Tsuburaya Productions

Tsuburaya Productions is the production company founded by the late special effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya and is now run by his family. First established in 1963, it was responsible for the creation of such classic shows as Ultraman (and its many sequels), Kaiju Booska and many other spectacular tokusatsu family/children's shows.

The company's current logo was originally the logo from their 1968 TV series, Mighty Jack, which was Eiji's favorite work.

The company, when first formed, was called "Tsuburaya Special Effects Productions" (円谷特技プロダクション). In 1968, Toho Company Ltd. forced them to change the name to just "Tsuburaya Productions," not only because they thought Eiji acted as though only he can do special effects, but they also felt that his own TV shows were becoming a strong competition to the movies he was doing for them. Although Eiji had strong political power at Toho, he and the company were at odds with each other until his death in 1970. Their more recent work include the "N-Project" (Ultraman the Next and Ultraman Nexus) and Bio Planet WoO, an unused concept originally conceived by Tsuburya after the conclusion of Ultra Q.

Some of Tsuburaya Productions' programs were licensed to American television syndicator Sandy Frank in 1986. Frank reedited the shows into a movie format, to take up a standard two hours of television time. Several episodes of the serial Army of the Apes were reedited into a two hour feature called Time of the Apes. Six episodes of the show Star Wolf were reedited into two "movies" called Fugitive Alien and Star Force: Fugitive Alien II. The first and last episodes of the original Mighty Jack series were edited together to make one movie. The movies were usually picked up by low rated UHF stations, one of which was Minneapolis' KTMA in 1987 which that year had lost the rights to show films from Paramount Pictures. The next year, it was featured on the station's movie mocking show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Later when the series went national, they were used again in the third season, and the episodes became extremely popular among fans. In 1996 Frank would not license the features to MST3K again, apparently because of some barbs made against him in some of those episodes. Producer Kevin Murphy speculates it was a negotiation ploy to get more money. Frank no longer holds the American rights to the shows, though they have yet to seen a release on DVD in either the uncut or MST3K format within the United States. (It is assumed that the rights have reverted back to Tsuburaya Productions.)