Category: Toys

Selling Another Collection

July 11, 2023

I’m selling my Star Wars figures. I’ve spent much of today getting them ready for sale, and have indeed already dropped half of them off at the shop.

All told I’ll be selling about 530 figures, as well as two dozen vehicles and figure multipacks. They’re all ‘modern’ figures, which means released after 1995. They’re all mint on card, and in fantastic condition.

I started collecting – as did countless people my age – when Kenner (now owned by Hasbro) relaunched the Star Wars figure line in 1995. I collected fairly seriously until 2003, sporadically until about 2007, and then only infrequently purchased any figures after that.

I have fond memories of weekly runs to Toys’R’Us and Walmart looking for new figures. Those were the early days of the internet so purchases were made in person. The figures were very popular and distribution was good so it wasn’t that difficult to get them all. They were inexpensive as well: my records show in the mid 90s I was paying under $5 for each figure!

As the line got more and more popular a silly amount of figures were released, and the quality continued to improve. Then the prequels came out and it felt like a lot of collectors lost interest overnight! The prequel figures were very high quality, but (for some) the films weren’t, and this killed interest.

I kept collecting, but around the release of Attack Of The Clones a pivotal change in distribution began: online exclusives. For me the joy of the hunt was a big part of collecting, and I had no interest just buying them online (or even worse, preordering). At that point, I stopped being a serious collector.

There’s not a great demand for modern Star Wars, and they’re hard to sell, so I’m happy the same shop that bought my games agreed to buy my collection. I won’t get anywhere near what I paid for them, but regaining the space they took up (10 large plastic tubs!) is worth a lot to me.

To end this post, let’s open one! The above is the most recent figure I bought. It’s a 1998 ‘Clone Emperor’ figure, which I bought brand new in Japan this past January for the princely sum of ¥300 (about $2.10)! I already owned one, so I bought it again just to open.

The package has a gimmick, and forms a ‘3D’ backdrop when it opens. It looks… well terrible. I understand that it’s supposed to replicate a scene from a comic but surely they could have gotten some better art? Also this doesn’t look anything like Palpatine. Maybe he’ll look better with the coat off:

Yeah, still nothing like what I think a clone of Palpatine would look like. But we know now such a future never came to pass, and Sheev’s actual (non-clone) return in Rise of Skywalker was much, much better:

I really love that film 🙂

Anyway the next few posts will likely be Star Wars collection related as well, since I’m not selling everything and I also found a few other strange items worth showing off while sorting…

Antipodean Bricks

May 24, 2023

As you know, Australia is a land of ancient mystery and dark secrets. Often on my trips to this Great Southern Land I try to uncover some of these, but I wasn’t prepared for what I found yesterday.

I speak of an entire range of officially licensed and absolutely not bootleg LEGO kits based on popular brands. I was slack-jawed as I stumbled upon these; why aren’t these in the LEGO store in my local mall?

I speak of such things as Deformation Armor:

And Dinosaur Crossing:

And New Hero:

And even Marvelous Aengans:

Note that a couple of them are from a company called ‘666’, which must be some sort of southern-hemispherean LEGO shell company ~~managed by Satan~~.

Anyway I was trying to decide which one to buy when I found this hidden at the back of the shelf:

Holy Moses it’s Ultraman! I purchased it faster than you can down a small frozen coke and scurried out of the store. This, I knew, was a find of the century!

Obviously this is an officially licensed and not at all bootleg LEGO Ultraman kit, and specifically one of four available:

But what’s the subtitle under the ultra logo?

Ah yes, it’s obviously based on the ~~obviously nonexistent~~ ‘Star Body Sucking’ series. This may explain why the included minifigure is a weird hybrid with the head and chestplate of Ultraman Taro, the body design of no existing ultra, and who wields the Sparklence from Ultraman Tiga!

But this is a trifling distraction since I absolutely love this little bugger! Surely he’s now risen to the very top of my collection of officially licensed and absolutely not bootleg LEGO minifigures 🙂

Oh and there was a ‘spaceship’ in the kit as well but it was absolute trash so I binned it immediately.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

April 23, 2023

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai is probably the most famous Japanese work of art:

It was a woodblock print first made in 1831. About 8000 copies were eventually printed, of which about 100 remain. The remaining copies are shockingly valuable now (one recently sold for almost 3 million), but their (relative) abundance means you can see an original in many galleries around the world. We’ve seen one in Japan, and another at The Met in NYC.

And here’s a LEGO kit I bought last week! It’s the second in their LEGO art series, which seeks to reproduce famous works of art in LEGO form (the first was The Starry Night by Van Gogh).

The set has over 1800 pieces, but a few hundred are small flat circles to make up the sky and clouds! You build it in six plates which then go together to form the full image. Here’s a shot before the 3D surface elements are added:

The ‘wave effects’ cleverly use white flower and bird pieces, and it makes a clever illusion of a frothing wave, especially from a distance:

Here’s a comparison between the original print and this set, showing Fuji and some of the fishermen:

About half of the finished piece is the frame (which is optional). All told it took me about five hours to finish, and while a very easy set, was enormously satisfying and relaxing to build. It looks beautiful complete:

It’s designed to be hung on a wall, which I intend to do, but it’s somewhat large and quite heavy so I need to think carefully as to where I’ll place it. I like this even more than I expected I would. I wonder what art sets LEGO will make in the future?

Robot Claw