Today we went out shopping one last time before Christmas. Incredibly, I found (and purchased) these:
More of the accursed things that I am compelled to buy!!! Maybe I’ll complete the set and then give all 50 to someone 🙂
The Christmas shopping is now finished, the wrapping almost complete and I’m also (mostly) ready for my trip. Now it’s time to relax and enjoy the holidays…
Oh and look at this Christmas ornament KLS made out of beads:
It’s wonderful isn’t it?
That’s a shot of a hot wheels car I recently purchased. It’s beautiful isn’t it? Bernard certainly thought so, as he unwrapped the one I sent him yesterday! Looking at the back he saw the other models and seemed to love this one even more:
Maybe I should have sent him all of them?
So you’re thinking “Why did he buy these?” and the answer is quite simply that I don’t know. No one knows. But I did and now they live in the same box as the Star Wars pezzes I showcased the other day…
Now the story should have ended here. But, sadly, there’s more. I went out shopping the other day and beheld an employee putting out new product in the toy section:
OMG! More – different – SW hot wheels?!? I don’t like toy cars, never buy them but once again was suckered by the packaging! (Plus they were only $0.88 each!)
The cars aren’t even anything special! But I dug through the display like a mad ferret and hastily gathered all eight:
So that’s 13 (dreadful) Star Wars themed hot wheels I’ve bought in the past two months. As I delicately placed them into a storage box where they all reside for all eternity I dearly hoped I’d never buy any more ever again 🙂
I thought, since many of you have asked, it’s time to showcase my Pez collection.
What is a Pez? It’s a horrible, horrible candy that I never eat. I really hate them – they taste like medicine to supertasters such as myself. However they are often sold with little sculptured dispensors, and occasionally I have been known to buy them just for the dispensor. Many people collect these avidly (indeed, the pursuit of rare Pez dispensors is what led to the original creation of ebay). I don’t. I just buy them at the checkout line in Wal-Mart every now and then.
Over the years these became a bit of a ‘gag gift’ for Christmas. In the last few years that trend increased as I started giving AW collectors sets every Christmas. Alas, 2014 bore no such set (so you’re safe this year Adam).
But enough blathering, let’s get to my collection:
That’s the first collector set I bought. It was released a few years ago and has characters from the original Lord of The Rings series. It sits proudly on a shelf, never to be opened. I gave this one to Adam and I believe it quickly became his favourite Pez set of all time.
This Star Trek: TNG set is also a couple of years old now. I had trouble finding it at first, and then was never able to find the limited version that replaced one of them (Beverly?) with Locutus of Borg. Again I gave this to AW, and again he treasured it, but not as much as SFL, who surely lists this on top of her list of favourite Pez collectors sets 😉
Last year’s Hobbit set, obviously following on from the LOTR set from 2011, is another that proudly adorns a shelf in my library. Again AW got this one for Christmas last year, but it’s probable that Bernard (who was there) loved it even more than AW since he was heard to bellow “What a grand Pez Collectors Set!”
Many times these past twelve months I daydreamed about what sets they could have done for xmas 2014… Avengers? Guardians Of The Galaxy? Godzilla? AKB48? Sadly, the store shelves remain bare of new sets this year.
Say it with me now: OMG! I bet you didn’t know about the US President series now did you? This is of course an entirely original idea by Pez, since they couldn’t have possibly been influenced by the US President series of $1 coins that started about the same time. Happily, I was able to collect both. (Jokes aside, the sculpting on these guys is very impressive). This first set came out way back, and (as with almost everything in this post) I purchased it on a whim in Wal-Mart one night. Months (years?) passed and I assumed there would never be another. But then…
And (oh my god, why) then…
Yes I have five different sets. These aren’t particularly expensive (I think about $10 or $12 per set) but even so I don’t know why I bought them. Even now I weep a single tear as I see them all on my shelves.
Pause for a moment here to remember I hate Pez candy and will never, ever eat it.
Here’s a C3PO Pez:
And this is a C3PO Pez:
And here, good readers, is a C3PO Pez:
What’s that you say? “They are all the same?” But are they?
Check out these completely different R2D2 Pez’s for instance:
Yep, completely different.
