I bought the Popy Golion DX GB-36 in Hong Kong in 1985 for 24 dollars. On that trip, we went to Japan and Hong Kong. I went back to Hong Kong in 2011 and I saw nowhere near the amount of toys I recall as a child. I mean, I remember I would go to the malls and there’d be toyshops everywhere and that these toys were relatively in my price range. Fast forward to 2011 and I only saw about 2 toystores and I went to a bunch of malls. I guess the robot toys of my youth are an adult hobby these days…
Here’s Golion aka Voltron and the cartoon image. He’s got a massive sword which I understand was not included in the Matchbox version, but was in the Bandai Godaikin release.
Golion DX Godaikin Bandai 1981 GB-36 aka Voltron III 1984 from anime Beast King GoLion(百獣王ゴライオン) 1981-1982
Still from Beast King GoLion 1981-1982 or Voltron: Defender of the Universe 1984-1985
The Matchbox version does have a sword, but it was sold separately. It did not come with the DX set.
We watched an episode or two at your house of the Golion cartoon, which was a lot better than the US edit of Voltron. The violence was more along the PG 13 lines and I never realized how much they edited out of the cartoon. I am enjoying to Japanese version much better than what we got to see here in the US in the 80’s.