Archive for the ‘Toys’ Category

NYCC 2015 Day 2

Friday, October 9th, 2015

 
Three shots taken from our hotel room which costs an arm and a leg and boasts a ‘deluxe city view’. The view earlier this evening during a heavy rainstorm was quite stunning. 

 
I’ll get the obligatory ‘insane lines’ comment out of the first. Yes the lines are insane and yes it can be frustrating but as old hands we knew what we were in for and endure it calmly like saints… but Christ there’s a lot of people here! 

 
That’s KLS getting her lips glittered. From the hundreds of exhibitors you can buy almost anything: it’s not all comics and toys. There’s actually a surprising amount of vendors selling clothing (mostly costumes), wigs, contact lenses and cosmetics. KLS bought some eyeliner from this booth last year, loved it, and was happy to find they were back! 

 
I particularly like the guys selling the ‘vintage’ collectibles because you never know what you’ll find. Take the above shot: a view master reel next to nazi memorabilia and a vintage Star Wars toy. Wonderful! Occasionally these sorts of vendors have some treasures like this: 

 
Which pales next to some of the ‘serious collector’ comics on offer, such as this: 

 
There are also a dozen or so original art dealers, from which you can buy the original art created for comics over the years. It’s a bit daunting browsing their wares though, when tiny pieces of art run into the thousands! 

 
No real comment on the above, other than its about 60 cm tall! 

 
That’s the sort of thing I would have gone berserk for as a kid. Not only does the set contain 12 gargoyles and 6 titans, but it’s also got 12 dragonriders and a mind-boggling 40 demons!! The fun I would have had πŸ˜‰ 

 
I wonder if this prototype shown at the Kotobukiya booth is a Force Awakens spoiler? 

 
The last silly item photo of the days goes to these perler bead faces of Stephen Colbert. Each (that’s 2 different items) costs $400 and is (much) smaller and in fewer colours than the one I made of Bernard earlier this year…

On to cosplay! As usual it’s everywhere, and sometimes you feel like you’re in the minority not being in costume. The eye-catcher at the show so far is this massive Hulkbuster that towers over everyone and is build around a sort of power suit the guy inside is wearing: 

 
You can see how popular it is! Here’s a shot of him putting the whole thing on: 

 
Impressive as it is (and it really is), I tend to prefer quirky stuff like this: 

 
Or creative (and pretty!) stuff like this: 

 
I don’t even know who she is cosplaying πŸ™‚

We’ve also spent hours walking ‘Artists Alley’, where hundreds of artists display and sell prints of their work to the public. Much of this is comic-related, but there’s also a bunch of other genres and themes and a good amount has made its way into our bags destined for our walls at home.

Tomorrow is the big day, and the only day with panels we are interested in (we missed the Rebels panel, which was held too soon after opening yesterday). Assuming we beat the lines and get wristbands hours ahead of time, we may even be able to sit in on panels with (omg) celebrities! I’ll swoon with excitement! Wish me luck πŸ˜‰

NYCC 2015 Day 1

Thursday, October 8th, 2015

  
That’s the sun rising in the fog as we rode the train to NY this morning for another (our 8th?) comic con. You know the drill by now, legions of people, otaku madness, great exhaustion, much excitement. 

And so it started again! 

 
We only had to line up for a half hour or so to get in, but the crowds are truly massive. Once inside it started off on a pretty high note, as I lined up to get my very own Yugioh token card made: 

 
I think I nailed the pose didn’t I? 

 
Usually seeing this piece of remarkable art made entirely of Jelly Beans would be quite a thing, but here it’s just one of an endless cavalcade of spectacles. One minute you could be checking out a display of costumes from the upcoming Warcraft film, next minute you could be digging through old comics or getting a wrestlers autograph and the next moment you could be shopping at a stand that only sold Star Trek merchandise: 

 
We saw all sorts of amazing figurines… 

 
We saw fine art, action figures and stuffed toys… 

 
We saw amazing cosplay: 

 
Really amazing cosplay: 

 
Old toys… 

 
And even an incredibly expensive pack of trading cards: 

 
It was a long day, and even after 6.5 hours we know there’s still much left to see (not to mention panels etc.)

