More Fort Bragg Dusk pics

Didn't think I was only going to post a few Dusk pics and leave it at that, did ya? :P

Figma Hatsune Miku Live Stage ver. and random pics.

So one of my recent purchases was a figma Miku Live Stage ver. This was something I've wanted for a long time and glad to finally have one. Me holding out for a Live Stage ver was the reason I passed on the Cheerful version and I'm glad I did.






One of the things I like about this version is that it comes with keyboard synthesizer, di:stage, live stage papercraft, a different set of faces that are more to my liking, as well as the original Miku accessories such as the leek and microphone.


The only thing that's casting a cloud on this is this mysterious bag containing a note saying to "use this part when you reach step 11 in the soundstage instructions". The reason it's mysterious is because it's a sealed bag with nothing but the note inside! Hope I'm really not missing anything.

Since I'm on the subject of figma, I thought I'd post some random related pics.


I've had her like this since last year. :P


This was part of an idea I had for a Halloween strip but Halloween has come and gone... orz I still plan to use this however.

And a final random pic.

Bionicle/Hero Factory villains make great bad guys. :D

Busou Shinki Eukrante review and Fort Bragg Dusk

Wow, almost a month since I first posted about my Fort Bragg and Eukrante purchase. It's time I posted some pics.

Confessions

I have some confessions to make. First off, I missed out on getting Nendoroid Elsie. Even though Mikatan blog hinted at it, I didn't expect her to get released before the end of the month and sell out at Amiami shortly after. While there are other avenues of getting her, buying her from Amiami would have been the least expensive option (especially considering there's a few other things I wanted to get from there as well). Next is that I bought too much toys this holiday season. Again. I'll be going over those purchases in the next few weeks to come but I definitely need to spend more time with my toys. Also I've been letting a FB game take too much of my time again. I would think I'd be over it by now but it ain't so easy after all. orz.

The biggest confession is that I've been spending more time reading about toys (whether through reviews or blogs) than I do playing and taking pictures of the toys I bought especially this year. It was quite a shock when I realized it so hopefully, this will cause me to pay more attention to my own toys especially since I have a few that's not even out of the box yet.



As mentioned, I went on a spending rampage this past couple of weeks. Not long after I bought the Shinki figures from Mandarake, I've bought some more import toys thanks to HLJ's BF single price shipping sale. I've also bought a few more stuff from Mandarake as well as some more brick toys including the Lego TRU truck ($25), Mega Bloks Halo Battlescape ($26 from Target), and the big Kre-O Prime ($30 from Amazon). I'll have a lot of boxes to open this holiday season... :P

Lego Store in Houston Galleria

Went to the Lego Store in the Houston Galleria to buy a couple of brick separators. Decided to take some pictures while I was there. Sorry for crappy white balance.

Cocktease

Mikatan Blog is such a cocktease sometimes. Even though there's no way at this point for anyone to order any more of Cheerful Miku figma, they proceed to parade it around on the blog like it's going to change anything. Doesn't really make any sense to me but maybe someone else can explain the meaning behind it all? :P

Nendoroid Elsie

Nendoroid Elsie from The World God Only Knows. Only one word to describe that smiling face: HNNNG!!
Releasing in a few days from now. I've been considering getting her for some time now and the newest Mikatan update just re-affirms that.



Elsie's accessories have a lot of cross-compatibility especially her faces. Speaking of which, 4 faces! And they're all very cute and useful. And then there's the comical arm shaking and leg running parts. Very fun stuff. GJ, Max Factory!

And some blatant advertising. Help me buy a Nendoroid Elsie. XD


Buy Nendoroid The World God Only Knows Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Elsie at Play-Asia.com

Speaking of advertising, if anyone knows of an affiliate program that allows me to put up specific stuff like the Amazon button above, let me know. Even better if someone can teach me an easy way to put up a Play-Asia link similar to that Amazon link because text only links suck. :P

New Shinki figures!

From Mandarake. Price as follows:

Eukrante 4000
Ft Bragg Dusk 4500
EMS shipping 3600
Total: 12100 yen
Converted to $: $157 >_<

Both are opened items; Eukrante was described as scratched although initial inspection didn't reveal any outside of not so clean looking sprue cuts. Normally it'd be a couple weeks before I open them up but since they're opened items, I'll be doing a through inspection this weekend.

