Interest

$1.3 Million Giant Robot Listing on Amazon No Longer Available

Maybe it's because the live-action Patlabor movie snapped them all up, but it appears that none of the giant Kuratas mechs previously available to the public are still for sale.

Last month, Suidobashi Heavy Industry put up a listing on Amazon for the Kuratas, a four-wheel, humanoid robot big enough to fit an adult human in its cockpit. The price tag? 140 million yen (~$1.3 million). Further more, the listing is just for the "Kuratas start kit," which doesn't include the arms.

If the comments are any indication, though, the kits seem to have sold out in little over a week, although with that kind of price tag, one wonders how many were in stock to begin with... and of course, which enterprising mech fans are now driving a Kuratas to work. It's possible that the listed robots were all taken up by the Patlabor folks, but considering that the photographs on the product page show multiple available units, and that thousands of orders were previously taken, we like to think that they just sold out that fast.

Although the company doesn't plan on restocking any time soon, you can still check out the robot on their official website, which shows some of the ways in which you could trick out your Kuratas, like gatling guns, organic rifles, and a pilebunker.

The robot comes in at 4 meters (13') tall, and weighs 4 tons... and according to the manufacturer, safety and comfort are not guaranteed.

Here's a tutorial video on how to drive a Kuratas:

Here's a three-minute ad for the Kuratas: