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20 Minutes Into The Future

Sunday, October 23rd, 2022

I recently bought these:

It’s a full set of Max Headroom stickers from 1986. Although not labeled as such, these were a Topps product and are mostly based on the TV film that introduced the character, although some images clearly come from The Max Headroom Show.

I was surprised to learn these existed since I’d never heard of them, and while wax packs do exist, I can’t find an image of a box anywhere. I have read claims that the set was released in very limited quantities in the USA only, and another online article claims it was sold as sets only (which can’t be true since there exist wax packs on eBay). It’s a mystery!

The first two-thirds of the stickers resemble fairly standard Topps-style trading cards from the mid 1980s, only they would be mostly meaningless to non-fans since the images seem to be in random order and the backs contain no text; instead being dedicated to two large ‘puzzles’ of Max:

The remaining quarter are foil stickers, which are reflective, slightly embossed and very impressive for a 1986 set. However five of them are extremely unusual, especially if you’re familiar with the character:

These look like poses the actor that played Max (Matt Frewer) did to test the prosthetic or perhaps to be digitized for marketing purposes. I’ve never seen these images on any other Max Headroom product and they seem out of place here!

The backs of the foil stickers contain the origin of Max taken from the film:

This is curious for a few reasons. Firstly I don’t think the film ever screened in the USA (and in fact Max himself didn’t catch on here until about a year after the rest of the world) and secondly it doesn’t say much at all about Max himself! Once again this would have been a confusing product for non-fans.

These didn’t cost me much (<$20) and the stickers are in perfect condition so it’s a fun curio for my collection. I’d love to test and see if a sticker still worked, but I don’t have any doubles so I’ll never know. Likewise I doubt I’ll ever know the true history of this weird product. Do any of you remember these from 1986?

Posted in Collecting, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Retro, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

The Box Of Treasures

Sunday, September 25th, 2022

This came in the mail the other day:

It’s a box from Adam’s sister (let’s call her AC) in Japan! It’s a large box and had been traveling for almost 3.5 months! It was sent surface mail which could be the topic of a blog post in and of itself (but I shall save for another time).

The box was a big surprise, and I couldn’t wait to open it. But never in my wildest imagination did I expect the contents:

Look at this pristine condition burger box from McDonald’s! Back in April Macca’s Japan had a Shin Ultraman collaboration which featured the return of two chicken burgers which would be sold in Ultraman boxes. AC sent me two of these boxes! Aren’t they beautiful 🙂

But it didn’t stop there! Inside the box was also three of the special Ultraman branded plastic cups, also from McDonald’s. These are even prettier than the burger box and have immediately become the stars of my ‘Ultraman fast food packaging’ sub-collection!

I don’t know any details behind the acquisition of these items – AC included limited commentary in the box – so I assume she went to McDonald’s herself and purchased a Shin Chicken Tatsuya burger with accompanying McFizz Aomori Fuji Apple beverage. And yet the burger boxes are absolutely spotless and look unused… did she have a black market connection? However she obtained these, I appreciate it.

If you’re not aware, these items are in collaboration with the brand new Shin Ultraman film that opened in Japan in May. I want to see this film more than any film that ever existed but it hasn’t yet been released outside of Japan so I continue to wait. I’m guessing Amber saw the movie, since the box also contained this extraordinary item:

I believe this is a cup purchased from a Japanese cinema! The side of the cup features the movie logo, and underneath it says ‘fantasy special effects film’ just in case you’re one of the handful of Japanese movie-goers that hasn’t heard of Ultraman! The cup is large and the Ultraman on top – in his Spacium Beam pose – is large and dynamic. This is an amazing item that will proudly be displayed on my shelf for ever!

And this wasn’t everything in the box. There were a few other Ultraman items, an extraordinary hand towel (that you’ll see in a future post), a clear file (how did AC know I was planning an upcoming clear file post?!?) and two more incredible Gotochi postcards including this one:

I need to go back to Japan so I can send some of these special postcards myself…

Thanks AC; this box was like Christmas coming early 🙂

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Food, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Postcards | Comments Closed

Ramen 19: Stop In The Name Of Ramen

Tuesday, August 16th, 2022

No soup this time, but a few more ramen-adjacent items I’ve acquired on my travels.

I bought the above in Australia. It was one of those things that come ‘free’ with a Japanese magazine, and is a Cup Noodle ‘purse’ (based on the photo of the girl using it as a purse). Naturally it’s an insane item to use as a purse, so I’m displaying it here as a ‘ramen carrier’. It’s a nifty thing, with nice printing in and out and a cute fork-shaped zipper pull. Of course I have no actual use for it 🙂

Here’s another ‘noodle stopper’, displayed in the intended position. This is now my second such figurine, and was a prize from a (type of) UFO machine in Sydney. Sue watched bemusedly as I loaded $1 coins into the machine at a good clip, and I’m sure she shared my joy when it only cost me $52 to ‘win’ it. Naturally I’ll never use it to steep noodles, and it will live happily on my shelf forever.

