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‘Imaginary Skeleton’

Sunday, April 17th, 2022

It’s time for another model kit, and yes I know this means two in two days.

This is a new Bandai Imaginary Skeleton kit of a tyrannosaurus. As soon as I saw this I knew I had to have it! (The omission of ‘rex’ from the name is likely due to this kit being an imaginative depiction of what may have been three separate species.)

The kit is notable for almost every piece being the same colour! It also has the biggest piece I’ve ever seen in a model kit (the base, see photos below) and is also one of the biggest kits I’ve ever made.

In addition to an instruction manual (in colour and with English instructions as well as Japanese) the kit also contains this 10-page booklet with the latest science about the tyrannosaurus. For instance, it shows how back in the 1900s we thought tyrannosaurus stood up like kangaroos but now we know they more likely lean forward and are feathered.

The head shown above contains ten individual pieces. While the kit doesn’t need glue, I used a bit here and there to keep the connections nice and tight.

From the booklet I learned that the head of a living tyrannosaur weighed about 500 kg, and had a brain that was unusual large compared to mammals. From this scientists believe they were more intelligent than most mammals, especially related to hunting since they had well developed vision and smell. Their longest teeth were 30 cm and had a serrated inside edge like a steak knife.

Look how long that tail is (and the kit in general)! The tail itself was nine pieces, but the rib cage was many more since each rib pair was a separate piece.

On the underside of the ribcage is a smaller inverted riblike structure called a ‘gastralium’. This supported the internal organs and itself was connected to a bone called the pubis which was likely used for support when the tyrannosaur lowered itself to the ground, since it was probably unable to lie down.

It was once believed that the tyrannosaur was clumsy and even slow, and as a result probably ate carrion. But these days we have a better understanding of the physics of the skeleton, and most researchers agree that tyrannosaurs were in fact agile, and could possibly even leap to attack prey (which this kit depicts). This was a creature up over three times the mass of an elephant that may have been agile and intelligent!

These beasts lived in North America about 66 million years ago. This was the last days of the reign of the dinosaurs, and some theorize that the tyrannosaurs were ultimately unable to achieve their full potential due to premature extinction. In other words, for as fierce a predator as this thing was, it may have only been a prototype of something even more deadly!

I love this kit. It’s easy to build, looks great when assembled and comes with a lot of interesting information. For a dinosaur-loving child, this would be an incredible gift.

Posted in Animals, Crafts, Models, Nature, Otaku, Science, Time | Comments Closed

Retro Wax Packs (Part 1)

Sunday, April 10th, 2022

In the 1970s and 80s, trading cards were packaged in waxed paper that was folded and heat-sealed. The term for such packaging is ‘wax packs’ and generally refers these days to any package of trading cards sold before 1991 (when the last wax pack was used). Importantly to me, all the cards of my youth were sold in wax packs, so these are very nostalgic for me.

Recently I bought a bunch of unopened wax packs from the 1980s, and over the next month or so I’m going to open and blog them all. Let’s start!

Robot Wars (Fleer, 1985)

This is a set of game cards, cashing in on transformers and scratch-off lottery tickets, and conceptually similar to the Super Mario and Zelda cards I have previously blogged.

The pack contains three game cards that no longer work since the scratch-off material has solidified (and I mean solidified; it’s like obsidian)! I expect children would have enjoyed these back in the day though. There’s also a sticker in the pack, but it’s in less-than-perfect condition due to a quirk of wax packs – the gum:

Almost every wax pack – and certainly all of them targeted at kids – contained a stick of gum. Over the 35+ years the gum has at worst become brittle and cracked to pieces or at worst become greasy and moldy. In most cases it’s just a solid inedible stick that has cemented itself to the card it was adjacent to. Removing it usually causes damage, as you can see above.

Incidentally there’s an internet rumour that this ancient gum has become poisonous and dangerous to eat. This is nonsense: it’s mostly just distasteful or extremely bitter. I’ve eaten some before, and I learned then never to eat it again 🙂

What about the ‘win a robot’ contest? Well it was a write-in, as detailed above. I wonder if anyone actually did this and won, and if so what happened to the robot?

Superman III (Topps, 1983)

This is the one with Richard Prior, and definitely not one of the better Superman flicks. But Topps, which had enjoyed in the years before massive success with the Star Wars cards, followed their formula and made a great set here.

The cards are nicely designed with good printing and a lot of action scene for the kids (from a film with a lot of ‘boring’ comedy scenes). The backs are nicely written too:

In addition the pack includes the usual sticker, and these were the days when Topps die-cut their stickers, which from a kid point of view made them just that bit better:

The gum in this pack hadn’t stuck as much to the card, and the pack itself was very easy to open, so I can show just what one of these wrappers looked like unsealed:

Unsurprisingly the wrappers themselves are collectible, and some of the rarer ones are worth big bucks these days in good condition.

