Category: Toys

Two Treasures

  • August 22, 2019

I picked up a bunch of weird stuff during my California trip. Here I’ll show two of them.

This LCD Star Wars pinball game cost me $15 which wasn’t bad considering it was new. A glance on eBay tells me I wasn’t ripped off. The guy that sold it to me made mention of treating it carefully since the plastic packaging had become brittle but of course I was going to open it!

And here it is! Note the poor sticker affixed between the buttons, as if after they made it they realized they forgot to brand it! You’ll also see that the only Star Wars evidence in the actual game screen are the droids on the backplate…

The batteries had of course leaked (it’s 24 years old!) but not seriously and it was an easy clean. I popped two more in and:

It has flashing lights, a vibration function and very, very poor gameplay! Also the game itself has nothing to do etc Star Wars, and I imagine the others in this like (such as a Barbie game) play identically 🙂

A curiosity though, already in a box never to be played again!

Following on, I also bought this for $5 at an amazing antique store in Gilroy:

A European Panini sticker pack from 1983! Panini made gazillions of sticker sets for just about every sport and licensed brand you can imagine and sadly they barely distributed outside of Europe. So I never got any Dark Crystal or E.T. or Pope John Paul II stickers in my youth…

The ‘original’ art stickers in this set are strange and difficult to look at for long periods, but most of the stickers were from the cartoon;

I bought this in the hope of sending you all some He-Man nostalgia via future postcards but the adhesive is too weak after 35+ years and these will therefore remain as priceless additions to my collection 🙂

Oh and even though this post was just supposed to be two treasures… here’s some of the rest of my purchases:

Two Ptimo Kits

  • May 12, 2019

While in Japan back in January I picked this up:

It’s a weird superdeformed Hatsune Miku model kit that I previously didn’t even know existed. Even better it was only about $20! Today I made it.

So far so good, lots of pieces in many colours. However I immediately noticed that the runners were all single colour, that the plastic was somewhat brittle and that there was a frankly unacceptable amount of flash on many pieces:

I usually make kits by Bandai (Gundam) or Kotobukiya (ZOIDS, Frame Arm Girls) and the QC on those kits is so high that I can’t recall ever seeing flash. Furthermore they have multicoloured runners, pieces made of all sorts of plastic (or even rubber or metal) and everything goes together perfectly.

Here, not so much. Assembly was tricky and at times difficult, seams were often visible and due to the brittle plastic a few pins even broke off when I tried to attach pieces. But I soldiered on and in a couple of hours had mostly finished:

Look at those tiny legs! The kit didn’t come with a stand and while I initially assumed the hair would function as some sort of standing mechanism this wasn’t the case. In short, she can’t stand at all and even though she looks ok complete she’s definitely supported by the books in this photo:

Yes she’s cute, even unpainted. But it was a frustrating build, and not half as good as the other Miku kit I made a while ago. But I have to say assembly was fun, if only because I had a helper…

So Ptimo was a bit second-rate compared to the (admittedly far more expensive) other kits I usually buy. Would I recommend them? No. Would I buy Ptimo again? Well… it turns out I already had:

Yes this was another Japan pickup, and yes it is (incredibly) a Rilakkuma model kit! It was newer and more expensive than Miku. Here’s the parts:

Unfortunately this kit had the same flaws as Miku, especially in ease of assembly. Kuma’s head in particular stubbornly resisted going together seamlessly and of course once completed he was incredibly difficult to stand unaided:

But they look great don’t they?!? Though it was a fiddly kit to make, with frustrating imperfections, I’ve got to say I’m happy with them both for the uniqueness. Overall the better of the two kits.

Lastly, speaking of Miku kits, I also in Japan bought the astonishing Frame Arm Miku kit (on the actual day of release no less). This will be my next build and assuming it doesnt disappoint you can look forward to seeing it here…

The Happiest Meal

  • May 2, 2019

I was having a wretched day, suffering from seasonal allergies so bad I want to tear my skin off. Add to this uncertainty about planning/booking our late-semester vacation and the usual end-of-semester-workload blues and it was clear I needed an injection of cheer.

Since it worked last time, the answer was of course a Happy Meal! So here we go again…

Well now, what a coincidence: there’s an Avengers: Endgame promotion in effect! I stifled excitement as I ordered, pulling my head further into my hood so the octogenarian beside me didn’t judge.

“Can I have Thor?” I asked the server?

“You can have two!” he responded with a smile. I hadn’t yet ate and my lunch was already grand!

There’s my meal, which cost a total of $3.26! Not bad for a burger, fries, apples and a drink. Plus you get a toy! As I unpacked all this I could feel my spirit soaring.

There’s something very familiar about a Happy Meal. The tastes haven’t changed in decades and the quantity of food is perfect not just since I eat less now but also because the meal ends just at the point at which the flavours become repulsive.

My burger was notable. Not due to taste or texture, but because the overly dry bun stuck in my half-swollen throat nearly every swallow, thus distracting me from the slightly rancid taste of the overly flaccid fries.

In fact one bite I almost did choke, and as I wildly grasped for my beverage to wash it down I questioned whether Maccas should return to the days of pink slime if only to lubricate their food. I ate on cautiously, reminding myself that no meal – not even this one – was worth dying for.

Iron Man apple slices (acidic and rubbery) soon made the burger a memory, and as I ate I pretended not to notice the pair of obese retirees who were apparently enjoying a lunch consisting entirely of an insane quantity of chicken nuggets. I don’t think they saw me, since I was behooded and half-concealed by the inexplicably (for 10:30 am) overflowing trash receptacle.

With the food gone it was time for the toys. Prepare to be astonished:

Yes my friends, such was my Antipodean charm that I got not one but two toys! There are apparently 14 different ones to collect, all of which have stunningly sculpted likenesses of the actors in the films. Of course lightning-maestro Thor is best, and as you see I got both versions, including him wielding Stormbreaker and the other of him wearing a futuristic suit from… um… what the hell is that weird suit?!?

And it glows?!?! I’ve seen every MCU film and have no idea what this version of Thor is supposed to be, so I’ll assume it’s a glimpse into Phase Four…

I didn’t forget to punch out my Avengers security card before leaving, and as you can see the entire food + toy experience had definitely turned my frown upside down. It may not have been the best lunch I’ve ever had, but I can say in all honesty it absolutely was the best lunch I had today…