Robot Claw – Page 6 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Trading Cards Purchased From Bootleggers

May 27, 2026

We drove back to Newcastle yesterday, and I’m now at mum’s. I won’t blog as frequently here, but right now I’m going to showcase some exclusively Australian trading cards games I obtained from reputable sellers at a location in Sydney. I won’t tell to exactly where this market is, but it rhymes with ‘Paddy’s Markets’ 😉

Let’s begin with Lilo & Stitch. This trading card game – which isn’t a real product and only the product of smugglers – labels itself as ‘new’ and seems to be based around a larger Lilo universe that I have no knowledge or indeed interest of.

The pack – which cost me $3 – contained 8 cards, each featuring a loveable character from the franchise. All cards have attack and defense values and a rock/paper/scissors mark so this can be played multiple ways by even imbeciles. Amusingly the statistics are ludicrously inflated: with most in the high hundreds of thousands.

The front of each card is foiled with a nifty starburst effect, but the backs (see the first pic) are matte and uncoated and I imagine if you got these wet they’d ruin quickly. Quite a risky feature considering these would have been shipped to Australia on galleons from the far east!

This is of course a worthless product as a game, but intriguing for hardcore Stitch fans. My analytical brain tells me this is probably influenced by Lorcana, but I think that may be giving the bootleggers too much credit.

I’m not a fan of Demon Slayer – I found the characters insipid – but in the interests of research I had to buy this illicit card pack. Much like the above, this cost $3 at the blackest of markets.

Were I a betting man I’d suggest these were produced at the very same factory the previous cards were (and these in fact) since the size, card stock, print quality and foil effect are identical. That is except for one card – top left in the above photo – which mysteriously has a different foiling from all the others.

The pack contained seven cards, and as a game this seems even simpler than Stitch since each card only has attack and defense values. There’s some flavour text in the form of attack names (“Breath of Rain in Love with Cats“?) but this has no bearing on play. A worthless game therefore, albeit about a very popular series.

It’s worth noting these are in English – not Japanese – and I do wonder if the audience for this game is as large in occidental ports? Maybe the bootleggers miscalculated spending their valuable production time on this one?

Now this is a more marketable ~~illegal~~ product! Everyone loves Spider-Man, and who wouldn’t want a pack of game cards for a film the sequel of which seems like it’s been delayed forever?

Once again we have the same type of cards produced at the same factory using the same materials. However these ones are all slightly bent, and some of them were dirty! This suggests the factory was in somewhere like Tortuga, and indeed I can almost smell the rum on the cards.

Gamewise (I know, I know…) these adhere closely to the system introduced by Stitch and I think I can confidently say they have the same game system and can therefore be played together as one weird multiversal TCG.

Players that attempt this should be careful: with the exception of Ultimate Spider-Man all the cards in this pack had much lower atk/def values and would be effortlessly defeated by any of the Stitch cards!

While this is another worthless product, it’s also Spider-Man which means of interest to collectors. I don’t doubt they would like a pack or two for amusement value.

One of the hottest brands out there right now is undoubtedly K-Pop Demon Hunters and in a shocking upset the first to market with a TCG are the same pirates that produced everything else I’ve shown today!

It’s all the same again as Stitch and Spider-Man, only the statistics on these cards have a wider variance, with some weaker than any in Spider-Man and others so strong to be able to defeat anything from any previous pack.

I know you’ll be shocked to hear that (unlike all the others I’ve opened so far) the QC on these cards is atrocious! Not only is the foil layer lifting on a couple of them, but three had serious damage to the edges. Not only would this make them illegal in a sanctioned tournament, but it would greatly reduce their value if sent for grading. Shame on you, pirate TCG bootleggers!

And that’s all I’ve found (so far) in the category of bootleg trading card games… but I do have this other mysterious box:

This was found in a cavernous dollar store in Orange and purchased from a lady whose face had never known a smile. It’s about as big as a box of cigarettes, and this is what was inside:

The box label was correct: it contained exactly 60 cards and 36 stickers. This isn’t a game, so the cards are just pictures, but they’re all different and the print quality is excellent:

There’s no foil effect and the backs (the top left card above) are matte, but if you’re a fan I think these would be a good buy for the price.

