After reporting from the SHOT Show 2014, Hyperdouraku seemed taken a short break before coming out with this gem of an interview. The blog interviews former Model Gun Company (MGC) Vice President, and now the President of Tanio Koba, Tazo Kobayashi, considered to be the father of the "Model Gun". Many of his designs are still in use and improved upon by various airsoft gun makers.

At the age of 77, there is still no let up for the Tanio Koba. He still keeps on designing model guns and also does something on the side, such  as his taking care of his vintage Model A Ford. It is unfortunate that my knowledge of Japanese is so poor to really write properly about this. Even the online translation tools do not do any justice to this fine interview.

The famous MGC M93R he designed was actually the best selling gun he designed and has sold over 500,000 units and helped solve MGC's management crisis. For the record, this is the first time in Popular Airsoft that we have actually read about an airsoft model's actual units sold and we hope that many airsoft companies would even be more transparent about how many units they have sold broken down into models and versions to give us a better understanding of the airsoft market.

Also shown hanging around his workshop is the MGC Calico M100 which I am hoping would be produced again. He is also working on a Les Baer 1911 Thunder Ranch Special which would surely be something that will be sought after by collectors.

Hyperdouraku provides the full interview in a 2-hour video in which Tanio Koba talks about the Japanese airsoft industry, proving that he is the living dictionary of the airsoft industry (there is an abridged version of the video). It would be wonderful if we can get a proper English translation of the text in this story and captions in the video since there are information that would be useful in documenting the history of airsoft.

If anyone's volunteering, it would be very much appreciated by the airsoft community outside of Japan.