Happy 25th wedding anniversary to us!
Let’s take a trip down memory lane with photos that run from 1992 until just a few weeks ago…
Silver Jubilee!
July 23rd, 2018The (Long Awaited?) Can Collection Post!
July 15th, 2018I’ve threatened this one a few times over the years: a post about my can collection! I’ve covered some of it before, so I won’t mention them here today. This is the rest of them 🙂
Incidentally I’m not a collector of cans. Im not like these guys! I just keep some every now and then…
I started with the above since I drink the damn stuff every day :< The can on the left is some weird camouflage design, and the one on the right was sold in 2012 to market a Batman film. Both are about 50% taller than normal cans.
Similar to the above, tiny and narrow Lift cans from Oz, and a tiny Fanta can that was in stores last year to (bizarrely) market the new Mummy film!
This set of 8 was out way back when the first Avengers film released. We bought lots of Dr Pepper to get them all, and I recall pouring lots down the sink. I believe I saved three of these sets; and think I gave one each to AW and BS?
I believe the above were for Avengers 2? Again Dr Pepper, but this time I couldn’t get them all because some were only on regional flavors we never saw in shops!
And then they continued the madness with Batman vs Superman…
And Wonder Woman. As you can see I didn’t complete either, again due to the difficulty of getting the weird flavors.
Actually Dr Pepper movie cans have become a bit of an annual thing, although the contrast on this years Jurassic World cans left a bit to be desired:
Again… I only found half of them 😐
Moving away from endless Dr Pepper a while, here we have a lovely Dragonball can from Japan, a customized Coke can that was part of a promotion in Australia, and two game-related energy drink cans.
Here we have Evangelion coffee and a special Hakone-themed beer can (bought in Hakone) both from Japan.
And a variety of additional Japanese cans, including AKB48, Frame Arms and Queens Blade (my only ‘gamebook’ can!). Most of these are energy drinks, and all are the tiny half-sized cans.
Here’s one from 2012: a Michael Jackson Pepsi can! It’s oversized and nicely designed.
And continuing the music theme, three Pepsi cans I bought recently. I don’t drink Pepsi and neither does KLS, so I poured all the contents down the sink…
And I say I’m not a collector! Actually to be completely honest, after photographing all this and making this post I’m wondering just why I keep this stuff? Yes some of the Japanese ones are nostalgic souvenirs (I recall exactly when I bought the Dragonball one for instance) but Michael Jackson?!?
At least they don’t take up too much space 🙂
I’ll end by saying I’m a little disappointed there hasn’t been any additional Star Wars cans released since 1999, especially considering the annual Dr Pepper series. Surely consumers would prefer a Porg can to one with ‘Stiggy’ on it?!?
Fire Power
July 8th, 2018I’m right in the middle of my summer class, which is busy and time consuming and very tiring and the reason for the infrequent posts.
But last week was July 4 which meant – once again – crackers! This year we invited new Doctors J and Y to share our backyard extravaganza and it was a lot of fun.
We let off about 70 fireworks over two nights, but I kept a few back just in case a certain someone who hasn’t lit a cracker in decades visits in a few weeks…
Air Port Panic
July 8th, 2018In Inverness, a quick search on the information superhighway led me to a used game shop only a few hops and skips away from where we were staying. Of course we wandered over, and found a most intriguing and messy little shop full of records and games.The walls were decorated with album sleeves, mostly examples of 1970s Top Of The Pops ‘cover girl’ compilations like this:
There were loads of records and singles, and even a few cassettes. Disorder was the name of the game, and actually finding anything specific would have been a matter of luck. And yet I reckoned there were treasures in the boxes, and had I not been overseas I may have dug a bit through the vinyl.
Happily the games were sorted, but unfortunately 99% of them were 16 bit or older. I spied a few old Spectrum and CPC computer games, and may have even purchased them if they hadn’t been lacking their sleeves. There were no signs of actual 8-bit computers, or magazines from the 1980s. It looked like I would depart without making a purchase.
