Robot Claw – Page 2 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Happy Halloween

November 1, 2025

Yesterday was Halloween, and for the second year in a row we went to Jessica’s place since our neighborhood seems to have aged out of kids and hers is the exact opposite.

Decorations this year feel muted compared to previous years, and I imagine this is because of the economy. The giant skeletons and inflatables (shown above in the front yard of a house near us) in particular are very expensive and a non trivial investment for once-a-year use.

The house just down the street wasn’t daunted though, continuing with their habit of custom-made lawn decorations. Here we have a skeletal Beetlejuice with the sandworm (from the films) and yes it’s as big as it looks. A vast amount of effort went into this creation.

That’s my work Halloween ‘outfit’ – a $5 Twilight shirt from Five Below. I imagined the shirt would be a bit dated for my students but that wasn’t the case and I got a few asking why I didn’t have on a Jacob shirt 🙂

Upon arrival at Jessica’s she revealed she had (accidentally?) purchased two copies of this ghost cat shirt, one of which was gifted to me, so I suppose I had two ‘outfits’ this year.

We got a lot of kids. I kept count actually, and more than 175 knocked on Jessica’s door. We had about 600 pieces of candy so we were well-prepared, but for about an hour they came thick and fast and it was hectic keeping up with them!

For obvious reasons I don’t photograph the kids, but I made an exception for the above since it was an adult and since she claimed to have made the entire outfit (of a character from the horror game Five Nights At Freddy’s) herself.

Amongst children who wore costumes (about 90% of them) the five most popular (in order) were princesses, skeletons, spidermen, ninja and clowns. Runners up (with more than a single examples each) included witches, K-Pop Demon Hunters, Ghostface (from Scream), Harry Potter, black cats, Minecraft, cheerleaders, Bluey, bananas, soccer players, Chucky, the clown from Terrifier, ballerinas, Vampire Diaries, basketball players, Fortnite and Disney characters.

And lastly there were dozens of costumes only represented by a single child, including Captain Hook, Taylor Swift, a ghost, Reed Richards, an explorer, a pilot, a race car driver, a rocket, Michael Myers, a robot, a taco, a demon, the Grim Reaper, a bee, a ladybug, a deer, a doctor, red-riding hood, a ghillie suit, Skibidi Toilet, a murderer, Barbie, a flower, a bat, Princess Leia, an M&M, Freaky Friday, a devil, the Winter Soldier, Iron Man, a gingerbread man, a crazy cat lady and two dozen or so other characters I couldn’t identify.

In short, a fun night.

That’s the house just across from Jessica’s and they go all out with the yard with projectors and animated lights. They counted kids as well and got 207, and even though they are literally across the street the reason they got 20% more is that all these lights are irresistible for 5 year olds hunting for candy so they walk right past Jessica’s!

Maybe next year we’ll put a few lights up in her yard…

New Japanese TCGs (Part 3)

October 28, 2025

It’s time to open some more packs of Japanese TCGs, all purchased during my trip either last year or this recent summer. Most of these are new expansions for old games, but some are brand new games as well.

Shadowverse Evolve is a physical card game based on the digital Shadowverse card game. This expansion – Duet of Light and Shadow – was released in April 2024 and is the 9th of now 18 expansions for the game (they seem to release about every 2 months).

The cards are attractive, which is unsurprisingly considering the games heritage. There were eight cards in the pack, three of which were foil (the three on the left side of the bottom row). The most unusual card was the knight card at lower right, which was made of thicker card stock:

I wonder if this is some sort of avatar card? Surely it doesn’t get shuffled into a deck since it would stand out.

Shadowverse released a switch version which I enjoyed a great deal, and I hope the sequel gets a translation. I’ve never played this physical version but when I was in Japan last year there was an event in Akihabara that drew enormous crowds. It seems to be a successful game in Japan.

Speaking of successful games, Duel Masters continues to be Wizards of The Coast’s most successful game in Japan, outselling Magic The Gathering. These two packs are from recently released expansions.

Duel Masters has been around for 26 years now, and actually began as a manga (which itself was based on Magic The Gathering)! This card game began in 2002 and has to date received nearly 100 expansions. Two attempts to launch the card game in English markets have fizzled, but it remains one of the most successful card games in Japan.

