blue or light grey. The only reason I say it is sturdy is because this guy has taken a couple of shelf dives and survived like a trooper. Almost everything is just friction-fit together, and the finish is scary. Sprue marks remain all over the figure from where the parts were removed from the sprues, and not cleaned up at all. Just a couple of stickers adorn the Dougram, and provide the only detail. No paint to be found on this guy!
The Dougram is articulated at the shoulders, and at the back cannon. That’s it. The wrist blaster fires pretty well, but the missile hardly flies true. You’d have to be a hell of a shot to get that bull’s-eye.
Until I got the figure in hand, I thought that was all there is to it… I hadn’t put any thought into why it was called the ‘Core Brook’ figure. Turns out, there’s far more to this near-masterpiece. The entire figure can be disassembled, and the main body section splits in half lengthwise to reveal a partial chrome inner skeleton! The parts fit into the body shell similar to a Transformers Pretender, and the legs can peg in to the bottom of the torso block (Brook?) when removed from the shell.
Detail is sparse, and the parts are cheap feeling, but the chrome is quite shiny, and the thought is nice.
In the end, the Core Brook Dougram is more of a novelty than anything else, but I can totally appreciate its place in the toy hierarchy, and it makes for a more interesting toy-historical piece than actual Dougram plaything.
