Category: Collecting

Pokeos

There’s recently been stories popping up on social media about Pokemon biscuits/cookies selling for thousands. Naturally, it was time to strike it rich.

We bought two bags of them. The Oreos feature 16 different Pokémon designs but are otherwise unremarkable (no different colour or flavours). They look cute though.

There’s sixteen different designs, one of which is ‘super rare’ (according to a press release put out by the manufacturer). In our first pack we got thirteen of the varieties, not including the rare one.

They were tasty though, and we bought a second pack. We got one Pokemon we hadn’t seen in the first, but still no rare version.

The rare one is ‘Mew’, which was a cute choice since Mew was the rarest Pokémon in the original game. About a month ago word spread on social media that Mew Oreos were selling for ‘thousands’ on eBay, and before you knew it there were hundreds of listings, made by people hoping to strike it rich. Still today, you’ll find fools people hoping for a payout:

Of course they aren’t selling for these prices at all, and likely never did. Surprise, surprise, but the stories that initially claimed as much didn’t have a lot of facts to back them up, and (as usual) the internet was happy to spread the story without bothering to verify it. Mews were selling on eBay, but for only a few dollars. And apparently 99% of the listings never sell.

The truth is that the Mew Oreo isn’t that rare at all. I’ve read maybe one in four packs, so for about $15 (the cost of 4 packs) you’d have about a 70% chance of getting your own. Think about that before bidding $1,000,000 on that eBay auction!

Madness aside these are decent Oreos, but don’t hold a candle to the Trolls ones from last year that included pop rocks in the cream! Let’s hope they bring them back at some point 🙂

Hexagons!

Back in 2015 Topps released an unusual ‘collectible’ product called Galactic Connexions. Basically they were Star Wars hard plastic tokens with pictures on them:

They were Wal-Mart exclusives, not particularly easy to find in stores, and as far as I thought at the time, a very strange product that seemed like it didn’t have much of a market.

The ‘hexagons’ (which I’ll call them from now on) came in three base rarities (grey, black and clear plastic) with three further rarity levels based on the sticker finish (normal, foil, patterned foil).

In addition there were several levels of chase hexagon available in a variety of colours and foils, including stupendously rare 14k solid gold hexagons available via a redemption.

There’s also an additional rarity in the form of the blue ‘star field’ hexagons that were only available in promo bags given out at a Star Wats event at Walmart in 2015. This was in fact the first hexagons I got, since KLS happened upon a handout of these promo bags one day when she went shopping.

The backs of the hexagons are all the same, only with the ‘1st edition’ removed for later releases. Weirdly I have a single disc with the sticker from the back on each side. Was it some sort of promo? I forget…

So what are these for? We’ll it’s actually a game! Players form ‘decks’ of seven hexagons and score points by placing them adjacent to others a bit like dominoes. Scoring is slightly complicated and depends on the colour of the hexagons, the character shown and the lines at the edges of the image. I’ve never played the game, but I’ve read it gets boring almost instantly.

So they’re basically collectibles. A plastic hexagonal trading card, if you will. Given that almost all of them occur at each rarity then it’s a weird product to try to collect (since there could be up to 17 versions of each hexagon), and they’re not really as attractive as the average trading card. They’re also somewhat heavy in large quantities and trickier to store than cards. As I said, this is a strange product.

As far as I could tell at the time these failed quickly and spectacularly. I only purchased a couple of packets of them when they first came out, but I remember finding them in the clearance section within weeks. When series 2 and 3 came out within the next few months, they seemed to instantly be on clearance and I don’t remember paying full price for more than a very few of the 100 or so I now own. Series 3 was particularly tricky to find, probably because the line had failed by then and most Walmart’s didn’t stock them.

So I bought some, opened them, stuck them in a tin and forgot about them for 6 years. Then – to my amazement – I found three packs of series 3 at a local Walmart just a few weeks ago. And much like 5+ years ago, they were in the clearance bin!

Naturally I bought them, and opened them up. I retrieved the tin, took them all out for a second look (and this blog post) and was amused to see that I didn’t have any of the new hexagons I just opened. Unfortunately I didn’t get the redemption hexagon for the 14k gold one, which was probably for the best since the mailing date expired five years ago!

Now they’re all safely packed back into their tin, where they will probably stay forever 🙂

Ramen 10: I’m Not Stopping!

I’m not reviewing ramen today, just showing off a recent purchase. Specifically this:

It’s a noodle stopper, which is a figurine designed to help keep the top on cup noodles while they steep. Most of us probably use a fork or plate or some other device, but now you can use a cute figurine:

Yes this is a real figure designed for this use. They are made by the Japanese company Furyu mostly as UFO Catcher prizes, although the days you can just buy them on amazon. Mine is Hatsune Miku in a cherry blossom outfit, and I’m astonished at the sculpting and paint job considering how inexpensive she was ($20)! She also sits on the noodles very well and keeps the top nice and sealed while the hot water does its job.

Of course since I don’t want to damage her I won’t actually be using her for this purpose, and instead she’ll sit happily on a ledge in my office to remind that a piping hot cup of noodles is only a few steps away:

Noodle stoppers: an essential tool for the cupnoodologist! 🙂