ROBOTO.(Toy Tokyo, 121 Second Avenue, New York City)(Industry Overview)

You're a collector looking at Hyper Hobby, the shiny Japanese magazine devoted to alluring vinyl toys and fantasy figures from Asia, tiny toys so desirable that you need tons of them. You probably can't read the Japanese text, but it's not necessary to, because there are so many photographs. You study the new Transformers--martial robots that convert into trucks and tanks and cars--and decide to pass. The Gundam figures, whose bodies are essentially frames for carrying science-fiction weapons? Also pass. Godzilla, pass. You examine the front-, rear-, and side-view photos of Gigantor, the Space Age Robot. Need Gigantor. Also the new Kubrick designs, the sturdy little vinyl Lego-man-like figures of robots and warriors and characters from American culture--a graffiti artist, with spray-painted bus stop, for example--all of them with a thrilling, soapy opacity that works on your wallet like a chainsaw. Having made a list of the toys your beating heart yearns for, you're ready to visit Toy Tokyo, which occupies apartment 2F at 121 Second Avenue, a walkup in a tenement.

Toy Tokyo--shrine to the imagination of Asian toymakers and outfits that don't sell to Toys R Us. Tin cars and monsters and little porcelain figures that were included as prizes in King Pie pastries, in Paris--you had to eat the pie to obtain them--and windup robots from the age when the world was just beginning to imagine robots: robots that are biggest around the middle, like circus strongmen; robots painted beautiful colors, so shiny they look enamelled; robots with heads under glass, like deep-sea divers, and mute, pleading expressions in their eyes. You're a collector, so you already understand that by the time these toys reach America they aren't meant to be played with. You're a fool if you play with them. Go ahead, take the robot out of the box. Now it's worthless, just a toy, something to amuse a child. If you can't keep your hands off it, observe the collector's principal rule: buy two, and leave one in the box.

At Toy Tokyo there is a glass counter with shelves of small figures in bright colors.To the left of the counter are aisles of toys, and to the right ...