Spider-Man’s Japanese robot Leopardon headlines a Hong Kong show recasting toys as antiquities

There is a moment, preserved in a single cardboard box, when the American superhero stopped belonging only to America. On its front, Spider-Man crouches beneath Leopardon, a hulking robot in yellow, black and silver, drawn in the flat, saturated graphics of Japanese toy packaging. That box, with the giant figure inside it, is the centrepiece of “Pop Culture: American Comics & Superheroes”, the exhibition with which JPS Gallery launches JPS Collectible, a new division devoted to pop culture.

The show’s argument sits in its framing: that mass-market ephemera, the newspaper strip, the soft-vinyl figure, the signed photograph, now carry the weight earlier generations gave to scroll paintings and ceramics. It is a pointed claim to make in Hong Kong, and the gallery and its partner, memorabilia specialist SIGNHOLIC, stake it on objects that once cost pocket money.

Vintage 1978 Japanese toy box showing the giant robot Leopardon above Spider-Man — 1978 Popy Jumbo Machinder Leopardon, made for Toei’s Spider-Man. Courtesy of JPS Gallery and JPS Collectible

Leopardon comes from Toei’s live-action Spider-Man, a product of the 1978 cross-licensing deal between Marvel Comics and Toei that the release credits to Stan Lee’s instinct for carrying his characters across media. The series ran for 41 episodes, and its robot, often cited as the first giant robot in a Toei television show, sold so well as a toy that the studio folded the idea into its Super Sentai line, later reworked in the West as Power Rangers. The Popy Jumbo Machinder on display once cost a few hundred Hong Kong dollars; the gallery values a pristine example at around HK$300,000.

Beside it sits the quieter and more eloquent object: an original Sunday page of The Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip from April 2008, pencilled by Alex Saviuk, inked by Joe Sinnott and signed by Stan Lee. At full size, the board shows what printing hides: brushed blacks laid down with confidence, hand-lettered balloons, six panels paced to the rhythm of a broadsheet. Next to the robot, it measures how far a character can travel, from an inked page to a plastic colossus on a living-room floor.

The exhibition unfolds in three zones. The Global Archive opens with autographed Hollywood film posters sourced by SIGNHOLIC founder Waz. The Time Tunnel recreates a 1980s Hong Kong living room from the private archive of JPS Gallery founder Tim Yu, with first-edition comics, Stan Lee-signed manuscripts for Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Iron Man, and vintage figures, a nod to the years when “Made in Hong Kong” toys tied local children to American icons. The Collector’s Room, co-curated with SIGNHOLIC, gathers cartoon cels, certified signed stills and limited-edition props.

Black and white photo of the Avengers cast eating shawarma at a diner table, covered in gold and silver autographs — Avengers shawarma-scene photo signed by the cast. Courtesy of JPS Gallery, JPS Collectible and SIGNHOLIC

That last room is also a shop: pieces such as a Robert Downey Jr.-signed Iron Man poster and a shield replica signed by Chris Evans are for sale. The thesis that today’s mass-produced object is tomorrow’s heritage is the dealer’s as much as the historian’s. The strongest pieces make the case through craft and memory rather than price, tracing how an idea crossed an ocean and came back in another shape.

“Pop Culture: American Comics & Superheroes” runs from December 4 to December 24, 2026 at JPS Gallery Hong Kong, G/F, 88–90 Staunton Street, Central, after an opening reception on December 3. The gallery, founded in Hong Kong in 2014 with later spaces in Tokyo and Incheon, notes the show is independent and not endorsed by Marvel, Disney, DC or Warner Bros. Discovery.

Tags: Hong Kong, JPS Gallery, spider-man, comics, Stan Lee, Toei