Category: Toys

Rogue Friday

September 30, 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!

Con Swag

October 20, 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.

NYCC 2015 Day 4

October 11, 2015

Since we could only stay at the con a few hours today we focused on one last sweep of the main hall (well, about a third of it) and some last minute purchases.

As always I love the vintage and the unusual, and were it not for getting sidetracked by a pile of ancient D&D modules (all of which I then bought) I nearly purchased a crazy expensive boxed Ultraman villian from the 80’s.

I didn’t buy this though:

Or any of these:

And certainly not this:

I have to say though, I love that someone’s even trying to sell that. Yet another reason this con is so much fun.

I haven’t spoken of our celebrity sightings yet. Aside from the X-files panel, we probably saw fewer this year than ever before, and much of the sightings were like this:

There were also much fewer people signing autographs this year as well, which may have been good because I doubt anyone could have topped the bizarre John deLancie from last year 🙂

Eventually, it was time once again for us to turn our backs on the con and head home.

Since it’s KLS’s birthday today, we had sprung for a first-class room on the train home! It was cozy and comfortable, and came with a delicious meal in the dining car!

Doesn’t she look happy!!

After four long and packed days we’re super tired, but once again we had a great time at NYCC. I’ll follow up in a few days with a post about some of the unusual loot we brought home with us…

Robot Claw