There was a pop up shop placed in the Modi OIOI (Marui) building in Shibuya during the time of 21st February until the 2nd of March 2025. Above is the artwork advertising it. I went there to check it out. The primary purpose of this pop up shop is to sell credit cards. Actually the whole building has a very CC selling focus... Just check out this escalator.
A slight rant
The EPOS card is a Japanese credit card that often has cool artwork on the cards in a variety of flavours and they have just started producing 2 types of Transformers credit card. One features the comic artwork above and the other is a black card with the Autobot and Decepticon logos on them. To be honest, the cards looking bloody great. However the problem with EPOS and other Japanese CC companies is they don't have the reach that companies like VISA/Mastercard have, so really there is no point (They are also kind of expensive with monthly fees and whatnot).
Obviously I was not so interested in getting a card, already having a few and need only one. Plus, they are hesitant to offer them to non-Japanese people. They were offering some freebies if you applied, but you had to be successfully approved and I believe you also had to actually use the card before getting them. That's a few too many hoops for me to be bothered jumping through, so I didn't bother. Enough ranting about companies capitalistic tendencies...
I went to another pop up shop a bunch of years ago, and that one was just a tiny stand, so I wasn't expecting much.
However, I was pleasantly surprised.
It was a nicely not cold, but not exactly warm 24th of February, a public holiday that resulted in me going to the tourist filled torture land of Shibuya to visit a rather fashionable (everything about Shibuya is fashionable) building. After exiting the station from the Hachiko exit and being absorbed into the miasma of bodies that linger outside in the square, I crossed, or perhaps flowed over the scramble crossing with a couple thousand other people (many of whom were filming the trip) and made my way up the street, dodging through the slow walking people and found myself opposite the building I needed, which looked like this:
Wow, lots of action going on there isn't there?
Luckily, I knew which floor I needed to be on(unlike last time), lucky number 7! Thus I rode the escalator. Elevators are really not worth the hassle. You wait a long time for them to arrive and then you practically stop at every floor as you go. That is after you've queued up to get on it in the first place.
My eyes didst spy:
Oh, what a moment. You can see a cardboard standee of the cards and a projected screen of er, various stuff.
Before we get all excited, I'll slap up and dodgy image of the floor plan I whipped up:
On the left running along the wall were some blown up comic book cover art. They used the same art for the acrylic things I was after, which were also the freebies if you managed to get the credit card. Recently the artwork for the old Marvel comic books has been used and it looks pretty cool. I picked up some stickers from the event in September last year and I like it. For Japanese fans it would be a cool novelty as well.
I didn't realise that the artwork used for the comic book coloured Masterpiece Grimlock was an actual cover. I assumed it was made specifically for that box.These posters were mounted on foam and about movie poster sized, and pretty impressive! I wanted to take some home with me. Not some actually, ALL OF THEM.
The shop was pretty small and there weren't many people there. If you gawked from the entrance, it looked like this:
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| The posters are on the left of the image (but not in the image). |
Back to the floor plan and having a look at Shelf-1, they had a bunch of artwork from the Transformers Anniversary event from September 2024. They also had the book you could buy there too.
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| Top row was all clear files for holding papers |
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| There were just foil art prints on a nice backing. |
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| On the left is the book from the TF40th event. The things next to it are canvas prints of various Primes. |
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| G1-ish Clear files up the top, acrylic stands down the bottom. |
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| These were under the clear files, and they are character Acrylic stands. |
Acrylic stands have become a standard promotional item recently in Japan. I suspect that any event will have some acrylic stand things of some sort. Probably because they must be dirt cheap to make with a good profit. These ones started at 900 yen I think and went up to 1100.
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| Megatron Tumbler glass |
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| These plates had some nice artwork on them. |
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| Postcards with the same artwork as the plates. You got 6 in a set. |
Moving on to Shelf-2!
SHelf-2 consisted of some collab items. For some reason this donkey thing has been popular recently and I dunno why, but here we have a bunch of left-over (tf 40th event) Megatron, Bumblebee and Optimus ( ? ) Donkey things. I remember Griffin getting one of these and I asked him why. He stated "these kind of things are just crazy enough to be intersting. It's not likely to happen again." Or something to that effect. He makes a valid point.
However I didn't get them on either of the times I saw them.:
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| Donkeys on the left, cable clip things up the top, Cassettetron themed card cases and some Chibi TF stickers I think they were underneath. |
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| Donkeys everywhere. |
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| Yes, Chibi Stickers |
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| Bottom shelf has 3 kinds of masking tape, energon bath bombs and handkerchiefs. |
Second half of Shelf-2
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| The uchiwa has a Megatron slapping hand on the back. |
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| More acrylic goods, pixel art character stands and a bunch of random other stuff. On the right are the freebies for the card, but these ones you have to pay! |
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| Keyrings, keyrings, pouch. |
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| HeyO~~~ My most wanted stands! |
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| Classed as handkerchiefs, but more like small hand towels. |
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| Bottom shelf items, small acrylic stands. |
That covers the main entrance. Opposite the Shelf-1 was the cashier with the bagging area.
I call it the card wall because they have large version of the type of card you would get...
if you were a Japanese citizen and applied.
Underneath is more left overs, this tim transforming neck pillows. A great idea, but the stuffing quality looked a bit questionable. On the bottom shelf were left over t-shirts. In the corner were some T-shirts to test out and a mirror.
Now, on the floor plan, the area I cleverly called the the "Little Area."
In the first picture we got...
Wait for it, WAIT for it...
Acylic key chains!! Amazing! These ones are from the Rise of The Beasts movie. Underneath them on the left is movie key chains, lenticular key chans, and bio phrase (in Japanese) key chains. Socks, and to the left of the socks were small necklace charm thingies. Bottom shelf were Bumblebee movie towels (very yellow!) and G1 Artwork cheap looking hats of a Dinobot and Constructicon nature (they weren't cheap though).
The shelf on the right side is a shelf load of stickers! Yes, so many stickers! I bought the comic art won in the top left at the 40th Event and was a bit tempted at the G1 artwork ones, but eeeeh, 495 yennies for one seems a bit of a stretch. On the bottom shelf are bags of various descriptions. Well... Two at least.
I did end up grabbing a lenticular key ring, coz I am a sucker for that kind of tat. Was thinking about the socks, as I like some novelty socks, BUT the curse of gaijin feet strike again and they were too small. Gawdamit, I tell you if you have larger than normal feet, you are doomed to never be able to easily find good shoes or cool socks.
For the last section I called the "Acrylic Cards Display," I managed to not get any snaps, so I suggest doing a hard core zoom in the right section on this picture:
All it had in it was the comic themed acrylic cards that I wanted to get, the character cards set up, and a couple of sample of the cursed credit cards that this whole place was set up to promote.
As it was I ended up caving and buying a few of the comic acrylic doodads for my good self. The promotional material, yoinked from their website looks a bit like this:
The actual items look like these llittle silver packets in before being opened.
Not much to see. Damn random picks.
I bought two and got these. Nice. I did go back and get one more, and luckily ended up avoiding doubling up, which was cool and all. However, I do query the quality of the design. The print is fine and clear, however it's just printed straight on the back, so it could well be prone to scratching at the back. What I find a little whacky is that the plastic it's printed on is super goddam thick! Like, a big fat chunk. I would've preferred it was thinner and the print was sandwiched in the middle of two acrylic sheets to be honest.
And there we go. That is the end of my trip in to the bustling metropolis of Tokyo for a popup store designed to sell credit cards of all things. It was fun enough at the time and I had no other plans so it was totally fine and good.
A satisfactory adventure.
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