Ultraman Vital Bracelet
I bought myself this for my birthday:
This is a limited Ultraman version of Bandai’s Vital Bracelet electronic toy. Think of this as Fitbit meets Tamagotchi. I didn’t know too much about it when I preordered it (for $70) on Bandai’s collectors site, but since my birthday was on the horizon I couldn’t resist.
The bracelet came with a memory card containing five of the Showa-era Ultra’s, and it is these you can take care of in your bracelet.
After putting it on and initializing it my first Ultra was born… and it was a disturbing baby in a swaddling cloth:
Very quickly this child evolved twice into Ultraman himself:
The device has a pulse detector on it and a vibration-based pedometer. However they are both wildly inaccurate and it’s made very clear the values measured ‘are for game purposes only’. Ultraman seems to gain energy as you wear the bracelet, and this powers him up and eventually evolves him into advanced forms. After a week or so mine is now Taro:
You can do missions (fight battles, walk a lot of steps) to power him up, and the bracelet has a NFC chip so you can get in battles by moving a phone near it, but it’s all a bit random and less interactive than I thought it would be. For instance the battles are completely non-interactive, over in seconds and are against other Ultramen. They could have at least added some monster graphics!
I think he will eventually evolve again, and I also think there’s other options that become available when he gets to a higher level, but since there are no English instructions (this is not intended for an English market) I’m going by the ones they translated for the similar Digimon device that doesn’t seem to have as many features as this one. There’s also an app available that somehow connects to the device but it’s not on the US App Store so I don’t have it. Of course these devices connect to each other as well and you can battle your friends, but since I’ll never ever know anyone else with one that feature may as well not exist for me!
So far I have to say this is a cool little toy, and I’ll certainly keep wearing it until I’ve seen more Ultras, but it’s certainly less functional than I expected. Because of that, and since the battery life is awful (it needs daily charging) I suspect the attraction will fade sooner than later.
That said the collector in me likes this thing for what it is, and if I ever see the chips with the other Ultramen on them I may be tempted to pick one up 🙂
Ramen 14: The Endless Parade of Chicken
Its time for more ramen reviews! Yes, the varieties seem to never end 🙂
Nissin ‘Chinese Product‘ (Artificial Chicken Flavor) (470 Calories, 21 g fat, 1980 mg sodium)
This one was a bit of a calorie and sodium bomb, which suggested a robust taste. Everything was fine until the flavor packet was added to the cooking noodles, at which point an unpleasant smell filled the kitchen.
My first reaction to sampling this was that it had a strange seafood taste (which KLS also detected) and tasted strongly of vegetables and nothing at all like chicken. It wasn’t terrible, but I’d never choose to eat it again. An average product: 5/10.
Kasari Kids (Chicken Flavor) (228 Calories, 42 g fat, 492 mg sodium)
This is a cute mini-sized product for kids. I bought this maybe a year ago but it sat in the cupboard all this time since the adult-sized version was awful. I prepared this with trepidation.
Firstly it’s not ramen: the noodles resemble the packet ‘chicken noodle soups’ I used to eat as a kid. Secondly, it had little or no visible flavoring added, with just a smatter of dedicated veggies mixed with the noodles. And thirdly, it had no taste at all. Imagine eating flavorless noodles in hot water and that’s what this was. I have to believe this was a production error since I can’t see how anyone could call this a chicken soup, but regardless my score for this is an easy 0/10!
Nissin Souper Meal (Chicken Flavor) (560 Calories, 23 g fat, 2700 mg sodium)
This mega-sized beast is obviously made for a real man so it was something I should love surely? The noodle brick was bigger, the flavor pack bulging and I chuckled as I poured what seemed like too much water into the massive cup.
Unfortunately, it disappointed. I’ve sampled a few Nissin products so far, and mostly they are average and would be good in a world without Gefen or Maruchan. This one however tasted very different to me: more earthy or even beefier. I found it distasteful, and ultimately this was a product that wouldn’t be to my liking even at half the size. Score: 3/10.
That’s 36 ramens reviewed and I’ve still got some to go, including the most expensive one I have yet purchased. What is it? Stay tuned…