“From the Past Friday” is a weekly column in which we trot out some hilarity from our collective fandom past. Sometimes it’s funny marketing materials, sometimes it’s name spelling curiosities, and sometimes it might just be a neat little trinket we still have kicking around all these decades later.

As the aughts roll around, history ends, and the English dub hits the final major arc of the Dragon Ball Z television series. Action figures under license from FUNimation with Irwin and Jakks Pacific are running strong — things have moved from AB and Super Battle Collection re-releases into original molds and unique creations like the IF Labs movie collection.

In 2002, another batch of figures hit store shelves under the “Maijin Buu Saga” branding.

You read that correctly: “Maijin Buu“…!

Despite being wholly Japanese (see also: kami, senzu, roshi, kai, baba…), the untranslated “Majin” was hardly a new word for the English dub crowd by this point — its everyday-inclusion as part of the official English Dragon Ball localization dates at least back to 1997’s release of Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout on the PlayStation, which uses the “full name” of “Majin Boo“:

A previous five-inch figure release in “Series #9” from back in 2000 also used the name “Majin Boo” (for what will later be called “Super Buu” in the English dub) — in fact, it is this figure that seems to have prompted a July 2000 trademark registration for the name “Majin Boo”…

…which would be supplanted the next year by FUNimation and Shueisha instead filing for the “Buu” name spelling.

Side note here, but “Boo” had been the standard spelling in Japan and was also in wide use in the existing western fandom of the era — it was also Steve Simmson’ spelling of choice for FUNimation’s official English subtitle track on the home DVD release:

But to bring things back around to “the English dub” and its lexicon, however: VHS releases for the “Majin Buu Saga” hit back in December 2001 (right in line with the new trademark registration), which is in addition to plenty of mentions of the character in the show itself before that — the name itself first shows up in text in the episode descriptions for the “Babidi – Descent” home video release (which first hit on VHS in August 2001).

The Wizard’s Curse
The Z Fighters race to stop Babidi’s cronies from delivering the pure energy which will be used to resurrect the dreaded Majin Buu. Will they find Babidi’s hidden spaceship in time?

This then brings us to 2002 and the “Maijin Buu” figure line.

At this point in the production cycle, it is very different from the situation with some of the earlier figures where “Freeza” and “Mr. Savage” had yet to actually appear in their English dub — that this specific “Majin” spelling typo made it all the way to production in 2002 is undeniably funny, when that’s the one word they had been consistent about since 1997!

I have no real memory of picking this up (or if it’s even originally mine to begin with), but it’s fun to note that someone got a deal with 3-for-$10 on this (which was originally listed as $8.99 by itself) at KB Toys in 2003 according to the sticker on the front.

Lesson learned: if you ever need an extra “i” you can always count on English Dragon Ball stuff!