Toys « Robot Claw

Archive for the ‘Toys’ Category

Birthday Aquisitions #4: Figures

Thursday, March 16th, 2017

I’m a sucker for a good figure, as you probably know, and in that regard the birthday didn’t disappoint. They were a common gift item from a few people.

I haven’t opened any of these yet. I’ve still got some work to do with a new curio cabinet before I’m ready to populate it, so all these photos are boxed.

I had thought the chance of new Guyver figures was about zero for years now, so when Max Factory announced Figmas a couple of years back I was pretty happy! Female Guyver is the second in the line and pretty snazzy. There’s actually two versions, with the other being purple and based on the anime appearance.

I’ve posted about Aegis before, and she’s still a favourite of mine! This incredibly cute not-a-Nendroid (also from Good Smile) was a gift from JF! I’m looking forward to getting this one out and putting her next to her twin sisters 🙂

Now this is amazing. It’s my first Tamashii Nations figure, plus it’s a cute goth girl and she’s wearing dress/armor based on Gore Magala from Monster Hunter. Basically this is an ubër-otaku figure right up my alley. Also… it needs some construction! When I open and make her, she’ll get a dedicated post.

Florence got me this! She knows I’m a bit disturbed by René Auberjonois famous changeling from DS9, but not so much that I’m not proud of my very own! So now I have two, and this one even has legs!

I’ll never open this one by the way. I wouldn’t want to ruin the value 😉

Posted in Blog, Games, Miscellaneous, Models, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

Air Powered

Sunday, November 6th, 2016

It was time to assemble the Lego kit I’d gotten for my birthday. It’s a Mercedes Benz ‘Arocs’ truck with a pneumatic crane. Even by technic standards this is a complex kit. The manual alone is over 400 pages!

The kit is made in five broad parts: the chassis with gears, the pneumatic crane, the cab and the bed. The gearing mechanism is dazzlingly complex and requires careful assembly.

It’s also quite large. Here is the complete chassis (sans wheels) shown next to a rather large house at for scale:

The pneumatic system is even more complicated, and we’re not trivial to assemble! Many times I thought I’d attached the wrong hose to the wrong nozzle, or feared that once I’d finished it wouldn’t work and I’d have to take it apart. For this kit, that’d be a nightmare!

This is a real pneumatic system, which means the kit includes an electric pump that pushes air through these tubes to power pistons. It’s amazing just how much functionality they’ve worked in (four pistons and dozens of tubes) and how the kit is designed to fit all this in the crane itself. Here’s the truck 75% finished, only needing the cosmetic parts added (the cab and bed). Until this point, I’d been working for maybe 6 or 7 hours.

The remaining sections were easy by comparison, but that’s not to say they were simple. The mechanism to tilt the can forward was particularly nice. Here’s the finished kit in ‘road ready’ mode:

And here it is with the supports out, bed up and crane functioning:

All the functions you see above are controlled by the motor and switching system (via the astonishing gearing). I was very relieved it all worked first go 🙂

It’s a beautiful, massive, complex (and yes expensive) kit and was enormously fun to put together. Highly recommended 🙂

Posted in Crafts, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech, Toys | 3 Comments »

Con Haul

Monday, October 31st, 2016

I’m shamelessly borrowing a post format from AW here; everything I purchased at the local comic con I attended yesterday. I arrived with $106.50 on me, and left with nothing! Here’s the swag…

A pack of Voltron tattoos from 1984. The guy that sold them to me (from a mostly full box) seemed surprised when I said I’d use them. ($2)

Three packs of trading cards. As should be obvious by now, I can’t pass up non-sports cards. At $1/pack these were a bit pricey though. ($3)

A stuffed stegosaurus. I bought this for KLS from the girl who made it. This is actually the second one I’ve bought over the years, although this one is cuter and fatter! ($7)

A Japanese money box ‘sound bank’. I haven’t opened it yet. I think it’s a tiny bank that plays a sound effect from Super Mario Bros. when you put coins in. ($5)

Loads of comics. The average cost was just under $0.50 each. I tend to gravitate to non superhero stuff pre 1990 if possible. That’s the first eleven issues of Indy! ($14.50 in total)

An Avalon Hill fantasy board game from 1979. Yes it’s complete, and yes it will be played. The rules seem delightfully complex! ($10)

A fat Rilakkuma thing. I overpaid for this, but it was my white whale in a UFO catcher in CA early this year. Plus it’s cute! ($40)

Dungeons & Dragons lite-brite set (from 1983). Yes it’s unopened and yes it will remain that way! How could I have passed up such a curiosity! ($15)

Not a bad load of loot is it? For those keeping tabs this totals to only $96.50. What about the other $10 you ask? That was the admission fee.

