Tets goes to Transformers Pop-up Store (again) Aug 2025

 

As you can tell by the title, there was another pop-up store made for the wonderful money vacuum we call the Transformers.  I went to it and will now share what I have.

This one was cleverly called: 

"Transformers Meets Japan"

A slightly odd name considering Transformers, but ok.  It was held in the famous Shibuya in the building that my other Transformers exhibition things have all been in (Ok, 1.  However I feel like I have gone to quite a few things there recently for some reason), The Modi building.  This time, however, it was held in the HMV store.

Inneresting.

The HMV & Books store actually takes up two floors.  Being an idiot, I naturally walked around the wrong floor before discovering the second level.  What was interesting to see though was that the store had lots of little areas for fans of various comics and stuff to have a look around, it was quiet and kind of nice.

When you first ride the escalator to the correct floor, you see this plushie Prime chilling on a chair, a rick background diorama and a future base diorama.

I neglected to bring a toy... Maybe I should bring my Uncle Travelling Ratchet out of retirement for these things?

He's been living in a box for so long!  Next time, I will dig the little fella out (Ratchet that is...).  When I arrived though, there was a gentleman studiously setting up hi Studio Series Bumblebee on the sandy one, which is why the photos are separated like they are.  Considerate aren't I?

He seemed like a decent chap though.

After a quick walk around, I soon discovered that the pop-up store was relatively small.  For this one, I had also arrived about a week after it opened, so there is the possibility that it had run out of some stuff.

The view of the entire shop + extra! From the front

Overview of most of the stuff for sale.

View of the shop from the back.

For this shop, there is essentially just a wall and a table.  We'll start at the table line.

As you walk up, they had three large dioramas set up using the Bay movie figures.  These are dioramas that they use quite often and I've seen them a bunch of times before.  I still thik they are pretty cool.  Huge, but cool!

I've noticed that for a lot of these pop-up shops, they have a tendency to have someone come up with a specific art style and go with that.  This artist they've used is KatoYuri <-Twitter.  Wix Site .  I'll freely admit, that I am not that sold on this art style, but I realise it might be the thing for some people.

Then we have the table.

On the top right, we have:

• Cans of candy "fruit drops" with comic artwork
• TF40th metal mug in  the white box
• The black box is a tumbler Glass
• The can is a lemon squash drink.
• The white box is a box of "manju" snacks, with Transformer faces and Tokyo stamped on them.  You can a sample on display.

The fruit drops had some cool artwork on the can, but it was a very expensive 900 odd yen...

For this next part, we have 

• two types of pens up the top -  One using the art style for this popup shop, the other using TF40th.
• The golden looking packets are stickers (right)
• On the left are Acrylic key chains, using the pop-up art style.

For that last section of the table:

• Top Right and left are neck tag name holder things, with the popup art style and a brush work style (was available at the 40th event last year in September too.
• Bottom right is a bunch of tin badges
• Bottom left is Trading acrylic holders.  I think they are just stands, TBH.

Off to the back wall.

Behind the dioramas is a section showing a gold print swoosh artwork of extreme price.  As well as the the bags and a sample of trading cards if  you spend over a certain amount.

I didn't spend over 3K so had no sample card.  They didn't look all that exciting TBH and judging by the stack at the register, other people didn't think so either.  The bags looked pretty cool, but it would've been a stretch to spend 10K there.

Next to that was a sticker printing machine where you could print you personalised name sticker.  Again, they used the pop-up artwork, so a no-go for me.

Then we get to the wall.

This first section has

• stickers at the top,
•  acrylic character stands, 
• a big photo badge (the round things)
• Hand towels
• Bags

I picked up a sticker (400yen!!!) of my favourite Cassettetron, Buzzsaw.  The poor guy doesn't seem to get much love.

They're not reflective, but the artwork style is pretty cool.  I bet it's a "Showa" era art style, retro Showa shit is all the rage at the moment with the young-uns.

In the next section, we have 

• the Japanese classic, the clear file with comic print on it
• Some very expensive sketch books.
• T-shirts
• A-4 Tote bags

• Katoyuri CLear files.
• Caps
• Kids t-shirts
• More tote bags.

Around the corner we move in a little L shape and on the floor there are some comic style lithium style print things.  

These are poster that you can see hanging over the main display.  They look really awesome.

I would've bought some clear files with this artwork on it.  It seems to be a current thing, using the US/UK comic pages as artwork for Japan's Transformers goods lately.

For the final section, we have a couple of baskets of plushies.

I actually picked up that Shatty Optimus at the 40th Event.

So in the end, I bought that Buzzsaw sticker and a トランスフォーマー name plat acrylic stand thing, oddly they only had the Decepticon versions left.  Which sucks a bit.  I need to get the English version I saw kicking around somewhere.   Now where was it... E-Hobby maybe?  Maybe.

I finally had something for the dioramas:

And that was all the Transformers Meets Japan in HMV & Books August 2025 has to offer.  I hope you enjoyed that.