Robot Claw – Page 63 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Ramen Universes Beyond: Chiikawa and Puyo Pop

July 11, 2024

It’s time for some more licensed ramen, this time two examples I purchased recently in Japan.

We’ll start with this Chiikawa ramen, based on a popular manga series that has been licensed to hell and back. Chiikawa is super popular in Japan right now, and I saw long lines (of exclusively young women) just to enter some of the popup shops.

The ramen is soy sauce flavour, but caught my eye since it contains Chiikawa naruto (little fish cakes) which feature the characters face and are incredible finely made:

That’s not printed: the pattern extends right through the fish cake with sub-millimeter detail! I’d love to see the machine that made these. Once prepared the ramen looked like this:

And… it was almost good! The first and second bits were quite tasty, and I was about to take a third when the awful chemical aftertaste hit. That was the end of it for me, but I still liked the cute little Chiikawa faces 🙂

Next up we have this Puyo Pop ramen. Much like the Chiikawa one this is quite small – possibly intended for children – and while this is heavily branded with the characters from the game, it seems to just be a standard kitsune udon ramen and doesn’t specify a flavour. It also doesn’t promise special naruto inside.

So imagine my surprise when I opened it and found these tiny sakura flower naruto in the flavour packet! I liked the look of the noodles as well. I added the dehydrated tofu brick and hot water and this is what it looked like:

And… it’s not for me. It tasted like petrified wood, which is a shame since the noodle size and texture was great. If I had bought two of these I would have tossed the flavour packet of the other and used one from a chicken ramen!

While neither of these were to my liking, both get a high score due to the cute little naruto. Next time I’m in Japan I’ll be watching out for more like these!

Classic Doctor Who Trading Cards

July 8, 2024

I bought thirteen packs of Doctor Who trading cards last year and I think they’ve aged enough. Time to open them!

As you can see there were four series, released from 1994 through 1996. Unusually these were printed by an American company, but even though I knew of them and looked for them at the time I never saw them sold here. They of course only cover classic Who, since the relaunch was several years away when these were printed.

The above shows the contents of a series 1 pack. Ten cards, each nicely designed (especially for the time) and with a great deal of text on the back. I would have loved these thirty years ago!

A nice touch is that the first three series continue numbering and share design, and it’s almost impossible to tell which particular series a card comes from if you don’t look at the number. Here are cards from each of the first three sets:

Series 1 and 2 have a small (about 1 in 500) chance of autographs in the packs. Of particular interest to me was the Jon Pertwee autograph apparently possible in series 2, and there were traces of excitement in the house as I opened the packs. Alas I was not lucky, and in fact only got two chase cards between all 13 packs:

The leftmost is a glossy card that has a puzzle piece on the back, and the rightmost is a very nicely done foil card (both these came from series 3 packs). These are of average quality for chase cards of that era, and I think would have been satisfying enough to pull from packs.

The 4th series was a surprise. Not only is the design completely different and the numbering resets, but the cards are uglier, many of them are poorly aligned or even miscut and the text written on the back not as good. If I’d bought these in 1996 I would have expected consistency with the first 3 sets (based on the wrapper) and would have been disappointed with the changes.

Overall though, it was fun opening these 30 year old packs of cards, and I’m happy I only got a single double and now have about a third of the full set!

Now let’s go back even further… almost fifty years to be precise!

Back in 1976 Ty-Phoo tea (in the UK) had a promotion called The Amazing World Of Doctor Who. This comprised a booklet, wall chart and set of 12 trading cards randomly packed into boxes of tea. Here’s the full set:

I bought these (for only $5!) at the antique store we visited the other day. They’re in incredible condition for their age, and as a relic of now-ancient Who they’re fantastic. As a fourteen-year-old I would have treasured these!

The back of each card has the name of the character/monster shown, and information on how to buy the book. Based on the rates quoted, you’d have needed to drink a lot of tea to collect a full set of these, so I suppose I’m fairly lucky I own them!

They’ll happily live in a case in a box in a chest for ever 🙂

Fireworks and Antiques!

July 7, 2024

We went to Rochester for a few days for July 4 and a very special 80th birthday!

That’s what we lit this year, which as usual we had purchased in Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately I was stung by a wasp shortly after arriving (even now, four days later, the sting site is swollen and painful) which was a bit of a setback and required a few changes to our early July 4 plans, but luckily it didn’t impact our evening.

We purchased one of these instant fireplace logs just to see how they worked and we were extremely impressed. A single match resulted in a fire that burned for about two hours and could have easily been used for cooking. If you’ve seen these in a shop and debated buying one, I recommend it!

The fireworks were of course wonderful, and this year even more neighbors were launching their own so the sound of nearby booms and crackling was near endless.

And as usual I edited some of the highlights together (on my phone) into a brief video:

And here’s a shot of the birthday girl celebrating her 80th:

The garbage lid was a shield against potential firework mishaps, which as it turns out was almost needed when one of them fell over and launched a projectile that just missed us!

The next night the festivities continued when we went to a drive-in not far from where KLS’s parents live. It was a massive four-screen place with a mini golf course and a large food/snack shop (with eye-opening prices) that sold the biggest frozen coke I’ve ever seen! This beast was about a kilogram of frozen coke and filled a cup as big as my head. Even sharing, it took KLS and I well into the film to finish this one 🙂

While in Rochester we also visited the largest antiques mall in New York state, which has two sites and over 1000 dealers! The above is a photo taken in the larger of the two locations, showing a hall of booths each of which is full of treasures for sale. This particular site was a converted strip mall, and had dozens of halls like the above with several hundred booths in total. Kristin and I were determined to see everything, but even going at a cracking pace it took us over four hours to browse the two locations.

It was absolutely fascinating, with an incredible variety of items for sale. Of course there was lots of the usual tableware and art and decor items and the like, but there were also many unusual and specialized booths such as a seller who specialized in political badges.

I almost bought that 48-year-old King Kong glass, but you can be assured I had no interest in the weird PEZ and definitely not the sealed box of disturbing Trolls trading cards.

I browsed through those View Master slides looking for Doctor Who (without success), and I may have bought that Pac-Man bowl had it been in much better condition. The Hitler stamps though: not for me!

My big mistake was not buying this portable TRS-80 computer. A precursor to a laptop, this includes a several line LCD display and came with the programming manuals. Did it work? I don’t know. Was it worth the risk at about $56? Probably.

Even though I made the wrong decision on the computer, I did make a couple of intriguing purchases as well as hundreds of postcards. You’ll read about them one day on this blog 🙂