Thursday, April 7, 2011

Recurring Monsters of Ultraman: Alien Baltan


Alien Baltan is an alien race originally featured in Ultraman (1966). Their first appearance was in Episode # 2, "Shoot the Invaders!" The Baltan aliens have been considered Ultraman's most popular foe. A Baltan recently appeared in episodes 33 and 34 of the Ultra series, Ultraman Max. The race's trademark is their sinister laugh.

From Wikipedia: The Baltan-Seijin have several powers at their disposal. they can fire either explosive machinegun style white beams or repelling red beams from their giant claws, or white freezing beams, a red/white energy ball, or basic beams. To confuse and bewilder an enemy, Baltan-Seijins can also project multiple, fake illusions of their bodies like Ninjas. Baltans can also hypnotize or possess human beings and use them as translators for communication. Also, when one Baltan suffers enough damage, it can shed its outer skin. They can teleport over short distances. Multiple microscopic or human-sized Baltans can fuse into a single, larger Baltan form.

They appeared in The Return of Ultraman, Redman, The Ultraman, Ultraman 80, Ultraman Powered, Ultraman Cosmos, and Ultraman Max. Juda, the main villain of this series of Andro Melos (1981), had a cyborg version of the character named Mecha-Baltan as one of his many minions.

Since Baltan Seijin's debut in 1966, there has been a continuous array of countless armies of Baltan toys bombarding and assaulting innocent children and avid toy collectors alike world over. With the majority of toys made and released by Bandai the Japanese toy giant and its subsidiaries (Bandai B-Club, Banpresto, Yutaka and UniFive, just to name a few), the market has been tapped and sometimes overly saturated by vinyl makers such as M1, Marmit and U.S.Toys in the recent years.

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