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Ultraman Cards!

Sunday, February 6th, 2022

Just before Christmas this arrived:

It’s a box of Ultraman trading cards! This is the first item I have ever Kickstarted, and was released by a boutique trading card company here in the USA of all places. It contains cards based on Ultra Q and the first Ultraman series.

The 36 packs were hand-collated and packed, but had security and tamper-proof seals. I opened one pack a day for about a month, which I’ve found is the best way to enjoy a full box of cards.

The bulk of the set is 67 story cards and 91 monster cards, and I got them all. The numbering is such that about the first third of each type is for Ultra Q and the remainder Ultraman.

The story cards have full episode summaries on the back, which seems normal for those of us that have been collecting cards since the 1980s but is very rare for modern sets.

The monster cards have pictures on the back that can form ten different nine card mosaics. I love when cards do this and these are particularly great!

One cool subset are 3D cards, and the box actually comes with a pair of glasses. The 3D effect is incredibly good – easily the best I’ve seen on a trading card – and I’m very impressed with these!

Other subsets include copies of some of the sketch card art (a very nice inclusion)…

Stickers based on the opening credit silhouettes…

And several types of character portrait cards.

But you want to see the chase cards I got don’t you? Well my (actual) metal ‘box topper’ was this:

A bit bland I admit, especially compared to some of the other ones, but this is my first ever metal card and it’s very impressive. I also got (in a pack) this original sketch card:

That alien is called ‘antlar’. Obviously getting a sketch of someone like Ultraman or Zoffy or Zetton would have been amazing all original sketch cards are special. I looked up the artist and she’s done cards for many different series, always in a comical, cartoony way like here.

I also got a lenticular card (which doesn’t photo well) and as part of the Kickstarter they threw in some test print cards as well:

And this was one of the more unusual things in my box:

It’s a ‘DIY sketch card blank’! Should I draw my own Ultraman on it?

This is a set with a mind-boggling amount of variant cards. In fact the checklist spans the inside of three pack wrappers and even then doesn’t include every possible card:

I daresay it would be impossible to collect everything, but I’m happy that of the 360+ cards I got, I completed the basic set of episode and monster cards, got all the stickers, all the 3D cards, all of the lenticular and metal art cards, over 90% of the sketch art cards and a good selection of limited variants of most of the above!

I even have a full second set of episode cards, which of course will one day go to Bernard. All told, only one card in my box was an un-needed duplicate, but even then I’ve got an idea for it…

Needless to say this is a great card set and I’m extremely happy with my purchase (which was about $70). The Kickstarter itself was very delayed due to the pandemic (many sketch artists were overseas and the mailing of the art slowed considerably) but the company was extremely communicative and as you can see delivered in spades. I will certainly be joining the follow up set which will include Ultraseven and Return of Ultraman!

Posted in Art, Collecting, Otaku, Trading Cards, TV | 1 Comment »

Labo Miku

Sunday, January 2nd, 2022

Time for another model kit post, this time another Miku. Are you keeping count how many figures of this character I have made?

I bought the above in Tokyo in January 2019. I was stopping in to the Yodobashi Camera near my hotel every evening and one day I was surprised to see pallets of the above set out with a strict limit of one per person. Naturally, I hastily picked one up!

It’s a plastic model kit that makes a posed figure with no articulation. This allows for fewer pieces and a bit more style in the pose and finish. The kit includes the gimmick of layered injection:

It’s remarkable to see how sophisticated the injection molding has become. Only a decade or so ago I was astonished at two-colour molded pieces, now we have four or more and pieces that have multiple layers including transparencies!

The kit also included dry-rub decals, which in my opinion are a big upgrade from wet decals and were both easy to attach and added a lot to the detail of the finished product.

Even Loppi was amazed!

