Robot Claw – Page 202 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Ramen 10: I’m Not Stopping!

September 12, 2021

I’m not reviewing ramen today, just showing off a recent purchase. Specifically this:

It’s a noodle stopper, which is a figurine designed to help keep the top on cup noodles while they steep. Most of us probably use a fork or plate or some other device, but now you can use a cute figurine:

Yes this is a real figure designed for this use. They are made by the Japanese company Furyu mostly as UFO Catcher prizes, although the days you can just buy them on amazon. Mine is Hatsune Miku in a cherry blossom outfit, and I’m astonished at the sculpting and paint job considering how inexpensive she was ($20)! She also sits on the noodles very well and keeps the top nice and sealed while the hot water does its job.

Of course since I don’t want to damage her I won’t actually be using her for this purpose, and instead she’ll sit happily on a ledge in my office to remind that a piping hot cup of noodles is only a few steps away:

Noodle stoppers: an essential tool for the cupnoodologist! 🙂

Let’s Trade Cards (Part 5)!

September 11, 2021

I never imagined that box of random trading card packs I received for my birthday would last six months but here we are. Let’s open the final six packs…

Thunderbirds (2004) was a forgettable live-action remake of the classic 1960s marionette series (directed by Jonathan Frakes!) but the card set confusingly calls it Thunderbirds Are Go which was actually the name of the 1960s film, 1982 Japanese anime series and 2010 _and_ 2015 TV remakes. These cards are about as uninspired as you can imagine: just movie stills with no chase cards. I bet this set was in the budget bin upon release!

When you think of topics of interest to trading card collectors, does The Royal Family (1993) come to mind? This is a somewhat irreverent set showcasing pictures of everyone’s favourite monarchy, with a focus on Diana who was of course still alive when these came out. The cards are fairly well done, with lots of info on the back, and apparently the set features a ‘secret’ scratch off card with a ‘slightly risqué’ picture of Sarah Ferguson on it!

I wouldn’t call Generation Extreme (1994) cards non-sports, but whoever packed the box does so oh well. This is a terminally boring set with photos of ‘extreme sports dudes’ from the oh-so cool early 1990s. Remember when this stuff was all over MTV? I suppose these cards were of interest to the guys featured on them, but for everyone else this set is just recycling material.

Fun fact: I’ve always loved the song Iron Lion Zion posthumously released by Bob Marley but I’ve never known much about the guy himself. This set from 1996 attempts to remedy that, with an encyclopedic amount of info about the man and his life and beautifully produced cards. The set has loads of chase cards as well, including embossed cards and fantasy art versions of the singer painted by Ken Kelly! I was impressed with these cards and I imagine a Marley fan would have been over the moon.

Ah yes, the beloved film Bingo (1991)! I’ve never heard of it, and I doubt many have. Weirdly these are wax-packed (like early 1980s sets) despite being released in 1991, and most of the images on the cards I got are studio shots of the dog in weird outfits/poses. This is an awful set, that I doubt ever had an audience.

Back in the pre-copyright strike glory days of the internet I watched several entire series on YouTube. One of them was the 1970 British series UFO about a covert government agency tasked with stopping an alien invasion. This was – still is – ahead of it’s time and in my opinion remains one of the best sci-fi tv series ever made. This card set from 2004 includes beautifully produced cards on thick card stock and seems to be a precursor of the higher-end collectors series of today. Of all the packs I opened in this box, this is the one I wish I had more of!

And that’s it: every pack has now been opened and showcased here. And yet in the six months it has taken I have obtained a few more packs of cards from other series. Who knows, maybe I’ll continue this series at some point in the future?

Chitocerium

September 6, 2021

It’s time for a new model kit. I don’t often do posts about kits these days, but this one is unusual:

It’s a tiny cat kit! This is one of several kits in a new line called Chitocerium, which apparently means ‘the protectors of the gates between worlds’. Yes it’s silly, but the kits are cool.

This kit is small and inexpensive (about $10) and all the pieces fit in the palm of your hand. It’s an easy one to build, but sandpapering down the flash was a little tricky due to the tiny scale. This segment for instance was made from 5 different pieces:

About a quarter of the total pieces in the kits are tails! There’s 8 to choose from; which one would you pick:

It took me only about ten minutes to assemble, and is very small but can be posed in many familiar cat poses. It’s an extraordinary kit for its size. Here it is next to a LEGO minifig;

As the box suggests this comes in two colours, and the line also includes some extraordinary figure kits of android girls (one of which I have). Given that this is a line from a company (Good Smile) not necessarily known for plastic model kits, I’m impressed.