Category: Miscellaneous
Gore Magala Girl
That’s the figure/kit I got for my birthday. It was time to set it up!
But first a brief explanation. This is a figure inspired by this guy, Gore Magala:
He’s one of the enemies in Monster Hunter, and his armour – once you defeat him and collect enough parts to make it – is very distinctive:
So this figure kit, while not reproducing the in-game appearance of the armour, is inspired by Magala. Here’s the contents:
So many parts! There are several configurations the figure can be displayed in, and I wanted the dress-with-umbrella mode. This required use of the wings, folded around to form each half of the dress:
The problem was… it’s very difficult to assemble! The pieces hardly wanted to go together, and once I got it mostly done I couldn’t get the dress around her.
The archer mode was just as difficult, and since I didn’t want to use glue or modify the pieces I eventually just settled for replacing her normal clothes with the armour…
…and displaying her in ‘dual swords’ mode:
I think I’ll call her Momo 😉
I think I could easily get the wings attached and set up like the image on the back of the box, but I want to finish filling my new curio first to see how much space I have.
Final review: looks great, incredibly (over) engineered, very challenging to assemble!
Highway Robbery
On May The Fourth – aka “Star Wars day” – I purchased this:
Don’t let the size fool you. It’s a single pack of Star Wars trading cards. Not just any cards though, the premium ‘High-Tek’ series from late last year. Here’s the inside of the box:
Topps spares no expense on packaging do they? Here’s how big that single pack is:
Now here’s the evil truth: this single pack cost me $60. Sixty dollars. Sixty dollars! Also it was on sale (due to Star Wars day). It’s normally $75!!
So let’s look inside:
Eight cards. Eight. $60 for only eight trading cards. Admittedly they’re all plastic, but there’s only 8 of them, and they all look sameish, and all feature characters of dubious interest.
I could go into lots of detail here about how the all-plastic nature of the set is actually a negative, or how these cards themselves aren’t even as good as the plastic chase cards in the Aus/UK Rogue One set (which was $1/pack!) but there’s really no need because they cost me $7.50 each and that’s highway robbery!
So why so expensive? It’s because each pack contains an autographed card. Here’s mine:
Yes dear readers, that’s the actual autograph of Jett “George is my dad” Lucas, legendary non-actor who played youngling Zett Jukassa in Episodes 1 and 2. I’m sure you remember his blink-and-you-miss-him character fondly.
Now instead of $60 for 8 cards, you could think of this as, say, $5 for 7 cards and $55 for this dudes autograph. Except the auto itself goes for about a tenner on eBay.
In short, this product is a total ripoff. Not worth it by any stretch for the cards themself, with an autograph of extremely questionable worth as my reward. I was taken for a ride by Topps 🙂
Am I bitter or regretful? Of course not! To be honest I didn’t expect much going in, so in that sense it lived down to my expectations. Plus the gambling factor can’t be denied: I could have found this:
Or an autograph by Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, Daisy Ridley etc. Autographs by these main characters sell for $1000+ on eBay, and that’s the reason like a product such as this exists. It’s not even the most expensive SW trading card set!
So a total ripoff, which had a small chance of being amazing, but made a good blog post anyway 🙂