Billiken Mighty Atom, 1992 (Blender)
October 5, 2025
Lambda Infinity (Blender, Substance Painter)
I’ve been thinking about this one for a while now, so it’s nice to finally get it done: Last year when I was doing the research for my first series of tin robot illustrations, I learned more about the plastic robots that were produced and sold by Japan’s biggest tin toy manufacturers in the wake of the “golden age,” after stamped and lithographed tin had fallen out of favor as the de facto medium for science fiction toys.
Since my first series was specifically focused on reproducing the OG tin robots and this one was plastic, it didn’t make my cut, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. With a human pilot seated prominently at its helm, Horikawa’s Lambda series of bots from the 1970s reminded me of early piloted mecha bots like Mazinger, Getter Robo and Reideen that influenced pop culture in manga and anime for generations, and whose DNA can clearly be seen in contemporary bots like those in the Gundam franchise.
Left to right: Horikawa’s Lambda bots were sold in a variety of styles in the 1970s; texturing the pilot figure in Substance; the Blender mesh in wireframe view.
So it got me thinking: what if Japan’s biggest sci-fi tin toy makers like Horikawa, Masudaya, Yonezawa, Alps, etc. never stopped producing their glorious bots in tin – what would they have looked like? I may not have the capacity to produce a physical example, but I could certainly try to imagine some possibilities in 3D. Design-wise, I tried to capture the stocky proportions and color scheme of Horikawa’s original Lambda II (my favorite of their lineup), and took quite a few creative liberties – for example, I redesigned the thin silver grille below the chest plate on the original with a simple metal plate with lights and lithograped details. My main criteria for reconstruction was: “If I had to craft this or that part in tin rather than injection molded plastic, how would I make it?”
This take on the Lambda was always going to be the first of a series I’m planning to do over the next year or so, because it’s the one that sparked the idea in the first place. Beyond robots, I’m also interested in imagining what some other contemporary devices and household objects might look like in tin if they were produced today. Also, by default I’ve always made my bots to look “showroom new” as a baseline, with no flaws or aging, but I’m also interested in leveling up my procedural texturing skills to give them some patina, so don’t be surprised if there are more iterations down the road. Let’s see where this goes.