SOME OF THE most interesting Gormitis and absolute favorites in my collection are the ‘semi-official’ color variants from Hong Kong. And now you might ask: Why semiofficial …?
I’ll get back to that.
Let’s first
rewind back to 2018.
I was
scavenging the web for Gormiti-related stuff – as I always do – and came across
a picture of some transparent reddish Gormitis.
Four characters from the Elemental Fusion series (forest tribe) and four characters from the Supreme Eclipse series (Volcano tribe).
They looked similar in style to the red variants from series Atomic/Final Evolution that change color in hot water, but what were they? Bootlegs …? Official releases I for some reason had never heard about …?
I started
doing some digging and the first explanation I found for the existence of these
odd figures seemed so plausible that I instantly bought it and started
repeating it to whomever wanted to listen.
Apparently,
Giochi had made a mistake. In the excitement of producing as many Gormiti
variants as possible, they had simply forgotten that the footchip (you know, that little gizmo that makes
the Gormiti ‘talk’ on the Alter of Life) would malfunction when being doused in water. And somehow they escaped the factory and made their way to Ebay.
Makes
sense, right? That could have happened!
Maybe so, but it was wrong.
About six months later I found a much more reasonable explanation on the Spanish Gormiti blog Mi-Gormiti. Apparently there had been some debate about these transparent red fellas in the Italian Gormiti Magazine. And it turned out it was a Hong Kong factory (producing Gormiti for Giochi) that had sort of gone rogue and started creating (and selling!) their own crazy versions.
This was
sometime in 2010. According to ‘legend’ Ebay was flooded with these strange
color variants from Hong Kong sellers at the time.
Very few facts,
if any, have survived about this whole Gormiti/Hong Kong ordeal, so in all fairness
Giochi could have issued a license for the factory to make these
variations. But knowing the Asian market – with its glorious tradition for
shamelessly knocking off large franchises – I highly doubt it!
But still,
you couldn’t really call these knock off’s, could you? The figures are produced
the same place as the official Gormiti releases, it’s the same molds, same
paint, they even have the freaking Giochi stamp and the number under the foot.
I’ll go with the term ‘semi-official’ releases.
I only have
thirteen of these little wonders in my collections, not nearly enough, but let’s
have a look at them.
We'll begin with the red ones it all started with. Strangely they don’t change color in hot water. I also tried putting them out in the sun, but no effect. Furthermore, they have no chip under the foot, only a hole.
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| Cyclops and Xiron (Supreme Eclipse) |
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| Blind Screamer and Moloch (Supreme Eclipse) |
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| Rotten Leaf and The Artefact (Elemental Fusion) |
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| Bo Bamboo (Elemental Fusion) |
And then there's these two guys. Forest people from the Elemental Fusion series. Note that they are not painted under the feet - it's always like this with the Hong Kong variants.
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| Clubtrunk and The Artefact (Elemental Fusion) |
Here they went totally bananas in the paint department, right ...? No, not exactly. What’s interesting here is that the Hong Kong factory didn’t randomly choose these colors. There is actually both reason and a - dare I say - finely tuned aesthetic sense present - because they chose to paint these figures in the Titanium series color scheme for the People of the Dark. Comparison in the picture below.
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| Sbavion (Titanium) and The Artefact (Elemental Fusion) |
By doing that, they were mirroring exactly what the Italian Gormiti Magazine was doing at the time. They did Bertz (frequently seen in Hong Kong variation) and Hornelm, both from the Supreme Eclipse series but with the color scheme from the Titanium series.
It's almost as if the people on the factory said "Hey, we did those official ones for the magazine with the Titanium colors ... why not just do some more?"
Of course, I'm doing a lot of guessing here but no matter what, these figures are amazing! The Artefact is a weird figure in his normal wooden green colors (he looks like a freaking living treehouse!) but in this version he's out of this world. Could easily be one of my top ten Gormitis.
The ones shown below are also interesting. The people of the air, golden with white parts. Again, the lack of paint under the feet is a dead giveaway.
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| Rondor, Sirgius and Picchiavex (Supreme Eclipse) |
This next one could be a bit more tricky. Could look just like a normal gold figure. But again no paint under the feet. It's a Hong Kong variant!
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| Sirgius (Supreme Eclipse) |
As far as I know, not a lot of official gold or silver variants were made from the Elemental Fusion and Supreme Eclipse series.
The only silver ones I know about are these. Four of the lords from Elemental Fusion sold in a box set.
And these ...
Not sure how these last ones were sold, but they are painted gold under the feet so definitely not Hong Kong variants!
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