Robocop 2 (Topps 1990)

We’re close to the end of the wax pack era, since 1990 was when Topps both moved to plastic and abandoned the gum. We’re also more than ten years after the first Star Wars set, but Topps was still following their standard formula here with Robocop 2:

The eagle-eyed amongst you will note scenes from the first film amongst these cards, and this is explained on the back with a little comment that the set ‘Includes highlights from Robocop’s first adventure‘.

Ah, the 1980’s, where companies didn’t think twice about releasing trading cards for kids based on ultra-violent R-rated films 🙂

Cyndi Lauper (Topps, 1985)

In 1985 Cynthia Lauper was 32 years old and at the peak of her fame. I wonder what it was like for her to open a pack of trading cards all about herself?

The cards themselves are just ok, with underwhelming photos and the usual Smash Hits level factoids on the back. For fans though, I expect these were a real treat.

The stickers are die-cut but a bit ugly (or maybe just very 1980s). That said I’d still love to stick one on a postcard now, but I know from experience that if you peel a 35+ year old Topps sticker off the backing it’ll never restick! As with most sets of that era the backs of the stickers can be used to form a large picture: a nice use for the card even if you remove the sticker.

The gum in here was very unusual. This is the first time I’ve seen a wrapped piece of gum in a wax pack, and it was branded as well! I’ve included the joke from the wrapper to give you a belly laugh…

Indiana Jones (Topps, 1984)

While generically named, these cards are based on Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom, the second film in the series. This is the only pack I’m showing here today that I remember buying as a kid. And just as I’m sure I did then, I’m very impressed with these now.

The cards are wonderfully designed with great stills and the adventure style font compliments the pictures well. The backs all describe the action and preview the name of the next card (once again following the formula they perfected with the Star Wars sets):

Back in our Australian youth we often got the cards before the films, so almost everything in the movie was ‘spoiled’ for us. But it didn’t matter, and in some ways made the films even better since we were seeing the pics from the cards in motion. And afterwards, in an era without internet or video, our cards were a convenient way to relive the movies.

I bought two packs of these cards (and they weren’t cheap at $8 each, but unopened packs from Raiders are much harder to find and often more expensive) and in my second pack got the title card shown above.

The stickers from this set are amazing and once again I wish they still worked. I wonder what I did with the ones I got as a kid? The picture you can assemble from the sticker backs is shown at the right: and as a child if I collected the cards I would have made this and glued (yes glued) the cards onto cardboard to turn them into a sort of mini-poster!

What do you think of these sets? As I said there’ll be more in future weeks. I wonder what other treasures I managed to get my hands on…?

Posted in Blog, Celebrity, Collecting, History, Miscellaneous, Movies, Music, Otaku, Retro, Time, Trading Cards | 3 Comments »

The Land Collection

Sunday, March 13th, 2022

In the card game Magic: The Gathering (MTG) land cards provide the resources to play other cards. They’re ubiquitous and in the eyes of many players, boring. They are like the batteries in the toy: essential but often taken for granted.

The simplest type of land is called ‘basic land’. There are five of them – one for each colour – and they’ve been around since MTG launched back in 1993. And since I got back into Magic about 15 years ago I’ve collected them!

Its always been an informal collection: I just liked the art on them and made a point to keep one of each aside. In time I put them in a binder, and started seeking one ones I didn’t yet have. Over the years the binder grew and grew until it got almost too heavy to pick up, and a change was needed. These past few weeks I’ve sorted all my lands, sleeved and boxed them and had a good look at them all. This post shows off some of the collection.

The above are examples of some of the oldest and newest land cards I have. On the left we have a ‘beta’ card from 1993 and on the right an example from the latest set Kamigawa: Neon Destiny. It’s obvious how the design has updated on the nearly 30 years between them, but it’s notable that these two cards are identical as far as gameplay is concerned.

The above shows the progression of design of a Forest land from 1993 until 2020. You can see the various phases the basic design transitioned through, including the removal of the text describing how to use the card, which occurred relatively early on in the history of the game.

Here we have an assortment of promotional cards, most of which are foiled so they shine with a rainbow effect. These cards are obtained via in-store promotions or by attending events or – as with most of these – by buying them on the secondary market. None of these cost me more than a dollar or so, but some are worth five or ten times that now.

The above shows examples of non-English lands. MTG has been printed in 11 languages and I have lands in most of them (I think). The middle top card is an unusual exception: this is swamp printed in ‘phyrexian’ which is a (fake) language in the MTG universe.

