Yearly Wrap up 2018

As is the usual way of my blog lately, a few posts throughout the year and then I bust out a whole list of crap I picked up during the year.

It’s been an odd year for me, as it turns out there were a heap more Legends Transformers came out than I expected.  Work was a tricky taking my precious precious time away from toys and a couple of ripper video games also doing that too.

Toy wise, I naturally enjoyed the Transformers, although I got the definite feel that bot Hasbro  and Takara were phoning it in with Power of the Primes.  The mix of half-assed Pretenders (I actually like proper pretenders) and a random mish mash of combining other figures makes them feel like left over ideas from Combiner War/Legends.   It also feels like a lot has just been holding the fort until the Bumblebee movie toys come out as well.  

Here in Japan, the Bumblebee movie doesn’t come out until April 2019, yet the toys are flooding the shelves, the POTP figures are disappearing (will I be able to get punch/counterpunch??) and the timing of the Siege line (of which I have some interest) starts in February 2019.  Shelf space seems to be limited and I suspect that the movie toys won’t do so well right now, but will pick up when the movie comes out, but will have run out of steam by then, leaving the Transformers shelves in a rather sorry state.  They already take only a small section of shops (assuming they have a section at all) as it is.

Tets goes to Tokyo Comic-Con 2018

As the title suggest, I went to the Comic convention in Tokyo this year.  I went along last year too, as Stan Lee was there and got a photo taken with him.   This year, I was eyeing Peter Weller, AKA RoboCop and other roles, but as I was feeling kinda cheap, I opted out.  I’m sure I’ll regret that later….
The comic con is in its third year I think and doesn’t seem to take up much room at the Mukuhari Messe hall.  Between the comic con, and Toy Show, I seem to be getting pretty familiar with that place now.
However the Comic con also has a stand for TakaraTomy, and they usually have some interesting stuff to look at.  This year they certainly did.   I am sure that all the news and surprises are flooded all over the net before I even got there, so all I intend to do is blabble on about my thoughts of the day and slap some (Possibly blurry) photos up. 
Read on if you dare.

Legends Rattrap LG01 Comic Translation

After what seems a long long time, here is the first comic that was included with the first designated Legends toy, Rattrap.   Or Rattle as his Japanese pals like to call him.  Luckily in  English for all you lovely lads and lasses.



Enjoy.
Arrowless and Arrowed versions.

Abominable Gamble

Takara and Hasbro have moved to brand similarity for the Power of the Primes and here in Japan, we seem to be getting the exact same toys as America/Australia/UK etc. 

Being a fan of the Terrorcons, I was determined to get them one way or another and while cruising the web, I spied a listing on the TakaraTomy Mall (TTMall) for a Set of them.

Hmmmm. 

Now, according to the listing , it IS  a TTMall exclusive.

Oh, says I, mayhap there be a nice box, or little something extra to sweeten the deal?  SO taking a gamble, as the price is full retail (I can pick them up cheaper in the shops or from Amazon), I pre-ordered them.  After all they’re exclusive right?  Admittedly there was nothing extra listed on the release page, it just had the “TTMall Original” selection pegged on the page.

Well today, the friendly delivery guy dropped them off to me. 

Curiously, I cracked the box open to see…..



4 Deluxes and one Voyager.  Nothing extra.  I checked the delivery docket just to make sure they didn’t mess up the order.  Sure enough, it lists them as the Terrorcon set.


I’m still glad to have them, but I certainly could have saved some money by getting them somewhere else and was rather hoping to have at least something as a sweetener for the set.  Oh well.  I guess the extras that TakaraTomy used to do are well and truly finished.

Sonic Mania Plus Japanese Packaging

Finally Sonic Mania got a physical release, something they should’ve done at the start.  Considering how Sonic Forces got one, it just baffles me why this one didn’t.  Perhaps that’s a good thing though, as if it had got a physical release at the start, we wouldn’t have had the additional bits for the “Plus” made.  Regardless, I’ve been playing through the normal one and even went to the expense of getting the Plus copy, instead of just paying the extra 500 yen for the upgrade.  I wanted that Soundtrack dammit.

I figured that the release of Plus would be relatively the same all over the world.  As it turns out, it is not.  Check out retroking Simon’s coverage of the UK box.


So to compare, here are some shots of the Japanese box.

8th Anniversary post

Well, well, well, said the man with three wells.

8 Years have passed since I've started this blog.  So, as I am probably not going to be at my computer for this glorious day, I'd schedule a crap post to come up.

Incidentally, I'm going to cheesily link back to my very first "real post."  And it's a crappy post, I'll let ya know that!

Here it is

Looking back on my early posts, I did a lot of angry ranting back then....

Sludge, Power of The Primes, Quick `n` Nasty review

POTP, the line I thought I wouldn’t really care about.  To be honest, I am no way as interested in this line as I was the Legends line.  I even decided to forsake the Dinobots at first, however as the plastic crack addiction has it’s icy hand on my heart and after seeing them in store I caved and picked some up. 

As I am in love with little headmaster-y robots, I was extremely likely to get the Prime Masters and pretenders anyway (I also love pretenders).  Due to Grimlock’s horrible dimensions and volcanius looking kinda lame, I was happy to ignore the Dinobots as a whole.

Now I have Sludge.  By far my favourite of the original Dinobots and the one I wanted the most (but was never able to find) when I was a kid.