But day 1 was a big success πŸ™‚ 

 
The giant Monster Hunter cat? That’s KLS’s birthday  gift πŸ™‚

Force Friday

Friday, September 4th, 2015

Today was ‘Force Friday’, which was the heavily marketed release day for the first toys from the upcoming Star Wars film. It was a bit of a big deal, and while many shops had midnight launch events I stayed in bed and waited until after work to spend my cash. 

 
Everywhere I went the in-store advertising was abundant, with special props going to Target for their full size animated BB-8 droid (lower left in the photo) as well as the way they replaced some of their register belts with Star Wars scrolling text belts: 

 
I’ve always been a Star Wars fan. It has never waned, and I can’t deny a tremendous anticipation for the new film. I’m also a sucker for merchandise of all sorts, and spent a few hours today driving around several stores since there seemed to be different stuff everywhere.

So what did I buy…? 

 
That’s the boring stuff. Two action figures, a mini model of one of the new Tie Fighters, and a placemat πŸ™‚ 

 
Slightly more interesting was that balloon. I bought it since I hadn’t seen (and liked) the Drew Struzan art on it πŸ™‚ 

 

Those are ‘collectable game pieces’ sold blind in packs of five. The games is a bit like dominoes but we love the fact they are magnetic! With the addition of a few tiny little magnets our fridge will now be covered in flashy Star Wars hexagons! 

 

Avoid the blind-packed micro machine toys. Even at $2 they are terrible. The one shown is The Force Awakens heroine Rey on some sort of speeder. 

 

Dog tags are always fun! I guess this confirms C3PO to be in the new film.  

 
The less said about the above the better…

…but wouldn’t it make a fine Christmas gift? 

 
This was my second favourite purchase of today. One thing I was surprised by was how much new merchandise of all sorts there was – not just Force Awakens stuff. These Lego kits are based on the old Bionicle style and look great, but Grievous is far and away the best of the bunch. 

 
My favourite purchase was this children’s meal set, which will now be added to our cupboard alongside five (!) other SW meal sets dating back to ’99 when Episode 1 came out!

Look at that plate! Look at the cereal bowl with Kylo Ren and Phasma on it! And what about the First Order Tie Fighter on the cup?! Lovely stuff all of it πŸ™‚

As I said: lifelong fan! 

 
That’s something I didn’t buy: a $150 four foot talking Vader model. Pretty cool eh?

There’s one item though I should have bought, and probably will, and that’s the new Lego First Order Tie Fighter. I guess I just love the black and white design too much!

So readers, what did you pick up on Force Friday?

Another Robot Dinosaur

Sunday, June 28th, 2015

It was time once again to reach to my giant pile of unmade plastic model kits and remove another for assembly. The lucky kit this time was:

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Another ZOID! I’d bought this kit about a year ago after falling in love with the design, but I was a bit daunted due to it’s size (easily the biggest model kit box I’d ever seen). But I’m no amateur! Here’s what I found inside:

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That so many pieces right there, somewhere over 700 divided amongst an astonishing 47 different runners in at least 9 different colours! This would be a fun build…

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There’s an in-progress shot. I used the same old tools I always have, only this time kept a bottle of glue handy just in case. In theory I wouldn’t need it since this was a snap-together kit. The ipad you can see played mostly Amiga or ZX Spectrum longplays off Youtube while I assembled, which was done in approximately 2-3 hour sections over a period of about 6 weeks. As with most kits of this type assembly is done in sections: head, breast, torso, legs and lastly weapons.

Here’s the completed head:

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Menacing isn’t it! The mouth opens and closes, the spines on the crest and lower gun are posable and the entire upper half of the head opens to reveal the cockpit (the driver looks out through the green glass eyes). Very quickly I learned that this was no beginners kit and I needed to take things slowly, and a few steps during the head construction were technically difficult. The whole thing took maybe 90 minutes and contained an amazing 71 individual pieces!