Speaking of events, the above were all given to me by Adam, and are signed cards that he obtained from the artists at various events he attended. The middle one is heavily ‘altered’, which means the artist drew over the art with paint pens, leaving only the name of the card visible. For most of these artists, I have several different signed lands.

Here’s a unique inclusion: the ‘Florence lands‘! She decorated five lands with stickers many years ago and gave them to me as a gift. For all this time they had been the first page in the binder introducing the collection, and they remain an important and unique part of it. I wonder if she remembers making them?

In 1998, when MTG was five years old, an important and notable thing happened with land cards. In the set Unglued the first ‘full art’ land cards were printed. They dispensed with the text box at the bottom to fill the card with art and were very popular. Subsequent sets would rarely include new full art lands. The above shows examples from Unglued to Amonkhet (in 2017).

Full art lands have become more common in recent years, and the above five examples span less than three years of sets. Some think the island shown above (from Unstable) is the prettiest land card ever printed.

Some more basic lands. I’m a big fan of the black and white versions from the recent Innistrad sets, but many weren’t.

The above are five of the ten full art lands from the recent Kamigawa set. These are done in the Japanese ukiyo-e style and are some of the more unusual (and pretty!) lands MTG has ever printed.

Following on from the above is an unusual addition: these are unofficial ‘proxy’ cards made by fans. I got these on Etsy and they are another ukiyo-e inspired set done by a Japanese artist. The quality of these cards is incredibly high, and they’re almost indistinguishable from a real Magic card. (I’m amazed Hasbro hasn’t shut down people selling high quality proxies…)

The above show some of the more unusual and ‘rare’ lands I currently own. These are all from a type of release called ‘secret lairs’, which are very limited cards sold exclusively online. Unfortunately some of the lairs have contained lands, and since I believe they’re overpriced I’ll likely never obtain most of them. However I couldn’t resist buying a few examples on the secondary market. The top left is a ‘godzilla plains’ and the bottom right from a release that went overboard reverse-parodying the full art design motif.

Speaking of rare, a number of my lands have become very collectible. I have many ‘beta’ land cards, and those are worth $10 or more each today, and as I mentioned above some of my promo lands have appreciated a lot in recent years. But the biggest surprise as I was going through my collection was the current value of the so-called ‘APAC lands’.

These were a set of 15 land cards given to customers by game stores in the Asia-pacific region in 1998. I bought a full set many years ago for not much money (I think about $30) and they’ve massively appreciated since. The two above are worth about $150 each, and may be my most valuable magic cards! (I didn’t know this until a few days ago.)

There’s the whole collection. I don’t know exactly how many I have, but it’s more than 1500. I read recently that there’s been over 2200 unique land cards, so I’m missing a great deal, but I suspect most of them are promos or otherwise-unattainable releases like the European equivalents to the APAC lands.

In all these cards you’re probably wondering, which is my favourite? That’s an easy question, and the answer never changes. It’s this APAC plains, which shows Australia:

MTG is more successful than ever, and the set frequency seems to have increased, with each set bringing more basic lands. It’s a cheap card type to collect, since most players don’t care about the lands at all, so I’m not stopping any time soon. I’ll end this post with some examples of lands releasing in the remainder of 2022. If I ever update this post, you can assume I’ve got (some of) these as well:

Posted in Art, Blog, Collecting, Games, Miscellaneous, MTG, Otaku, Retro, Time, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Monsters In The Woods

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

I recently learned of a folk history of nonexistent wild animals in the area of America in which I now live (the Northeast). Apparently in the 1800s and early 1900s lumberjacks in this part of the world would entertain each other around the fire with tales of ferocious beasts inhabiting the woods, and these tales would in time be spread across the continent, continually modified and embellished with the telling.

The beasts in the tales are distinct from cryptids, since (it seems) few people ever believed they were real. They were more the inhabitants of fairy tales told by grown men, and in some ways this makes them even more curious. Various writers chronicled the beasts in the tales, and some (such as the Jackalope) have become well-known to people even today. But until I read about these recently I had never heard of the majority of these ‘Fearsome Creatures’ (after the 1939 book by William Cox).

Here’s a few of them:

The dungavenhooter was a lizard-like creature that had no mouth but enormous nostrils. It was said to prey on drunk loggers in the state of Maine, and would beat them to death with it’s long powerful tail until their bodies turned to gas, at which point it would inhale them for sustenance! Perhaps this tale was intended to be a deterrent to drunkenness?

