Nintendo Picture Cutter Ultraman (ピクチャー カッター ウルトラマン, 1966)

The second half of the 1960s and early 70s, Nintendo released a bunch of Ultraman boardgames (check this previous post and this one), Ultraman playing cards and even an Ultraman clock.

Ultraman, the star of the Japanese super hero TV series that debuted in the summer of 1966, was very popular and Nintendo quickly acquired a license to use him in their products.

One of the Ultraman items released by Nintendo is this Picture Cutter Ultraman (ピクチャー カッター ウルトラマン).

It is an Ultraman themed version of the Picture Cutter set released by Nintendo a year earlier.

Like the original Picture Cutter set, this toy has developed by Jajaco, and packaged and distributed by Nintendo.

Compared to the original set, which is already quite hard to track down these days, the Picture Cutter Ultraman set is very rare. This scarcity combined with a very active Ultraman collector base make for a sought after item.

The set includes two sheets of printed polystyrene, the picture cutter itself, a set of three 1.5 volt AA batteries and a bag with cutting wires.

The polystyrene is printed with Ultraman in a number of action poses, together with an assortment of adversarial monsters.

The inside of the box included the simple instructions.

A cutting wires needs to be tensioned between the metal ends of the two prongs of the picture cutter.

After the batteries have been inserted and the power button is pushed, the wire is heated by the current that flows through it.

With this hot wire the polystyrene can be cut easily in any shape.

More on the Nintendo Picture Cutter and it's bigger brother the New Picture Cutter can be found here.