And then I saw this:
Its an LCD handheld from 1982! The last game in Bandai’s LCD Solarpower series to be precise, and one of the very few released outside of Japan. I’d never heard of this series of games before, and was intrigued to find that they rely completely on solar power to run.
The Japanese box (mine didn’t come with the box) also shows how it has two layered screens for a very subtle 3D effect. This works well and makes the screens look busier than in the Game & Watch units from Nintendo.Unfortunately the technology requires actual solar power, and doesn’t function at all under artificial lighting!
Furthermore, it’s incredibly difficult to get good photos due to how reflective the screen is, but here’s my best attempts:
Air Port Panic is ridiculously difficult to the point where I suspect it’s slightly buggy. The action seems to lag the processor slightly and you seem to die moments before being hit by a projectile. But this can be accounted for somewhat, and success – reaching the hijacked plane in screen one and reaching the terrorists in screen two can be achieved with practice.
Sadky it’s not much fun, and not just because of the stupid difficulty. You also need to be standing in direct sunlight to play, and even then can hardly see the screen. I can see – impressive tech aside – why Bandai didn’t beat Nintendo in the early 80s handheld wars 🙂
I paid a mere £15 for this gem, which is considerably less than I see then for on eBay. As a game I’ll rarely return to it, but as another for the collection it was a happy find!
A Few Gamebook Reviews
June 30th, 2018My Gamebook collection ever expands, and while I still mostly pursue the fantasy RPG style of book, I’ve recently acquired a few unusual ones based on licenses. Here’s a few reviews…
Dinobot War was written by Dave Morris (author of countless other gamebooks) and released back in ’85. It’s for kids obviously; short, linear, predictable and with terrible art. It’s also nonsensical with the ‘plot’ involving Dinobots, time travel and Disneyland probably having taken at least half a lunch break to devise. Arguably not worth the $1 I paid, although the Achilleos cover is nice.
Another book based on a cartoon series and also released in 1985 Snowmen Of Hook Mountain is even simpler and easier than the Dinobot book. I beat it (by retrieving the ‘Thundrillium’) after only two selections, and my playthrough didn’t even include Hook Mountain or any Snowmen! This one cost me a few dollars – $5 maybe? – but probably isn’t worth that.
R.L. Stine is famous for his Goosebumps series of kids books but early in his career was a prodigious author of gamebooks. This is yet another one based on a cartoon and is one of many GI Joe books. Operation: Mindbender (1986) tells a story of a brainwashing plot by a Cobra lackey who wants to usurp Cobra Commander. I don’t know if he succeeds or not since in my playthrough I failed. The writing is leagues better than the previous books and I imagine this one would be fun for a young fan of GI Joe.
There were several Indiana Jones books released and this one, Eye Of The Fates is the oldest book I review here from 1984. In the story you assume the role of a child who (of course) helps Indy find a mystical artifact. My playthrough ended anticlimactically – with a conclusion that suggested the mystical eye didn’t even exist – so I can’t explain that bonkers illustration. It’s fast paced and reasonably well written, but ultimately forgettable.
This book was an incredible find at a thrift store in Scotland. It’s one in a series of He-Man books from 1985 but unusually this was the only one that is a gamebook, the others being normal novels. Furthermore it’s got a simple system of dice-rolling (compared to the choose-your-own-adventure systems of the others books I describe here) and is hardcover and full colour. The story is crazy and it’s (possibly) impossible to fail to win by actually killing Skeletor! A fun little book and a lucky find.
This is one of only two James Bond books and is one of those weird licensing oddities since it’s based on A View To A Kill and not the entire Bond series. The story is based around a portion of the film (the horse-doping) and is short and frankly boring. But the art is spectacular and if nothing else the book gives us a little more information about Grace Jones’s May Day character. Given that these books are a little pricey now, this is strictly for collectors only.
And that’s it for now. But I own several other licensed gamebooks and if you’re interested could do another post like this. Let me know.