After a string of disappointing years the con roared back this year and impressed me to no end. Next time I’ll be sure to have more cash with me 🙂

Posted in Books & Comics, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Toys, Trading Cards | 2 Comments »

Rogue Friday

Friday, September 30th, 2016

Today was ‘Rogue Friday‘, which is the day that merchandise for the new upcoming Star Wars film Rogue One hit stores. Obviously I had to go and check things out.

Apparently Toys’R’Us opened at midnight! Of the five stores I went to, they were the most disappointing so I suspect anyone that did arrive at midnight may have regretted it…

Target seems to have made a bigger deal out of it, with signs on the doors, this display just inside the entrance and…

…a whopping big (cardboard) AT-AT towering over the toy aisle endcap! They had the most new stuff by far, with all sorts of toys, costumes, models and Lego kits.

I don’t know much at all about the film, having only seen the trailers. It’s my intention – as I did The Force Awakens – to go into it as spoiler free as possible. Even so, these toys give a little glimpse at what’s to come 🙂

That’s the Walmart display, or at least some of it since they were still setting up! Happily I found the new Rogue One trading cards there, which made me a happy nerd 🙂

My last stop was probably the best, and that was (surprisingly!) the Disney Store. They had oodles of exclusive stuff including some very nice diecast figures. I bought the hell out of this one:

No I don’t know this character, who appears to be an R2 unit but is called C2-B5. He looks like a baddie with his dark paint, but then almost everyone does in this film. My guess he’s a lovable rogue of a droid 🙂

So it was a pretty good day of Star Wars toy shopping; certainly better than I had expected. In addition to C2-B5 I bought a couple of figures, a bunch of trading cards, some kitchenware (!) and a few other things that may end up as gifts.

Now the hype can really start for the film!

Posted in Miscellaneous, Movies, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

Con Swag

Tuesday, October 20th, 2015

We bought a bunch of stuff at the con. Here’s a selection:

That’s issue 1 of a magazine that ran for only 3 issues back in 1967. It’s basically a girls romance comic with some ‘true love advice’ and articles about dreamy male celebrities of the era. Some guy was selling scads of all three issues of this, probably found in an abandoned warehouse.

KLS bought this disapproving cat plush. I think it’s disapproval is due to it being the smallest and cheapest plush we bought at the con 🙂

I got these 4 old D&D Modules for a song. To my surprise, one of them is a single-player version that uses invisible ink to hide the events! Only two squares in the entire book have been inked in. I wonder if the remaining ink still works?

Autographed Chris Achilleos art, now framed and on my wall. The guy I bought this from (I also got an Achilleos poster) knows the artist, and was telling me how friendly and gracious he is. He said he had another print somewhere in his voluminous stand, and I was hopeful for some FF or DW art, but alas he couldn’t find it 🙁

More art, this time a lenticular Miku poster. See how her blue matches the colour of my study wall! We bought a lot of art at the con, from posters to prints to autographed works. Much of it is already framed and up on our walls (or KLS’s office wall).

Speaking of Miku, here’s the con-exclusive Nendroid they were selling at the Good Smile booth. It’s super cute, and somehow ended up leaving the con with me 😉

KLS purchased this tiny ‘sea bunny’ resin figure direct from the artist. It is based on the recently discovered ‘sea bunny’ species of nudibranch slug, which looks like this:

So cute! We stumbled upon this fortuitously, since the artist was only there for an hour and only selling 25 of them. I guess he’s somewhat famous since the person in front of us was very excited and had some of his other stuff for him to autograph. He was friendly and seemed genuinely happy people were buying his stuff.

Last but not least, could this be the find of the show:

All 36 packs, unopened! A world of spice and worms and Gom Jabbers and Kwisatz Haderachs just waiting to be uncovered! Plus there are stickers too. Even though they are already 31 years old I’ll let them age a bit before eagerly ripping into all of them…

…unless you want a pack for your very own self? If so, let me know in the comments.

Posted in Art, Gamebooks, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Toys, Trading Cards | 2 Comments »

Robot Claw