Ultraman at 60: the heroes are everywhere, the kaiju never left Japan - and the words that decide th

Sixtieth anniversary year, so I finally went down the Ultraman hole properly instead of buying one figure at a time. Posting what I worked out, because the shape of this market is different from anything else I collect.

The anniversary, briefly

The first episode aired on 10 July 1966 - that date is now registered as Ultraman Day - and Tsuburaya launched a 60th-anniversary project on 10 July 2025 that runs about two and a half years under the message "With U". The anniversary series, Ultraman Teo, started on Saturday 4 July 2026, 09:00 JST on the TV Tokyo network, with simultaneous overseas streaming. It took the slot over from Ultraman Omega, which ran July 2025 to January 2026.

The counter-intuitive bit: an anniversary is not a discount event. It pushes second-hand prices up on the old moulds, because every Japanese collector is topping up at the same time. What it does give you is supply - people sell old shelves to fund the new stuff, so things that were simply never listed start appearing.

Heroes vs kaiju is the whole story

Ask someone who does not watch the show to name a character and you get Ultraman. Ask a fan and you get Gomora, Eleking, Baltan. Overseas retail stocks the first kind, because the hero is the one on the poster. Japan stocks both, and the second kind is where the actual collecting happens.

So the single most useful thing I can tell you is: search ウルトラ怪獣 (Ultra Kaiju), not "Ultraman". Searching in English returns export-facing listings at export-facing prices; searching the monsters in Japanese returns the domestic market.

What the domestic prices look like

These were live listings when the guide I am working from was put together in late August, so treat them as the shape of the market rather than today's quote:

- Ultraman Omega Sound & Action figure, new - 1,280 yen
- Magma Seijin, discontinued 800-size sofubi - 1,280 yen
- Ultraseven, Yoshinoya campaign prize - 1,650 yen
- Ultraman 80, unopened out-of-print sofubi - 1,980 yen
- Ultra Action Figure, the original Ultraman - 2,000 yen
- Gomora, Ultra Kaiju Series 2005 - 2,555 yen
- Gamakujira, Ultra Kaiju Series sofubi - 2,850 yen
- Ultraman Orb Origin the First sofubi - 2,999 yen
- CCP Ultimate Ultraman 1/6, red Specium ver., LED light-up - 13,640 yen

Current Bandai sofubi retail for about 990 yen including tax in Japan, and the hero line is past its 127th numbered figure. Note that a 1966 design and a 2016 design cost roughly the same - recognition sets the price here, not age.

The vocabulary that moves the number

Two words are most of the difference between a 1,500 yen figure and a 5,000 yen figure that looks identical in the photo:

- 生産終了 / 廃盤 - production ended, mould retired. Bandai rotates the kaiju line constantly and does not re-run most of it, so the supply is whatever was already sold. This is the word to hunt.
- 未開封 - unopened, still sealed. Sofubi paint rubs and joints loosen, so sealed examples of retired moulds behave like sealed games: the premium is for the seal.

Also worth knowing:
- ソフビ - soft vinyl. The core format: hollow, painted, hand-sized.
- 800サイズ - the old 800-yen price-point format. Tells you roughly the size and which generation of the line it is.
- 非売品 - not for sale. A prize or campaign item that never had a retail price. The Ultraseven above came out of a Yoshinoya beef-bowl campaign; you got it by eating at the restaurant during a specific window, so resale is the only market that ever existed for it.
- 初期版 - early version / first production run. Later runs differ in paint and mould detail.

Shipping, which is where people lose the savings

Sofubi is hollow, so it is all volume and no mass - exactly the case where carriers bill you on volumetric size rather than scale weight. The marginal cost of the fifth figure in a box is close to nothing while the first one carries the whole postage, which is why buying Ultraman one figure at a time looks absurd and a box of eight looks like a bargain. Work out the whole want-list first, then order once.

US buyers: the $800 de minimis exemption was revoked with effect from 29 August 2025, so a consolidated box is assessable regardless of value now. That does not change the maths above - it reinforces it. One box, not four.

Full write-up with the price tables, the term-by-term listing glossary and the customs detail: Ultraman merch from Japan 2026: the 60th anniversary, kaiju sofubi and what it costs to get them home

And this is the search I keep open for the monster half of the line: Ultra Kaiju sofubi listed in Japan right now - usual disclosure, that is the forwarding service I buy through, so read it as a price reference rather than a recommendation.

Question for anyone deeper in this than me: is there a decent reference for which kaiju moulds have been re-run and which genuinely have not? I keep finding out the hard way, after paying a retired-mould premium for something Bandai quietly reissued.