Category: Otaku

Star Wars Man

November 22, 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 😉

Pokeos

November 6, 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 🙂

Hexagons!

October 17, 2021

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 🙂

Robot Claw