My Collections

March 17th, 2024

For over ten years now, I’ve been making periodic posts about my game collection. This update indexes all those posts. Some are yet to come, and will be updated with links when I get to them.

Note that as of this index, most of the collections I’ve posted about over the years have been sold. Those that I no longer own have been identified.

My Collection: NES (sold)
My Collection: SNES (sold)
My Collection: Gameboy (sold)
My Collection: GBA (sold)
My Collection: Virtual Boy
My Collection: Pokemon Mini
My Collection: N64 (sold)
My Collection: Gamecube (sold)
My Collection: DS (sold)
My Collection: 3DS
My Collection: Wii & WiiU (sold)
My Collection: Switch

My Collection: Genesis (sold)
My Collection: Game Gear (sold)
My Collection: Saturn (sold)
My Collection: Dreamcast (sold)

My Collection: PS1 (sold)
My Collection: PS2 (sold)
My Collection: PSP (sold)
My Collection: PS3 & PS4 (sold)
My Collection: PS Vita (sold)

My Collection: XBox (sold)

My Collection: Wonderswan

My Collection: Neo-Geo Pocket Color

Golden Stamp Books

March 14th, 2024

Some months ago I purchased this for only $3.50 at a local antique store:

This was quite a find, not only because it’s Australian, but because I owned this exact book in my youth!

It’s a picture book of reptiles that came with a sheet of gummed stamps. The lucky owner would separate the stamps and stick them into each entry like they were putting a postage stamp on a postcard. The stamps in my copy have been stuck, but the back cover shows what the unused sheets would have looked like:

And here’s the charming instructions for the reader:

The book is 48 pages long, almost all of which are dedicated to a single animal with a picture and several interesting paragraphs. As a child I would have loved this. All the famous and well-known reptiles are included, like crocodiles, goannas and this old favourite:

But the true wonder of this book is that it also includes many lesser known – and possibly even nigh-unknown – beasts such as the Tryon Gecko, Master’s Snake and the good old Scrub Mullet:

I can vividly remember in the schoolyard, when my lesser-educated peers were yapping on about crocodiles and frilled lizards and I started dropping facts about Curl Snakes, Dtella Geckos and Krefft’s Tortoises! Immediately they recognized a master herpetologist in their midst, and rightly admired me for my knowledge πŸ™‚

This book was first published in 1973, but I would have of course got it years later. I had other titles as well. I don’t remember exactly which ones, but I believe I had at least a sea life one and one about fossils or minerals. A quick search online reveals that many titles in the series were printed well into the 1980s. Here’s a selection:

The Golden Stamp Book series was popular not just in Oz but also in the USA and England, and no doubt other countries as well. Educational, fun, and lovely to look at: these were great books to have when we were kids πŸ™‚

Star Destroyer

March 10th, 2024

Yesterday I made this Star Destroyer:

It’s a cardboard model kit, and only cost $20. The reviews were good and I was looking forward to seeing what it looked like assembled.

First impressions are excellent. A 30 page manual, 16 ‘runners’ with over 200 pieces printed on thick card that punched out easily. It even comes with glue that the manual says is only required if the connections were loose.

The print detail was excellent, and the pieces are clearly marked making assembly – at least initially – fairly easy. I could have done without punching out the hundreds of tiny slots though!

It’s a massive model, and very sturdy. Assembly up until the point in the above pic wasn’t too difficult, but after this things changed a lot. Putting the main hull pieces onto the superstructure was an exercise in frustration, since it was extremely difficult getting the tabs lined up.

The hinged pieces I think could have been better designed as well. Far too often the print separated from the backing revealing the cardboard as seen above. I probably could have fixed these easily with a bit of glue, but I didn’t care enough.

The spherical parts were almost impossible to correctly assemble. The design of these overall was dubious, and they were very loose even when I attempted to glue them. In the end I just left them as you see above.

The whole kit took me about 4 hours, and here’s the finished model:

At first glance it looks great, and as I said with a bit of extra work it could have been near perfect. I think this is a kit that shouldn’t be rushed (which I did), and would look very nice if every part was assembled with great care. That said it’s almost too big: where would one display this?!

I found it fit very nicely – after some rigorous disassembly – in the recycling bin πŸ™‚

Overall I’ll give this a thumbs up despite the epilogue above, since I think the design is fundamentally strong and because I have another by the same company that I have high hopes for…

WcDonalds

March 9th, 2024

Watch enough anime or read enough manga and you’ll eventually come upon a scene where the characters eat at a fast food joint often called WcDonalds:

The almost-but-not-quite name of these restaurants is of course to avoid copyright, while telling viewers that they’re eating at McDonalds. It’s become somewhat of a trope these days, and apparently a version of WcDonalds appears in over 60 manga or anime series.