The finished kit looks great, and hardly looks like something I assembled (rather than a premade figure). It’s quite voluminous with her hair, but fits nicely on this Miku shelf:

I’m not a fanatical fan Hatsune Miku by any means, it’s just that she’s so popular that manufacturers know kits of her will sell better than most other characters. And if they continue to be as high quality as these, I daresay this won’t be the last time I assemble a Miku plastic model.

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Crafts, Miscellaneous, Models, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

2021 In Games

Thursday, December 2nd, 2021

Time once again for the annual review of my game-buying. It still remains one of my biggest hobbies, and probably as a result of so much time spent at home I spent more time gaming in 2021 than in previous years. It was an interesting year though, since more than ever before my gaming was concentrated on only one system…

In total I purchased 41 games in 2021, for a measly 4 systems. This continues the trend of recent years, and is a tie with 2017 for lowest purchases since 1994! However when you look at the data you’ll see something interesting:

Yes, 38 of the 41 purchases were for Switch! The reason is that our PS4 broke several months into the year and we’ve been unable to replace it, hence the Switch has become the only current system we own. The other three (Intellivision, NES and PS4) saw only one game purchased each this past year. An interesting tidbit from my records show that I didn’t buy any games in January or February, which I believe is the longest break without a game purchase (December 10 until March 3) since I started keeping records in 1993!

Here’s the cost breakdown:

97% of spending this year was on Switch games, since the Intellivision game was only $4 and the PS4/NES games under $20 each. The most I spent on any single game was $59.99, and the average price of about $37 is the largest since 1999! In fact the total I spent on Switch games in 2021 – about $1460 – is the most I’ve ever spent on games for any one system in a single year (by a decent margin; the second highest was $1158 spend on Nintendo DS games in 2009)!

So the year’s playing was a bit of PS4 and lots of Switch. This was not by choice: we wanted to replace the PS4, possibly with a PS5, but as you may know they’re basically unavailable. PS4’s are discontinued and in over 7 months of looking I have yet to see a PS5 for sale. Maybe we’ll get one in 2022?

I also made another sale in 2021, selling about 250 more games (mostly PS1 and PS2), thus reducing my collection to about 1300 remaining games, from a maximum just shy of 2000 a few years ago. I don’t regret either of the two big sales I’ve made, and it’s likely I’ll do more in the future.

As with previous years I’ll focus on my three favourites of 2021, although I’ll preface by saying this was quite a challenge due to me playing a lot of truly wonderful games this past year…

Nioh 2 (PS4)

I bought this sequel late in 2020, and was playing it avidly around the time I wrote the 2020 in review post. It’s more of the same of my best game of 2019, only bigger, better and more difficult. This is a sublime evolution of the soulslike genre, with dashes of Diablo 2 (itemization) and Monster Hunter (quest based) thrown in for good reason. Detractors said it was too difficult, but for me this was a nearly perfect game, and between the original content and the three DLC packages I played it well into March until my savegame exceeded 350 hours. If you like an extremely rewarding challenge, give this one a go!

Monster Hunter Rise (Switch)

Speaking of Monster Hunter, another year saw another installment. We were all wondering how they would follow up MH World but I don’t think any of us expected an open-world Switch installment, and we absolutely didn’t expect one in which they actually iterated upon (and improved) the systems introduced in World. Rise was a success on so many levels, but foremost was that it’s just amazingly fun to play. The graphics are lovely, the game loop satisfying and the controls spot on, but the real reason I played this like a man possessed was simply because it was loads of fun beating up the monsters! I can’t wait for the expansion next year…

Hades (Switch)

This is an isometric story-based roguelike with perfect controls, beautiful graphics and an incredible amount of depth. I predict we’ll see this one on many game-of-the-year lists and rightly so: it’s a wonderful game that offers something to players of every level but gets really, really good as you learn to master it’s many systems. I became lunatically addicted to this when it came out and had to put it aside since I was playing too much, and just yesterday I started it up once again and found the lure is still there…

As I said it was a year of great games, and honorable mentions go to Metroid Dread, Monster Hunter Stories 2 and Bravely Default 2. In addition I replayed quite a few games this year – Diablo 2 Resurrected alone saw me spend >200 hours on it! – and Slay The Spire (from 2020) remains dangerously addictive. I also bought a lot of rereleases (on Switch) of older games that I’ve yet to sink much time into but intend to.