I’ve been purchasing Star Wars pez’s for aeons, and most of them have ended up in boxes destined to be forgotten for ever. It took some time to collect up as many as I could find for this photo:
But I’m quite sure that’s not the extent of the collection. I also suspect there are some I don’t have, since (once again) I never bother to check what’s available, I just buy one every now and then at the store. If you ever see a SW Pez I don’t own, please buy it for me 🙂
So what’s left? Well… nothing. I have no interest in any other Pez’s! I only buy the licensed sets (+ Presidents) and the SW stuff. There’s about eighty-megillion others out there but I don’t care. I’m not a collector of Pez’s. In fact I’ll go further to say I sortof hate them, including the ones I own. And I really, really hate the candy.
So please don’t give me a Pez, since I hate them. Unless it’s one I don’t have from the above series, in which case I must own it 😉
Well my friends it’s been altogether far too long since my last blog post! I won’t list the reasons since they are history now, and truth be told I was holding back a little, since today begins my third ever ‘blog event’! I present to you:
What does this mean? A new post a day, for twelve (very majestic) days! You can look forward to posts about crafts, weird collections of mine, year-in-review posts and even a secret or two (bears??!?).
What better way to start this cosmic event than with this:
Yes, it’s a vinyl record. I obtained this prize from a second-hand bookstore when I was in San Jose earlier this year. Although Bernard saw it first, he was strangely uninterested and I knew it had to be mine! Here’s the track listing:
This is not a music album, this is a sound effect album! None of that ‘Doctor Who Theme’ stuff here, no sir. This is a record for true fans!
Yesterday, I removed the album from the sleeve for the first time, spend about 10 minutes trying to remember how my record player worked, and gave it a spin:
The sounds that came from the speakers were not like anything on this Earth! It was as if I was right there on Exillon as I listed to the sonorous droning of ‘The Central Control Room in Exillon City‘. It was bliss.
But the next track blew me away, and since describing it is almost beyond words, why don’t you listen to ‘The Dalek Control Room‘ yourselves:
And so it continued as I listened to such wonders as the electronic hum of ‘Styre’s Scouting Machine‘ or the astral winds of ‘Sutekh Time Tunnel‘. I was being whisked from planet to planet with each new track.
Side two continued the trend, although the tracks are a lot more uplifting than on side one. As en example, here is ‘The Mandragora Helix‘ in it’s entirety:
Beautiful isn’t it? Believe me when I say the rest of the tracks on the record are just as good 🙂
This album was released in 1976, and I have the US version from 1978. It’s in astonishingly good condition for something 36 years old, and even though I will go to the grave without ever playing it again, it is certainly a jewel in my record collection!
I think these guys may agree with me…
You may recall that a couple of years ago I made a Gundam I had bought in Japan back in 2010. I loved making that kit, and last year during our Japan trip I purchased his cousin. Several weeks ago I decided it was time to put him together:
This is a ‘Master Grade’ gundam kit which means two things:
1) It’s pricey! (I paid about $45 in Japan but it costs $75 or more to buy on import)
2) It’s much more complicated than most models.
Here’s the contents of the box upon opening:
Lots of pieces! As usual Bandai impresses with the engineering. Not only does this piece have pieces painted with reflective gold paint, but this is also the first Gundam I’ve seen with transparent plastic on the same runner as opaque plastic:
The build was meticulous but not particular difficult. I had more trouble with Liger Zero than this guy. The instructions, which were all in Japanese, were easy to follow and the pieces clearly marked, and the superior engineering of the molding meant that removal was trivial and very little filing was needed. Here’s the workspace:
And a couple of in-progress shots:
The articulation is mind-boggling. Each arm and leg has many points, and the hips actually have two settings for action poses. Everything snaps together perfectly as well, and the final kit is incredible poseable and solid. Here’s a shot of the leg before and after the armor is added. You can get an idea of the articulation in the first shot:
I didn’t keep very good track of time, but I’d estimate this kit took me about a dozen hours in total. I didn’t apply the decals or paint it (since I’m not a maniac), but I think it looks pretty good finished:
Here he is on the shelf with his spiritual cousin:
As I like to do – and to demonstrate my inadequacy – I’ll end this with a shot of a heavily customized build of this very same kit. Not only did the person who made this ‘Ieyasu Tokugawa version’ modify some of the parts, he also extensively painted the kit and even applied ‘itasha-style’ floral pattern to the upper thighs. It all looks quite incredible:
My ‘to build’ model stack is now at an all-time low of only two kits: Sengoku Astray Gundam (MG) and the ‘Dark Horn Harry Special’ HG Zoid I purchased a few weeks ago. I wonder which one I will make next…?