Robot Claw – Page 17 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Roadtrip: Ice Cream!

August 10, 2025

Today we drove up to the Ben & Jerry’s factory in northern Vermont for a factory tour. Photography was forbidden, but we got a good view of the factory from above and saw ice cream being made and packaged. Obviously many of the machines are automated now, and it was cool watching the process.

The sample flavour we got to try was ‘Half Baked’ which is a mix of chocolate ice cream and brownie. I didn’t try it (of course) but I had a sample of mango which was delicious.

They have three factories worldwide (two in Vermont and one in The Netherlands) and while they have 80+ flavours only seven are made in this location, to the tune of 400,000 pints a day. Amazingly enough they ship ice cream worldwide including to Australia! If you’re in Oz and get some Ben & Jerry’s from the supermarket it may have been made here.

Outside they have a comedic ‘graveyard’ of retired or failed flavours including the three very short-lived ones above. The biggest failure they ever made was ‘sugar plum’, which sold only a single pint in the first three weeks it was on sale! Apparently the popcorn ice cream was delicious, but suffered from the popcorn getting soggy too quickly 🙂

The drive was lovely, through the mountains and past ski slopes of northern Vermont. We half expected this part of Vermont to be quiet this time of year but it’s the exact opposite, with lots of people out enjoying the sun and the views.

We’re staying in an interesting motel with a bowling alley and mini golf course, and our room has a loft! A relaxing place to write a few postcards and watch trash on tv…

A weird thing we noticed today was the presence of Jaws merchandise in a few shops we stopped at, including T-shirts, stickers and even the above Vermont scratchie! There’s no link between Vermont (a landlocked state) and Jaws so we can’t really explain this.

Ramen Universes Beyond: Pokemon

August 9, 2025

It’s time to truly bend the rules with this licensed ramen review, since today’s product isn’t even ramen!

It’s a cup tteokbokki, which is a Korean sortof soup with rice cakes instead of noodles. This one is spicy flavoured. As you can see it’s Pokémon branded, and each cup contains one of 30 different Pokémon stickers.

The above shows the contents; a bag of rice cakes and a seasoning packet. To prepare, both are mixed in the cup with hot water and then the cup is microwaved. Here’s the finished product:

Of course I didn’t try this (Korean food is way too spicy for me) but KLS loves tteokbokki and said “This in the ok category of instant tteokbokki”. So it’s a good thing it came with a bonus sticker:

That’s Pokémon #906, known as Sprigatito in English, Naoha in Korean and Nyahoja in Japan. It’s a grass cat type that can mesmerize people with its pheromones!

I purchased this for KLS in NYC at a Korean grocer, and since they had two different flavors I got both. Here’s the other:

She said this one – which was plain flavour – was a little better. Here’s the sticker it came with (and how the sticker was packaged):

This sticker isn’t numbered, but is Pokémon #131, Lapras, who has the same name in English and Korean (and Laplace in Japan). This is a famous Pokémon since it’s been around for over 30 years now.

Have you tried instant tteokbokki? If not, and you see these ones in a shop, you may want to give them a go. Maybe they’re not wonderful, but you’ll get a cool sticker 🙂

The World Of Bootleg Chinese Waifu Cards

August 5, 2025

I bought this a couple of weeks ago:

It’s a box of ‘Goddess Story’ cards. These are Chinese unlicensed ‘waifu’ cards featuring girls from anime and video games. Some refer to these as ‘Goddess Story TCG’ but they’re strictly for collecting only: there’s no game element.

Here’s a pack:

And here’s the five cards that were inside:

From the top left, we have characters from Love Live, Oreimo, Needy Streamer Overdose, Gundam and Demon Slayer. All the characters featured on the cards are from existing properties – 24 in total are represented in this box alone – and none of them are licensed. These cards therefore exploit the (lack of) Chinese copyright laws to use the artwork without credit or payment.

The cards are extremely high quality. They’re all glossy and well made, most of them have some type of foiling and the rarer ones are embossed and have very fancy foil effects. Even the most basic cards feel better in your hands than a Magic The Gathering card, and this quality belies the bootleg nature of this product, and is one of the reasons it’s become so popular.

There’s six levels of rarity in this box, shown above. Rare cards (the lowest rarity) are not foiled, but all the others are. The four levels about CR (SR, SSR, SER & SCR) are textured with embossing effects as well. Apparently SCR cards are very rare, and I was lucky to get even one in my box (which I haven’t finished opening). Can you identify the characters/series on the above six cards?

I first heard of these during the pandemic, and saw them available on places like Etsy about two years ago, although I felt they were overpriced at about $5 a pack. When I was in Australia earlier this year a shop at Charlestown Square was selling individual packs at A$14 each (!) which was eye-opening, so when I saw on Amazon a price of only $13 – for an entire box of 30 packs – it was time to buy in. I was so impressed I quickly purchased a few more:

Only one of these boxes cost more than $20, and it was only by a few dollars. Each of these are different sets, although the bootleg nature of the product makes it difficult to determine in what order these were released (there’s no dates and the set codes are inconsistent). Furthermore the box I have opened contains some cards not listed on the checklist at the back of the box.

At this point I’m sure some of you are shaking your heads (“He bought ten boxes?!?”) but these scratch the itch of opening trading card packs, are very cheap, and the cards are shiny and pretty! I’ll be opening these packs for years 🙂

I’ve been buying these on Amazon, and the vendors usually send bonuses with the orders. To my surprise this has included promo packs and the included cards are shown above. I like that two of these are tarot cards. Imagine the difficulty of assembling an entire deck!

And then there’s the above. It turns out other Chinese companies are releasing similar products, and I’ve bought a few of them as well to evaluate. These were a little more expensive than Goddess Story and seem to promote themselves as higher quality cards with fancier treatments (including heat-sensitivity, glow-in-the-dark and gems). As you can see I haven’t opened any of these yet; I’ll save them for a special occasion!

I’ve got over 300 packs of Goddess Story cards now. Want some? Let me know 🙂