Madoka Magica review & comments

I've been watching Madoka Magika since the weekend and finished watching it 2 days ago. After watching the last episode, I spent the rest of the day in emotional BSOD while digesting the series as a whole. The next day was wasted reading through the Madoka section on TV Tropes. (I need to ban myself from reading that site, everytime I go there I find new stuff to waste time reading.) And now that I'm done, it's time to summarize my feelings on the show. The show has become my new top favorite anime I've ever watched (previous title holder was Code Geass). It was a nice emotional roller coaster ride and I definitely expect myself to rewatch at least the last 3 episodes over again in the near future. Those last 3 were definitely the ones most "relevant to my interests" plus I had to hold back tears at least once during each episode. =.=;

Transformers Tour in Spring, TX

The full name is The Hub of Transformers Great American Tour. The offical details can be found by visiting Hasbro's Facebook page and going to their sweepstakes link. The Houston event happened last Saturday in Spring which is located just North of Greater Houston. Going there also gave me the perfect excuse to meet up with fellow Houston TF collectors from the TFW2005 board and we went to lunch at Rudy's BBQ afterwards. That was some good meat, btw; I'll definitely need to revisit a Rudy's someday. :D

More Lego Minifigs and Animated Bulkhead

Some random pics on stuff I've recently gotten...


My series 4 additions, Hazmat Guy and Crazy Scientist.


My Lego series 5 minifigs: Lizard Man, Gladiator, and Gangster. I think I'm done with minifig collecting unless they come out with something particularly interesting to me in series 6.

Bionicle Baranus V7 review

Found Baranus at the clearance aisle at Walmart a couple months ago and built it about a month ago. Pretty nice set for the price.



Package contents. I like how Lego bags up some of the parts by each major component. (Now if only Mega Bloks would do the same thing...) There were a few parts that weren't bagged however it's easy to tell which bag they belong with. 1 is the pilot, 2 is the carriage, and 3 is the beast.

Muramasa for $11.99

Muramasa for $11.99 @ Amazon; it's a steal if you're a Wii owner and don't have a copy already.

RTS Lugnut review

I got the RTS Lugnut from Ross I think. The RTS Voyagers as a whole got passed by the regular chain stores so it's nice they're showing up in Ross/Marshall's types of stores especially since it means they're cheaper to boot. :P

Hongfire withdrawal

Hongfire's been down this entire week and I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms. I don't know if this was a planned or unplanned outage; either way I'm not too happy about it. While I'm busy trying to deal with the loss of my favorite method of wasting time online, I'll yap about this summer.

This summer has been pretty good to me as far as me finding great steals on brick-related (IOW Lego, Mega Bloks) stuff and because of that, I've also bought more brick stuff this year than all previous years combined. Let me list the brick deals that I've gotten this summer.

Bionicle Baranus V7 $15 @ Walmart (original: $39.96)
Dragons Universe Dx Dual-Blast Dragon Hunter $7.48 @ Target (original: $29.99)
Dragons Universe Rapid Fire Dragon Fighter $4.98 @ Target (original: $19.99)
NFS Porsche 911 GT3 RS $13.74 @ Target (original: $54.99)
Kreo Starscream $7.48 @ Target (original: $29.99)
Kreo Sentinel Prime $9.98 @ Target (original: $39.99)
Hero Factory Fire Lord $9.98 @ Target (original: $19.99)
Hero Factory Von Nebula $13.00 @ Walmart (original: $19.99)
Covenant Phantom $39.99 @ Target (original: $79.99)

All of the Target stuff were from the same store which leads me to wonder what's going on with their pricing/clearance department especially considering the fact that the Kreos have only been out for a brief period while the NFS Porsche and the Phantom are brand new releases. The Phantom is frankly a bit over budget for me so I'm not sure if I'll keep it or not. I'll be doing a post on the Baranus, Dragon Fighter, and Porsche within the next couple weeks.

There were also some other deals which I'll post about later but at this rate, I might as well rename this blog "Cheap-ass Toy Box"... :P

 

On the anime front, I've watched Sora no Oto and Asobi ni Ikuyo (Bombshells From the Sky). Sora no Oto, I liked a lot, maybe even more than K-On! Asobi ni Ikuyo, while enjoyable, doesn't exactly move me much but that kinda goes with most harem anime in general. Haven't watched much anime lately but that might pick up depending on how I spend the next few months. Haven't bought any import toys lately although I'm considering a few purchases in the near future. The high yen has really dampened my want for imports so future purchasing plans are really uncertain at this time.

