Category: Toys

Broadway

May 29, 2017

I just wrote a lengthy post but the app I used to blog from my phone crashed and it was all lost! So here’s an abbreviated version…

Yesterday we spent the day at Nakano Broadway mall, a Mecca for fans of anime/games/manga/toys etc, filled with shops that look like this;

And this…

We’ve been many times but it gets better every trip. It’s not for those with shallow pockets though; I think as the awareness of this place has grown so have the price tags!

I saw countless amazing things but none more so than Japanese imprints of the FF books I collect. That deserves its own post in the future though; watch for it!

Broadway isn’t just shops, there’s also a few arcades and lots and lots of gashapon (toy vending) machines:

We love all this stuff. It was a great day 🙂

Gore Magala Girl

May 19, 2017

That’s the figure/kit I got for my birthday. It was time to set it up!

But first a brief explanation. This is a figure inspired by this guy, Gore Magala:

He’s one of the enemies in Monster Hunter, and his armour – once you defeat him and collect enough parts to make it – is very distinctive:

So this figure kit, while not reproducing the in-game appearance of the armour, is inspired by Magala. Here’s the contents:

So many parts! There are several configurations the figure can be displayed in, and I wanted the dress-with-umbrella mode. This required use of the wings, folded around to form each half of the dress:

The problem was… it’s very difficult to assemble! The pieces hardly wanted to go together, and once I got it mostly done I couldn’t get the dress around her.

The archer mode was just as difficult, and since I didn’t want to use glue or modify the pieces I eventually just settled for replacing her normal clothes with the armour…

…and displaying her in ‘dual swords’ mode:

I think I’ll call her Momo 😉

I think I could easily get the wings attached and set up like the image on the back of the box, but I want to finish filling my new curio first to see how much space I have.

Final review: looks great, incredibly (over) engineered, very challenging to assemble!

Lego Bridge

May 7, 2017

I got two similar-but-different kits for Christmas last year. I made them both today. First was this one:

I’d never made one of these miniature scale Lego architecture kits before and to be honest had dismissed them as an ‘executive toy’.

But it was a fun build and looks pretty good once made, especially considering the small size. It was easy and took only a half hour or so to make. But is Centerpoint Tower really black?

The other kit was this one:

I’ve got a bit of a love-hate relationship with nanoblocks. I like the tiny size of the blocks themselves, but feel the engineering needs some tweaking to increase the adhesion between individual blocks when assembled. In other words, these can be too fragile!

They’re also a bit fiddly to assemble. The bridge here in particular was trickier than it should have been and when I accidentally dropped and it exploded I had to start again almost from scratch! Eventually though, I got it done and here it is:

That’s a normal sized Lego minifig for scale.

I like how both kits felt the need to include boats on Sydney Harbour and the nanoblocks kit even went one step further to use the right colours for the ferry. These were quick and simple fun, but here’s hoping my next Lego Harbour Bridge will be some massive technic model 🙂

Robot Claw