Word: robotically
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Even back when he was a kid at Clover Avenue Elementary School in West L.A., Nakamura knew the die-cast robots were more than mere toys. One of only a few Asian kids at his school, he morphed from shy geek to totally tubular dude when he showed up to show-and-tell with his techno-toys. "The other kids were playing with their little G.I. Joes," he recalls. "And then I appear with a robot that could shoot missiles or transform into something else. It blew them away...
...Nakamura owns more than 100 of the robots, which he carefully displays in a glass case at his parents' Los Angeles home. When Internet auction fever hit last year, the prices of the rarest robots - the $500-range machines intact in original box and Styrofoam - quadrupled, so Nakamura took a deep breath and hopped on a plane to Japan to hunt out the best deals. "It was the first time I'd traveled somewhere just to fulfill my toy fetish," he says of his trips down narrow Tokyo alleyways to check out tiny toy-shops. "But Japan is a mecca...
Nakamura is so enamored of the colorful chunks of metal that in 1994 he named his magazine after the mightiest of them all, Giant Robot. The hip 'zine delves into Asian-American culture and spots the latest trends from across the Pacific - from wasabi-flavored potato chips to schoolgirl porn. Today's toy robots, says Nakamura dismissively, tend to be cobbled together with cheap plastic. Die-cast robots, on the other hand, are emblematic of the kind of Japanese craftsmanship that transformed the nation's image from shoddy imitator in the 1960s to technological leader just a decade later...
...most avid die-cast robot aficionados have put videos of their collections on the Internet: overblown prose describes each robot in joint-by-joint detail. Nakamura scoffs at videotaping, but he admits to owning a few photos of his favorites. And from time to time, he writes about his robots in his magazine. Not because the readers may care, but because it's his magazine and he can do whatever he wants. That's the power of being the ultimate Giant Robot...
...what his pet is going to do. This afternoon Gibson is sulking. While a posse of happily inebriated customers crowd around, he refuses to play ball. "He can be moody," sighs Calkins, petting Gibson's silver-plated head. "But I suppose that's my own fault for spoiling a robot...