To the best of my knowledge (though you're welcome to correct me on this), during the 1960's, the Japanese company called Asahi Sonorama specialized in a unique combination of picture books doubling as record covers, with the audio record related to the main material of course. For a time when video tape and television reruns were not even a conscious possibility, these book / album hybrids did very well, until the market was flooded with many similar products in the late 1970's.
The blog-site Black Sun have featured articles and scans based on these Sonorama albums, particularly the kaiju and tokusatsu related ones. And now they've posted images from something entitled "Kaiju Big Pictorial", which seems to be an insane mixture of foreign monster movies, and even more outrageous original characters:
http://blacksun1987.blogspot.com/2011/0 ... orama.html
Some of the monsters are instantly recognizable, such as the Rat-Bat-Spider-Crab (from "Angry Red Planet"), the Triffids (from "Day of the Triffids"), the Colossal Beast ("War of the Colossal Beast"), the Morlocks ("The Time Machine"), the title horror of "The Black Scorpion", and multiple Ray Harryhausen creations.
But its the exclusive monsters that intrigues me the most, and the main reason why I started this thread, in the hopes someone can translate their names, and offer some idea of who these characters are about. The most prominent of which is a rather hideous looking humanoid giant in vague Roman garb, fighting off a pair of equally fearsome sea monsters.
At first I thought this character was a less than accurate rendition of Talos, from "Jason and the Argonauts", but considering that bronze giant is already featured in the book elsewhere, this is clearly not the case.
And same could be said for the strange robot sharing a page with the Rat-Bat-Spider-Crab, who may or may not be the title robot from "Kronos" (1957). In fact, its likely to be an original character, especially since its no where near as awesome as the aforementioned (or at least as simplistic).
I look forward to any informative replies, but thought I'd bring up this neat bit of obscure kaiju history to you all regardless.