The first photo above shows the cards in the left pack, and the one immediately above shows the right pack. I played the English Duel Masters when it was released and I remember the game world and ‘story’ being fairly insane and this card art seems to suggest that hasn’t changed.

I buy Duel Masters boosters every time I visit Japan since they are cheap (~¥100) and because the special rarity cards are amongst the prettiest in any game. While this example I pulled from the second pack is dazzling, it’s still well below the most incredible cards I’ve pulled from boosters in the past. This seems like a fun game.

Here we have two Kamen Rider Battle Spirits expansions, one very recent and one from a year ago. I’ve opened Battle Spirits before and I knew these cards would impress.

The above are from the left booster pack. Battle Spirits cards are plasticized and feel like thin credit cards. The print quality is exceptionally good, with super detailed artwork created just for the cards. This is clearly a product aimed equally as much at collectors as players.

I’ve read that each expansion introduces at least one new mechanic which is strongly supported by the new cards, so the game evolves with every new set. This is another game with organized play in Japan that must be interesting to watch since nearly every expansion is based on a licensed property.

The high-rarity cards are very pretty. In these two packs I got one textured foil and another with a sort of spiral foil design that rotates as you tile the card. It’s a shame that a much bigger-selling game like Magic can’t implement these types of foils since it makes the cards feel very special.

We’ll end today with the first three expansions from the new Quintessential Quintuplets card game. This game debuted last year, and I believe five expansions are now available.

Each pack has five cards, and three of the cards in my first booster (volume 1) used manga art! I won’t say this looks bad, but it’s an unusual choice given that they do apparently have enough high-resolution colour art to use.

One card was foil, and the effect was a bit lazy since it was simply a background. But looking close I noticed even the manga art seemed unusually high-resolution, as if it had been redrawn.

That’s the second pack, and again the quality of the art jumps out. Games based around anime often suffer from the curse of simply using screen grabs that are not of adequate resolution to look good on a card. That’s certainly not the case here. Look closely and you’ll see the foil also has a flower effect in the background.

This game is based on a manga/anime about a man that tutors five quintuplets and eventually marries one. The catch is the story begins with the wedding, but since the girls are identical we don’t know who he chooses until the very end. It’s wholesome and very well written and was a massive hit a couple of years ago.

I’m a big fan of the story (the manga is one of my favourite completed series ever) and these cards are very attractive. I can see why this has been a success in the relatively short time it’s been out, and I’ll probably purchase one each of the expansions after these as well.

Candy Making Saturday!

October 25, 2025

The seventh and final installment in this candy making series is another kit by Kracie: this sushi kit. Egg, tuna and salmon row sushi, all made of candy. Let’s go!

No surprises with the kit contents, although the dropper is unusual. The black packet on the bottom contains the ‘seaweed’.

This was a pliable solid that was flattened and would become the seaweed wrap for the salmon roe. I nibbled a tiny bit and it had a fruity taste.

The rice was interesting. Once again it was simply powder mixed with water but this time it formed a sticky and somewhat grainy clump that at first glance easily passed as rice.

The egg and tuna were jellies formed in these two trays. The bottoms of the trays were textured, as you’ll see on the photos of the finished product below. They nailed the colours of both of these and they convincingly look like egg and tuna.

The amazing moment from this kit was the creation of the salmon roe. A powder was dissolved to form a red liquid which was then dropped into a tray containing another dissolved powder in which it solidified! The individual eggs could then be removed and used as the roe.

The final step was to create beds of rice on which to play the egg/tuna/roe. This was easy and the final products look great.

The salmon roe sushi in particular is a work of art! That’s all candy, and 100% edible! And I made it myself 🙂

This stuff was all delicious. The texture was perfect (mostly gummy but the rice was chewy) and the tastes were all fruity. We didn’t plan this, but this final kit was the best of the seven both in terms of fun to make and how yummy they were to eat. All the thumbs up for this one!

And that’s it for a week of candy making. I hope you enjoyed this, since we did. And you can bet if we find any more unusual (probably Japanese) candy making kits in the future we’ll be buying them as well!