This last item was a surprise! I’d never seen a noodle stopper for sale here, so when I saw this double pack at Kino in NYC a couple of months ago I had to have it. Here’s a closer look at the contents:

A cute pair of noodle stoppers, and it even comes with a fake ‘cup noodle’ for them to sit on! These are of course sisters Ram and Rem from the anime Re:Zero (which I’ve never watched) and are amongst the most licensed characters in animation these days. The pair cost me less than the previous figure. So I have four noodle stoppers now, who sit on the edges of shelves. I think this is enough 🙂

Next installment some more chicken noodles. Stay tuned…

Posted in Food, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

LEGO Dagobah

Sunday, August 7th, 2022

In the previous post I referred to a pile of unopened LEGO kits in our house; it was time to make one. This one:

For me, this is the best of the three Star Wars dioramas they have released and I bought it as soon as I saw it a few weeks ago. And apparently it jumped to the front of the line as far as assembling kits goes 🙂

Here’s what was inside:

Exactly 1000 pieces apparently. When I opened it I didn’t pay too much attention to bag #3, but more on that later…

As with most LEGO kits these days it is built in stages, and the pieces for each stage are collected together in the same bags. This makes the build easy and fairly fast (in total it took me about 3 hours).

For the first few steps it feels like building a mosaic, with a lot of small pieces going into the flat base. And then you reach bag 3 and this step in the manual:

Yep, place 177 flat 1×1 transparent green tiles! I think this must be the largest amount of pieces I’ve seen in a single LEGO step! Thankfully the bag contained exactly 177 tiles and it was easy:

The next step built most of Yoda’s house:

What you can’t see is a cute touch: there’s a lightsaber hidden in the ‘attic’. While this obviously wasn’t in the movie (The Empire Strikes Back) it’s reasonable to assume he had it with him when he fled to Dagobah!

After the final steps – adding trees and the X-Wing – the diorama is complete. And it looks great! Here’s a detail of Luke ‘do or do not-ing’:

What an amateur he was in those days… he couldn’t even lift an X-Wing 😉

This is the ideal sort of LEGO kit for someone like me that makes these and displays them on shelves. I like it even more than I thought I would and am now considering the other two. And with so many iconic scenes in the Star Wars films I expect there’ll be more dioramas on the way.

Posted in Collecting, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

My Collection: Nintendo 64

Sunday, July 17th, 2022

As a followup to the SNES, Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 (N64) in Japan in mid 1996, and in the rest of the world in 1997. Even at the time it was an unusual choice for the system to use cartridges for games (when the industry was moving to discs), and this ultimately doomed the console to lose in the market against the PlayStation.

I got my N64 early, since I had befriended the guy who ran the game company I would in time write reviews for, and he brought me back one from Japan in 1996. I had exactly one game for it, Super Mario 64, but this was such a groundbreaking and important game that it hardly mattered. I played it nonstop.

When the US version was released nine months later, I had to modify mine to play American games. Luckily this was a trivial process (I had to open the system and remove a piece of plastic) and I then had an N64 that could play games from anywhere in the world. Despite this I only ever bought one other Japanese game – Sin and Punishment – which was also fittingly the last N64 game I ever bought (in 2002).

As I mentioned this was a system hamstrung by the choice of cartridges. It was technically competent and had a great controller – the first true analogue controller for a home console in fact – but gaming was maturing from simple 2D graphics and games needed far more data storage. Publishers faced the choice of inexpensive CDs for PlayStation versus expensive cartridges for N64 and it’s unsurprising the discs won. As a result the N64 was the last non-handheld console to use cartridges until they returned for the Switch over 20 years later.

I only ever bought about 25 N64 games, and traded many of them in in the early 00’s when EB Games offered too-good-to-refuse prices. My remaining collection is above. Despite the small number of games there were some true classics on the system, including Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, which is a wonderful Zelda game that pioneered many advancements that countless games utilize today such as lock-on targeting and a user-controlled camera.

Ultimately though this system must be remembered as a failure which lost Nintendo control of the industry. It’s followup – the GameCube – didn’t do well either, and it wasn’t until the phenomenal success of the Wii that they would return to the top of the market. I loved the N64 when it was the current system (I always preferred it to the PlayStation), but in retrospect it’s unquestionably my least nostalgic Nintendo console.

Which is one reason why I’m now saying goodbye to mine. I’m about to sell another large chunk of my collection, and will this time say goodbye to my NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube games (and hardware). Lots of memories will go with it all, but the time (and price) is right and I feel comfortable parting with it. I hope the next owners get as much joy from the games as I have over the years 🙂

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Games, Otaku, Retro, Tech, Time | Comments Closed

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