And I can’t end without mentioning I passed 3000 consecutive days of Puzzle And Dragons logins. Not only is it the game I have played longest in my life, but it’s almost certain no other game will ever challenge it for that title…

What will 2022 bring? Flashy new graphics on a PS5, or another year of (for me) Switch dominance? Come back in a year to find out 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Games, Otaku | 5 Comments »

Star Wars Man

Monday, November 22nd, 2021

I used to buy loads of Star Wars figures then stopped for well over a decade. The last few years though, my eye has occasionally been caught by a random figure. Here’s every one I’ve bought in the last 3 years:

For some reason, I have always associated Gamorrean Guards (and Bib Fortuna) with my brother! I’m not saying I think they look alike, but when we were kids he got certain figures and I got others, and I think it’s possible that he got the guard in those days! These are of course the big pig dudes at Jabba’s palace from Jedi, and have always been a striking alien design.

This is a fantastic figure; quite possibly one of the very best Hasbro has made. It was not widely distributed either, and I think I got lucky finding one. I’ve got nothing but praise for this one.

This guy was discounted at a local grocery store, and if you’re wondering who Quay Tolsite is then join the club! I knew he was in (the film) Solo, but had to look him up to find he was a Pyke (his alien species) who ran the Kessel spice mines. That’s pretty much all that’s ‘known’ about him, which means he’s such a z-rank Star Wars character that even the expanded universe has ignored him 🙂

This is a good figure of a visually interesting character, but I wouldn’t have bought it if it wasn’t discounted. Like the film, most people could care less this guy exists!

Ewok figures – when we were kids – were very exotic! They were humanoid, but short and fat and their silhouettes were quite different from most of the range. I liked them but only ever had one since most of them came out at the very end of the original line and were poorly distributed (especially in Oz).

I bought Paploo here because he wasn’t another Darth Vader or Rey or Luke! It’s a decent figure with surprising articulation (says the dude who won’t open it!) although the paint could be better. But… it’s still just a slightly above average figure of a forgettable character, which once again raises the question of why they bothered making it!

IG-11 was the assassin droid with an amazing role in the first two episodes of The Mandalorian. This guy in no small way helped sell the show at least as much as Din Djarin himself, at least until Grogu showed up.

As a kid I loved my IG-88 figure and droid figures in general, and this one was a no-brainer buy when I saw it for sale yesterday. It’s a fantastically designed and painted figure especially for it’s small size. I almost wish I could open it…

Ah good old Sheev Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, aka The Emperor. This was the dude that almost every single Star Wars film is actually about: he was behind the scenes in every film, pulling the strings of just about everyone. I’m a big fan of the character, and think some of the best scenes in the entire Star Wars series feature him.

This is a magnificent Emperor figure, showing him in the middle of his ‘zappy zap’ lightning attack against Luke in Jedi. He even comes with replaceable hands with lightning blasting from them! The face sculpt is amazing (his face is only about 6 mm high) and the paint application equally impressive. The only thing that could have made this better was if they made it an ascendant emperor version (from his fight against Reylo in Skywalker). Of the five figures here, this is probably my favourite.

I’ll end this with a wish. As I said I like droid figures, and there’s a few particular aliens that always catch my eye. But if Kenner makes a Jedi Luke in his black outfit from RoTJ with as good a face sculpt as Sheev here I’ll buy it as fast as that final scene in the last season of The Mandalorian brought a tear to my eye 😉

Posted in Collecting, Otaku, Toys | 1 Comment »

Pokeos

Saturday, November 6th, 2021

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 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Food, Otaku | Comments Closed

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