Category: Toys

LEGO Game Boy

October 5, 2025

I haven’t bought much LEGO in recent years, but as soon as the above was announced I knew it would be mine. It was released on a workday so I couldn’t go to the LEGO store until after my lectures, and when I got there they only had one left so I left happy. But later on I saw a dozen or more at Walmart so I doubt this is difficult to get.

At 421 pieces it’s not a large set, and it only took me an hour or so to build. It only comes with two stickers (all other labeled bricks are printed) but this is the first LEGO set I’ve bought that includes lenticular pieces:

There’s three of them, and they are the screens. They do a wonderful job of reproducing the iconic colours and draw-in of the Game Boy, and look great in the finished model.

Assembly is easy and fun. There’s many techniques I’ve not seen before used to create a compact model with almost no visible studs. Given the constrictions – it had to reproduce a real product – it’s an extremely impressive design.

The controls all ‘work’. The d-pad can be tilted and the buttons pressed. The contrast and volume dials on the side can be turned, and even the power button can be toggled. Pieces of rubber inside cause the buttons to pop back, and they were very creative using tires placed into slots sideways to make the start and select buttons.

The model comes with two cartridges (Super Mario Land and Zelda: Link’s Awakening) which can be inserted and removed. For the full experience you can exchange the screen as well (which is easy) to match the cartridge.

This is a fantastic kit and it’s truly incredible how well it recreates the original in LEGO. To illustrate, here’s a photo of my original Game Boy next to the LEGO model:

And here’s a LEGO cartridge next to an original one:

An incredible creation by LEGO, and immediately one of my favourite kits of all time. This one will be going on permanent display.

Con Haul

August 26, 2025

Here are some of the items I got at the con. I’m not including the half dozen or so volumes of manga (mostly isekai trash) or the many stationary items (postcards and stickers) since I haven’t yet decided which will be gifts and you may even see a postcard in your mailbox one day.

The above is an English ‘special edition’ of the Weekly Young Magazine, a Japanese manga weekly from Kodansha. This is a hefty (1000+ pages) volume containing the first chapters of 14 series translated into English. Readers can vote on which ones they want to see serialized, but it’s unclear whether this format (an anthology magazine) will continue or if they’ll be serialized online.

This is a beautiful book, printed in Japan and with the same feel as the Japanese anthologies. I had to join a longish line to get one (for free) at the con, and the next day I saw a big pile just sitting around for the taking at Kinokuniya in the city!

This is a vinyl figure of a kaiju that I bought from the designer. The monster itself is from an old (1980s) Korean film which I’d never heard of, but the guy who designed this figure also designed two of the kaiju in the recent Godzilla x Kong film and had a few impressive 3D prints of his work on display. His was a somewhat out-of-place booth for an anime con but I’d been looking for a vinyl kaiju figure and this one wasn’t expensive and scratched the itch.

There were hundreds of anime figures available, almost all of the prize variety. I’ve got loads of these BiCute girls, and picked up the above two at the con. Prices were extremely good – possibly due to competition? – and had I more space I probably would have bought more.

Bandai had a display and shop for Gundam kits, as well as an area where you could sit and make a beginners version for free. I charmed the dude into letting me take one! I like that it’s on a single runner, and will certainly assemble it one day.

I got the above clear file at the Japan Tourist Board exhibit. I was just throwing all the free handouts into my bag and didn’t even notice it was a clear file until I got back to the hotel. It promotes a 2022 short anime that reimagines Japanese castles as transforming robots, which was partially funded by local tourism agencies.

Loads of exhibitors were selling TCG cards, mostly Pokemon and One Piece, but one booth seemed to specialize in Weiss. I’d been considering buying a Weiss box for a while, they had them for a decent price, so I bought this Nikke one. I’ll let it age a year or few before opening.

Speaking of TCGs there were also a few being launched at the con. They all had the whiff of scam about them – companies wanting to cash in on the current TCG mania – but I wasn’t going to decline a free promo card. Maybe I can sell it for a fortune and retire one day. Or maybe not 😉

I’ve put most of ‘the cute stuff’ together. This is what I bought specifically for Kristin, and all of it came from artist alley booths. The envelope with Korean text is a blind pack of animal stickers, and the frog pin was also a blind box item. The bottom left is a capybara coaster. Had KLS been with me we would have purchased much more like this!

Even though it wasn’t a con purchase, here’s a bonus pic: dollar-bin comics purchased at Midtown Comics. I have no interest in recent superhero comics, but always find the late 80s and early 90s stuff a fun read. I wonder which of these will be best and which worst?

Not-LEGO Apothecary

August 18, 2025

It’s time for another ‘brick toy’ set by a LEGO competitor. This times it’s this ‘Medieval Apothecary’ by a company called FunWhole:

I bought this a few months ago for about $60 on Amazon, although the price seems to have gone up a bit since then. I chose this because the reviews were excellent, it includes lighting, and due to its similarity to the medieval blacksmith set from LEGO.

Opening the box reveals a lengthy full-colour instruction manual, 21 bags of pieces, and a box for the light elements. As with today’s LEGO sets, this one is built in numbered stages so you only open two or three bags at a time.

The large instruction book is very nice. Heavily influenced by LEGO, the illustrations are clear and easy to follow, and include elements like alternate angles to make the fiddly steps of inserting the wires for the lights easier.

The light elements themselves are bricks with built in LED lights connected by very fine wires. The finished model has about ten lights in total, and I was surprised to see it’s a single circuit powered by three AA batteries.

While there are a lot of aftermarket sets to add lights to existing LEGO kits, LEGO themselves rarely includes light bricks. My guess is this is due to difficulty: I suspect younger children would find installing the lights in this set quite challenging.

The above shows how the wires are installed in and around the other pieces, and on the finished kit they are mostly invisible. The set contains male and female bricks with matching +/- terminals so the top floor of the building can be removed with affecting the wiring, which is impressive.

The above photo shows the (unfinished) top floor, and you can see three of the light elements have become candles in the chandelier and a flame for a stove.

Even more than the UFO set I reviewed a month or so ago, the bricks in this set feel exactly like LEGO. They have the same grip and are in most cases identical, although there are a few I’d not seen before including ones designed to allow the tiny wires to run under them.

The set includes a few stickers, and these were much better than LEGO. While LEGO uses simple vinyl stickers, this set had decals that are rubbed on and then almost seem like they have been printed on the piece when the plastic top layer is removed. This is exactly what LEGO needs to switch to!

It’s not all as good (or better): since LEGO still has a trademark on their minifigs, the competitors need to design their own and these guys just look a bit… wrong. I’ve chosen to display the finished building without them 🙂

Here it is displayed in our curio next to the LEGO Medieval Blacksmith, and you can see they are the same scale and match nearly perfectly.

The lighting is truly impressive and although I’ll never really use it as you can see it looks great especially in the dark.

Many of the lights are interior and illuminate the well-detailed rooms of the apothecary. This kit has a lot of play value for kids and I would have loved this when I was young.

This is a phenomenal kit. The instructions showcase other sets made by this company and they have some themes – like ‘steampunk’ and ‘wild west’ – that LEGO has barely touched. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I buy more from this company.

Robot Claw