Actually, though Mme. Malkhos couldn't stop laughing when I revealed all this to her, that figurine is quite easy to identify.
One of the first anime type series in Japan was called [I]Tetsujin 28 (Iron Man 28)[/I] which concerned a giant fighting robot created by a 10 year old boy genius (he was operated by a joystick remote control the boy constantly fiddled with in a highly suggestive manner). This was in 1964. The series was released in the US under the name [I]Gigantor[/I] (I suppose because the name Iron Man was already copyrighted here by Marvel comics for another character who is due to have his own film come out this summer, incidentally). The series, as is common in Japan, was remade in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. While the whole genre of giant fighting robot anime derives from this character, with Iron Man 28 having numerous nearly identical copies, the identity of the doll in question is quite certain owing to the no. 28 inscribed on its wrists. The style of the figure corresponds to the 1980s incarnation. You can read a bit more about it here:
http://www.gigantor.org/
and at Wikipedia sv. Gigantor. As it happens the first DVD of the original series is about 5 down on Andrew's Netflix queue.
I notice the author of the BBC piece asks for readers to help idenitify the figurine, but I didn't see any link that would permit one to do so.
Re: You know bots
One of the first anime type series in Japan was called [I]Tetsujin 28 (Iron Man 28)[/I] which concerned a giant fighting robot created by a 10 year old boy genius (he was operated by a joystick remote control the boy constantly fiddled with in a highly suggestive manner). This was in 1964. The series was released in the US under the name [I]Gigantor[/I] (I suppose because the name Iron Man was already copyrighted here by Marvel comics for another character who is due to have his own film come out this summer, incidentally). The series, as is common in Japan, was remade in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. While the whole genre of giant fighting robot anime derives from this character, with Iron Man 28 having numerous nearly identical copies, the identity of the doll in question is quite certain owing to the no. 28 inscribed on its wrists. The style of the figure corresponds to the 1980s incarnation. You can read a bit more about it here:
http://www.gigantor.org/
and at Wikipedia sv. Gigantor. As it happens the first DVD of the original series is about 5 down on Andrew's Netflix queue.
I notice the author of the BBC piece asks for readers to help idenitify the figurine, but I didn't see any link that would permit one to do so.