Speaking of bricks, I had recently got the Lego midi-scale Star Destroyer for half off but I found it to be too delicate and crumble too easily so I returned it. The engine parts in particular were easy to fall off if not careful and then there's that unsightly gap through the front middle of the ship. It just didn't work for me. :/

DOTM deluxe Prime and voyager Megatron review

Short review of Walmart exclusive deluxe Optimus Prime and general release voyager Megatron.

Not sure how big they are supposed to be as robots but the vehicle modes for these two look almost in scale for some reason.






Robot modes.





Prime has a nice light-piping eye effect.


I'm impressed with the toy engineering for Megatron; that they made it so that the truck can turn at the connection between the truck and the cargo trailer. As a figure though, I don't really like him that much. I find his arm a bit too long and spindly and I find the shoulders kinda restrictive. Not too bad otherwise. I'm liking Prime a lot however. His size, ease of transformation, and stability in both modes, make him the perfect movie Prime toy to play around with. Some complain about his backpack and paint apps but it's not that big a deal and if you want a movie Prime to play with, this IS the one to get.

MARS Converters

They suck! That is all. :P



My main problem with the one I got was that all joints were loose and the shoulder joints popped out too easily. It might not be bad if it was cheaper but I rather get something that looks and plays better even if it's not as big. Yeah, they probably should have made it a bit smaller as well. Bigger doesn't always mean better especially with toys.

I returned him, BTW.

Squirrels...

Because you can never have enough pictures of squirrels. :P
These were taken back in January and February.

Lego odds and ends

About a couple months ago, I started buying Lego stuff. This was prompted by my discovery of the mini-fig blind packs. They weren't cheap though at $3 a pop so I set out to see what other Lego related stuff I can find and soon enough I was buying more than I thought I would.


My series 3 set.

HP Touchpad clearance

Can't help make a post about this since I'm a former Palm fan and current iPod Touch junkie. HP's discontinued their recently released Touchpad so what was once a $500 item is now being clearanced out at various outlets for $100. People's been snapping these up since Saturday and the frenzy's still going on. Positive is that you've got at least an instant net browser/ereader for just $100. Minus is that it's discontinued so don't expect too many other uses for it. For people interested, here's a link to a seller on Amazon that's still offering it at clearance. (May come and go at anytime.) I'll likely make a quick review of it once I get one in my hands.



BTW, there's two flavors of Touchpads being clearanced out; the 16GB at $99.99 and the 32GB at $149.99. The above link is for the 16GB and the one below is for the 32GB variety.

Dragons Universe Clawripper Review

Decided to grab Clawripper since it was on sale as well for $3-4. I feel it's mediocre at best. The photos are taken with my iPod camera which sucks seven shades of beans compared to the iPhone camera or any other decent smartphone camera. I didn't even want to bother using my real camera for this one, that's how bad it was.

Dragons Universe Deluxe Dual-Blast Dragon Hunter Review

I have a video mini-review up on Youtube. http://youtu.be/TaswTtqIYFc



So I bought a Deluxe Dual-Blast Dragon Hunter earlier this week. Why did I decide to get this now? The explanation is on the back of the box.



See that price tag there? Let's get a close up.



Nice... XD

Marvel Thing capsule toy review

I found this capsule machine at an HEB with these Marvel hero themed figures. They were 75 cents and I only had enough change for one so I went for it and got a Thing. Reminds me of those roundish figures that I'm forgetting the name for. Those never quite attracted me but this one did. It's cheap and very cute.


The ball comes wrapped in plastic sleeve.

Gecko in the house

A gecko somehow managed its way into the house. We saw one yesterday as well, not sure if it's the same one. I tried getting it into a bucket but it quickly jumped back out and wouldn't let go of the curtain after that. Hopefully it gets back out on its own.

IABWSS 6.0

Oooh, it's been a long time since I done this. I was playing around with Skyhammer and when I noticed I could swing his leg straight up, the first thing that hit my head was Zohan which led to this strip. For some reason, Prowl's slowly turning more and more into a joke character; it may be the influence of a certain other TF photocomic. ;) Shockwave fans please don't kill me. XD

Renge on Memorial Weekend

My mother wanted me to help her learn how to take pictures and for some reason, she wanted to use a Shinki as her subject so since I already had Renge in a bag, I brought her along. While she was taking pictures, I took a few of my own.


Sudden close up.


This was at a nearby park. Surprisingly enough, there weren't that much people even though it was early Sunday afternoon.