However if you’re a Saja Boys stan, step back! These are the Huntrix girls only, which makes me wonder if there was another pack with the boys in it?

And as for the stickers… watch your postcards 🙂

Dubbo Zoo On A Rainy, Rainy Day

May 26, 2026

I woke to the sound of extremely heavy rain outside the motel room, and later the morning news said it would be the wettest day of the year so far.

So naturally we headed to Dubbo Zoo 🙂

As it turns out, aside from the torrential rain and regional flooding, this was a great day to see animals! As we would learn on the safari bus, the animals enjoy the rain and are more active. This was not a day when the animals just lazed around in the shade!

Dubbo Zoo is large and spread out and visitors drive around in either rented carts or their own cars. We saw one group wearing ponchos and using the rented cart and it would have been miserable! While most animals can be viewed from the car, you get a better look outside so we had to park and brave the rain frequently.

The above snap was taken on a safari bus ride where we got very close to many animals including giraffes, rhinos and a few types of antelope. This was a couple of hours into our visit, and by this point despite umbrellas our shoes and pants were sodden.

There was water everywhere, and some of the paths were flooded, and it was remarkable how unbothered the animals were by the heavy rain. And this even included animals out of the enclosures, by which I mean these guys:

Look closely at the middle one: she’s got a baby!

Look how raggedy this wet beast is! As wondrous as all the other animals in the zoo were, these uninvited guests were my favorites. One zoo employee told me they come and go and even get into (and out of) the animal enclosures!

The zoo was great. Yes it was comically wet, but we saw lots of active animals and since there were very few other guests today we didn’t have to deal with crowds of other visitors 🙂

As a bonus, here’s a photo taken from the car this morning of another pack of roos hopping alongside the road:

Eight Antiques

May 25, 2026

Today we drove from Katoomba to Dubbo via Orange, and the total trip took about 6 hours (including charging stop) and I took nary a photo! So instead, today I’ll showcase a few interesting items I saw at antique shops these past two days…

Typewriters are a surprisingly common items at antique shops here, but this one in particular caught my eye due to the Kmart badge on it. The tag identifies it as a ‘Nakajima’ brand device from the 1970s and says it’s been restored and tested. In other words, you could write a book with it!

I know even without opening the box that this would have the thinnest of gameplay and contain fragile paper game pieces and a near-generic board. But licensed games like this one always catch my eye, and remind me of how undemanding we were as fans back in the ancient age.

Even though this was a common style back in the early 1980s, this one reminded me a lot of the devices that Bernard and I had as kids. This one appeared to be in extraordinary condition, but it didn’t say whether it actually worked or not.

I’ve never seen a Commodore 64 game for sale at an antique (or retro game) store in the USA, so it’s always a treat to see them here. But $75 for this? It was part of a larger collection of (mostly PC) Microprose games, all of which seemed overpriced.

I was tempted by these Japanese phone cards, but the store was a bit fancy and they didn’t have a price so I moved on. Years ago when I went to the stamp show while I was here there were also Japanese phone card vendors so it seems collecting these this was a (niche I’m sure) hobby in Australia at some point.

The store had three different sets of these, all labeled at $150 and the red one described as ‘incomplete’. The price was outrageous for the condition, but I would have liked to see inside regardless. Perhaps I should have asked?

I don’t remember ever seeing anything like this when I was young. Like most of the world, Australia no longer broadcasts analogue TV signals so this would be useless for TV viewing, but it very likely has an RF connector on the back so could work as a portable monitor for a retro game system. As a child, something like this would have been the dream!

This is the English version of a Japanese fantasy board game from 1986. The game asks players to survive a haunted house and apparently plays like a simplified version of Talisman. It has a beautiful big board, hundreds of tokens and cards and a large plastic spinner with an evil face on it.

The copy at the antique store wasn’t in perfect condition, and the spinner was extremely dirty, but had I seen this in America I would have been tempted even without knowing it was complete. Since the store hadn’t been able to verify that yet, it wasn’t yet priced or on sale.