The breast and torso were next, and a real pain at times. The kit is designed to a very high level of precision, and there is little ‘wiggle room’ for the sections when they all come together. Joints are quite tight, and some even lock together when you put the pieces in. This means you need to pay very close attention during assembly since it can be challenging to take pieces apart if you make a mistake.

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I managed to avoid any major problems during assembly, but if you look closely at the completed breast section above, you’ll see two flexible pipes protruding out the back. These would eventually connect to the torso section once they are combined, but (since the instructions are all worded in Japanese) I did not notice they had to be trimmed from their original length to precisely 87 mm and had to do a bit of disassembly to fix this after the fact πŸ™‚

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The front and rear legs are both made in pairs (left and right being reflections of each other) and were the most fun parts of the kit to assemble. Each are highly articulated and at the same time look very stocky. Each of the two legs shown in the above picture have 45 pieces in them.

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This particular ZOID is (apparently) a heavy weapons platform (almost literally) and the weapons are the last part of the assembly. From the left you see some sort of beam weapon (let’s call it a ‘linear wave motion cannon’), some sort of mass driver projectile weapon and a conventional chain gun. The mount on the lower right connects the weapons platform electronically to the cockpit. Often in kits like this the weapons are a bit of an afterthought, each consisting of a few pieces and mostly secondary to (and in some cases not even attached to) the main figure.

Not so here! Weapon assembly is a full quarter of the instructions, and they are just as complex and have just as many parts as the main kit sections. The wave motion cannon for instance (big grey thing, lower left) is articulated in three places, and contains an amazing 37 pieces.

Here is ‘Dark Horn Harry Special’ once he is all finished and assembled:

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Another shot showing scale:

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All told I’d say it took me about 10-12 hours to assemble, and was one of the most finicky and difficult kits of its type I have ever made. 99.9% of the joints were snapped-together; I only ever used one single tiny drop of glue. Perhaps due to the challenge – and certainly the design – I immensely enjoyed making this kit, and think he looks great on my bookshelf where he will now live.

Next though I think I’ll move onto something a bit easier. Didn’t I have a HG Gundam somewhere in that big pile of unmade models…

The Fabulous Owlbear

Friday, May 22nd, 2015

First, read this post Adam did on his blog.

I’ve found a similar example. Here is the owlbear (an owl-bear hybrid monster) as illustrated in the first ever AD&D Monster Manual from 1978:

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I have a copy of this book. It’s the 6th printing, from 1980, and was owned by KLS long before I met her. The owlbear in this version of the monster manual looks like this:

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Fabulous isn’t it! It’s the only monster in the book that has been coloured in, but we can only dream she had done more as a child πŸ™‚

Speaking of the owlbear… what’s this picture?

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Interesting isn’t it? A few years ago it was revealed that some of the unusual monsters in AD&D were based on plastic toys. You can read the full story here (with more wonderful pictures). Based on the toy, and the supposition (which seems reasonable) that the toys were bootleg Ultraman monster toys, it’s obvious the owlbear is nothing more than… a kappa!

The kappa is a japanese water spirit which has a very rich mythology. Here’s an illustration done by Hokusai (famous for his The Great Wave Off Kanagawa) in the early 1800’s:

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You can see the resemblance to the toy.

So what of the Ultraman connection? Japanese sentai shows often base their monsters on mythology, and it’s almost certain there is an early Kappa-based foe in one of the first few Ultraman series. I did a search and could only find one before 1978, a kappa-influenced alien named Tepeto in an episode of Ultraseven from 1967:

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Not very owlbear-like is he?

So my guess is the original kappa designs (such as Hokusai’s) influenced the chinese toy which influenced the owlbear in AD&D.

What of the owlbear today? Here’s the latest illustration:

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A bit literal isn’t it?