Snake Mountain

  • April 23, 2026

This was one of my birthday gifts:

It’s a MegaBloks model of Snake Mountain from the old Masters Of The Universe toy series. This is a recently released companion piece to Castle Grayskull which I built five years ago.

As with Grayskull the presentation of the box is wonderful. The fortress is made in two halves, each of which were packed into two separate boxes and over 60 different bags of pieces.

This took me a long time to make! I started it not long after my birthday, and worked on it a few sessions a week, only completing it recently. While the engineering is every bit as impressive as any Lego kit, the ‘grip’ of the pieces is much stronger and putting it all together wasn’t as effortless as Lego typically is. There were even a few instances where I made mistakes and had a devil of a time separating the pieces!

The above shows the completed model, which is about two feet wide and a foot high when opened. It’s also very heavy, and will need a large and secure place to display it (which I plan to be next to Grayskull atop a bookshelf).

It has many play features, including secret doors, trapdoors, a prison, portable snake, portcullis and various other ways for the figures to interact with it.

It came with six figures, and I also got five other new ones that were released around the same time (and yes, Scareglow glows in the dark). As with those that came with Grayskull, I love these tiny recreations of the original MoTU figures, and think they add a lot of charm to the model.

That’s the model closed up with the figures added. This is how it will be displayed, since you can bet I never want to struggle with taking it apart!

It was a fun build, looks great, and was a fraction of what it would have cost had Lego made it. If you like the design of the old Masters toys, this is an easy recommendation.

Willy Wonking Friday!

  • April 17, 2026

These were the final two candy making kits we recently opened. Let’s begin with the one on the left:

Now this was unexpected! The tray contains dehydrated mochi (sticky rice cakes), roasted soybean powder and thick chocolate sauce (these last two were in packets I forgot to photograph).

The mochi pellets needed to be rehydrated, which simple meant pouring a bit of water on top. It happened quickly and they approximately doubled in size:

A quick dip in the chocolate and powder and it’s finished:

They were good! In fact this was the first item (this week) where we ate it all! Two thumbs up.

The last item was a cheesecake kit, which was the most complicated of the week (although, as with all of these, still very easy). This is by Kracie, a name known to us because of the quality of some of their other products.

One packet was dissolved to make a thick cream, then a second was added which, when stirred in, turned the cream into a fluffy pudding.

The blueberry sauce was made by dissolving a third packet, and then a topping of biscuit crumbles went on top of the ‘cake’.

This was excellent. It had the correct texture and tasted delicious, and once again we ate it all. Another impressive product from Kracie!

Candy making kits are a big deal in Japan and it seems every time we’re there we find new ones to try. I’m sure you’ll see another series like this one day.

Willy Wonking Thursday!

  • April 16, 2026

This is a relative of the drink kits from Monday, only this one makes a magical potion.

One of the packets is dissolved in water in the plastic potion bottle, which produces a vivid pink solution:

It looked a bit more purple in real life, since the above photo was taken in direct sunlight.

The next step was to add the second packet. The instructions advised to put the bottle on a tray due to overflow, and suggested the colour would change.

And… it did! The reaction took some time to begin, but was quite effective as it was going. This would be very exciting for a child.

The taste? Just the usual sickly sweet of these sorts of drinks. I consider myself a top-tier fan of sugar but even these are beyond my ability to enjoy.

A fun little experiment then, but not worth drinking 🙂