McDonald’s itself has embraced anime for several Japanese TV commercials, and of course these use the real name of the restaurant:

But now McDonalds has gone one step further, and actually embraced the WcDonalds name. Stores in America are right now participating in a month-long WcDonalds event where much of the food packaging and in-store branding (posters, ordering kiosks, even uniforms) now display a large yellow W in place of the familiar M:

Here’s all four sides of the bag you get when you order takeout during the event:

There’s a website (WcDonalds.com) where you can read manga and watch anime based around the characters on the bags. You need the QR code from the bag to unlock these, so here it is:

The manga and anime are cute enough for corporate advertising, but predictably tame. Here’s a panel from the latest one about two teenagers falling in love while sharing WcDonalds:

Disappointingly, the event is limited to branding and the manga/anime. There’s no burgers, toys, or anything to collect. Surely they could have made a ‘Big Wac’ or something? The only actual menu item that is limited to the event is this nugget sauce, which I’m told isn’t fantastic:

A true crime is the lack of any Ronald WcDonald character. I know they’ve turned their back on the world’s favourite clown but surely his bizarro-world brother could have made a triumphant return just for this?

This event is USA-only now but will apparently happen in 30 other countries as well. While they’ve obviously put a lot of effort into it (an actual WcDonalds store is opening for a limited time in LA!) I feel there’s potential for even more. Let’s hope it’s a success and we see Super Saiyan WcDonalds in the future!

Five Droids

March 5th, 2024

Just because I sold hundreds of Star Wars figures last year doesn’t mean I stopped buying them, but these days all I’ll pick up is a droid. And thankfully they almost never release any! Here’s five I’ve bought since the great sell-off about a year ago.

This first one was an R2-D2 released back in 2000 in packaging reminiscent of the original figures from the 1970s. I was in the tail end of my collecting days then and didn’t buy it, but recently picked up the above copy for a low price on Amazon and was amazed when it arrived in near mint condition after 23+ years!

I won’t discuss the history of the character since you all know who he is, but here’s a fun R2 fact: he’s appeared on four postage stamps!

This R4-G9 was amongst the very first Revenge Of The Sith figures released and by then (2006) I’d by and large stopped buying any figures. I recently picked the above copy up (also on Amazon) and she’s unusual enough I’m surprised I never bought her back then. Perhaps I simply never saw her?

As for the character, despite appearing with Obi-Wan her role in the film was so brief you probably forgot about her moments later. And if you hadn’t yet picked up on it, yes R4-G9 is a lady droid. Couldn’t you tell from the pink tint to her dome? πŸ˜‰

I only purchased this Power Droid because it’s so ugly and weird, and I find the existence of a carded figure amusing. Another Amazon purchase, this one came in mint condition sealed in a custom shipping box and cost me considerably less than various online sites say it is ‘worth’.

This droid – long nicknamed Gonk’ – dates all the way back to the original Star Wars. They have made many appearances in Star Wars movies and shows, such as in Rogue One as shown above. Gonks are just generators on legs with rudimentary intelligence, but endearing because of how ugly they are!

I’m not a big fan of the current ‘Retro’ line of figures that are sculpted to resemble the original 1970s lines. That said I love how tiny this Chopper figure is and didn’t hesitate buying him. I’ve got a thing for little droids in tiny bubbles!

Chopper (his ‘real’ name is C1-10P) is from Rebels and last year made his live action appearance in the Ahsoka series. He’s a bit of a rogue, and famously uses a garbled dialect that is almost legible. There’s a recent non-retro figure of him as well, which I’m sure I’ll get one day.

R4-D5 was in the original Star Wars, and famously if it wasn’t for his ‘bad motivator’ then Luke may have never adopted R2 and C-3PO. Decades ago I had the original R5-D4 figure, and recently I picked up the newly released version above as well.

R5-D4 was recently in the third season of Mandalorian, which was a mystery since it raised the question of where he had been for so long? The short version is that his encounter with R2 in the belly of a sandcrawler years prior eventually led him to the Rebellion where he loyally served for years. Oh and that bad motivator? That was self-sabotage to make sure Luke took R2. Good old R5-D4: he’s always been the hero πŸ™‚