The gumberoo was a large creature of the deep woods, often mistaken for a bear. It had incredibly strong, near-invulnerable skin and was voracious, eating almost anything it could fit in its mouth. It was said they could be killed only by fire, and some legends said they turned to fire when they died, which explained forest fires.

The hodag was a chimeric beast with parts from many others: part frog, part elephant, part dinosaur and spikes all over it. This beast ranged in Wisconsin, and was said to be extremely ferocious for it’s relatively small size. In 1893, a local ~~prankster~~ hunter actually killed one (the photo above was printed in a newspaper) and after doubts emerged of the legitimacy of the corpse three years later he caught a living hodag and exhibited it at a state fair! Alas, it was soon revealed to be a hoax. If the hodag exists, it hasn’t been seen since.

The squonk was a small and lonely creature that lived in the forests in southern New York and northern Pennsylvanian (not far from here then)! The squonk was apparently so embarrassed by its ugly countenance that it spent its life hidden and crying in shame. Hunters reported that when cornered the animal dissolved into ‘tears and bubbles’! What an unusual beast.

The snallygaster was a dragon-like creature that inhabited the hills and valleys of northern Maryland. First reported in the mid 1700s, a series of sightings in the early 20th century led to a mini-hysteria to determine what this gigantic cyclopean metallic birdlike creature (sometimes with tentacles) that had actually eaten humans (although this was unconfirmed) actually was. The Smithsonian became interested, and it was reported that no less than Theodore Roosevelt himself became interested in hunting it. Or so it was said, although much like ‘reports’ of many of these creatures these claims too were part of a hoax to sell newspapers.

This is just a tiny example of a menagerie of strange beasts that once walked the imaginations of Americans. In the days when the forests stretched forever and the nights were dark, it must have been easy for a frightened woodsman to imagine that strange call in the deep woods coming from a glawackus, or a hudag, or even a wampus cat.

If you’re interested in more examples this wikipedia article is a good start.

Posted in Animals, The Unknown, Time | Comments Closed

Computer Spot

Saturday, January 29th, 2022

For a few years before I left Australia, my gaming life was all about the PC. Bernard had purchased his first computer in the early 90’s (for an ungodly amount in those days) and even though it was in his room I played games on it every chance I could get.

I mostly played RPGs and strategy games, and this was the era of the SSI ‘gold box’ AD&D series (all of which I played), classics like Eye Of The Beholder and Ultima 7 (thanks, Bernard, for helping me set up a boot disc to run that beast!), the Might and Magic series and… this game:

That’s a postcard for the 7th Wizardry game. I found it the other day while doing some random sorting through stuff we had in a crate. The postcard is in astonishing condition considering it’s age, for it was given out in a store to advertise the imminent release of the game. Remember those pre-internet days when shops were full of catalogues and handouts to advertise upcoming releases? It was fun grabbing all the free stuff and looking through it afterwards. What makes this postcard particularly interesting is the reverse:

Incredibly, this is an original card I picked up myself before the game was released! Some time in mid 1992 I waltzed into Computer Spot in Charlestown and would have grabbed this, possibly when I was there to buy something else. The vast majority of my game purchases were made at this particular store, which was a few doors down from the fish-and-chip shop where I first played Ghosts’n’Goblins and Exed Exes many years before. At this very store I bought the previous Wizardry game, all the SSI games, the Ultima games and a few others like Battle Isle and The Summoner. Bernard bought his flight simulators here as well.

Those were the glory days of boxed PC software, when the boxes were loaded with bonus items (‘feelies’, as Infocom called them) and the box art was wonderful. Computer Spot was loaded with games, and to an avid player like myself it was always fun to go in and browse the titles. For those few years I devoured what would become some of the best PC RPG’s of all time, and I have very fond memories of that era. The pinnacle of the games was Crusaders Of The Dark Savant, a challenging and lengthy dungeon crawl that I was proud to eventually beat, which was no small feat in the time before internet FAQs.

At the time I left Australia Computer Spot was evolving away from exclusively PC games into a general game store as they added consoles to their stock. At some point since then they’ve ceased to be. My guess is, assuming they even lasted that long, that like most stores of their type they didn’t survive the transition to online computer game distribution. I wonder when exactly that Charlestown store that I loved so much closed it’s doors for good?

I used to keep my games in perfect condition fully boxed, and don’t remember what happened to all of them either before or after I left Australia. I imagine I left them with Bernard or passed them on to someone, and they were all eventually sold and/or trashed. I wish I still had my two boxed copies of Wizardry V and VI, but even though I don’t, it gives me a warm feeling inside to know that for some reason I kept this postcard, and even brought it to America with me so long ago 🙂

Posted in Australia, Blog, Collecting, Games, Time | 2 Comments »

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