Tets goes to "The World of Transformers"

A Transformers 35th Anniversary Exhibition.



15th of March 2019 Opening day!

Today I hauled my butt out to Ikebukurou (twice in 1 week!) to go to the Parco Museum to see this gallery they had set up.  It only really grabbed my attention when I saw the (catchy) artwork advertising it in the elevator when I went to the Bumblebee cafe.   Boy am I glad I went!

Once again preparations began early, with pants selection:

Luckily the morning wasn't as bed comfy as before, so I was able to arise and wander off a little earlier from my house.

Knowing the gallery is in the same building as the BB cafe, I had no trouble finding it and when I first spied it, I was a little disappointed.



It cost 700 yen and at the counter looked a little sad. I prepared myself for feelings equal to my BB cafe experience. i.e nice but not exciting.

Luckily it was
More than meets the eye!  (Collective groans go here)

Tets goes to the Bumblebee Cafe, 2019

With the long awaited release of the Bumblebee movie here in Japan (the wait for movies here is nuts!), comes the push for promotion.  This time we have a Bumblebee themed cafe.  NOICE.

The cafe is a normal cafe that adopts a theme for a certain while and has some novelty food and drinks set up.  There was  one that did a Sonic theme a while ago that I kind of wanted to go to, but couldn't be that bothered to.  

Anyway, I got up and got my lay butt outta bed and made my way there today!  Just for the record, it was windy and stormy the night before and my bed was extra comfy this morning.

However, preparations started long before!

Siege Micromasters Roadhandler & Swindler Quick 'n' Nasty review

Man with these guys I certainly feel like I’ve been swindled.

When I was a young fella and getting out of Transformers, I stumbled across the Decepticon Race Patrol.  From that moment on, I fell in love with Blackjack, Detour, Roadhugger and Hyperdrive.  To a lesser extent Micromasters as well.  I ended up getting Overload and thought he was pretty neat.  Their size and the fact that they had good base style interaction was pretty awesome.  I didn’t really get anymore than them, but I definitely appreciated their efforts.

When War for Cybertron: Siege line announced Micromasters, I was all for them.  I saw them at the Tokyo Comic Con and they were tiny, but looked all right. Also they had no price listed.

Now I have Roadhandler and Swindler in hand.  I remember these guys mostly from the Marvel comic that led up to the Underbase saga. Or after. I can't remember exactly. Anyway Micromasters are cool!


(Picture stolen from someone's site.)

So with that warm fuzzy feeling of having some new Micromasters I bought them and boy do I feel swindled!

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.