Pullips and Junk

90/365- New doll arrivals

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Klein

February’s pullip Chelsea arrived much sooner than anticipated, I was rather shocked to get her in the mail yesterday. The day prior I actually had a package from Hobbysearch arrive, containing among other things Bohso and Ms. Green. I was asked to make an order for a friend of mine on hobbysearch when I noticed they had a few mini pullips including Bohso and Ms. Green on clearance for 1400 yen each so I tossed them on the order for myself. I had wanted Bohso for quite a while, but I happened to notice that Ms. Green’s costume looked awfully familiar as it is seemingly based on a uniform design used in Gundam Seed/Gundam Seed Destiny I decided I needed her as well ^^; . I haven’t actually opened any of them yet but I am really wanting to debox Chelsea I who have named Picadilly.

I didn’t really realize I had so many minis until I started thinking about after these two arrived, I had no idea I had over a dozen of the little ones already ^^;

Posted in 365 Photo Project, acquistion, Doll, Pullip | Tagged bohso, chelsea, hellcat punks, little pullip, ms.green, picadilly, Pullip | 1 Comment

89/365- Elisabeth Pullip

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Klein

Running a little behind again ^^; Elisabeth arrived a few days ago, I decided to name her Hecate. She is an absolutely gorgeous pullip and she does prove that Groove is still really able to really make releases with a wow factor. The quality of this release is amazing, December’s releases to me were unremarkable but this pullip is really unique and she is just absolutely amazing.

I absolutely love her despite her lack of versatility, her gray-ish skin tone makes it next to impossible for her to be anything but a vampire unless you really want a sickly on-her-deathbed pullip but she does make a damn fine vampire.

Posted in 365 Photo Project, Doll, Pullip | Tagged elisabeth, groove, hecate, Pullip | 2 Comments

88/365- New arrivals (Dolls/Comics/Nendoroids)

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Klein

This inglorious Ash Wednesday is not exactly setting a good vibe for the rest of lent, I have been dying to take doll photos for the past two days but the damn sun won’t come out at all and I don’t want to have to resort to using my flash on my camera (especially when some of these pictures are for a magazine). I am extremely annoyed with the sun right now, and cursing my inability to bend it to my will on the bright side there is not supposed to be anymore snow for about a week.

As I mentioned yesterday, I was still going out to one last comic book shop last night. I ended up getting issue 8 of Kick-ass (the final issue of book one), a bunch of other random comics (basically anything I could find with Joker content that I didn’t already have) and the Silver Age Joker/Batgirl figure set. I had been wanting the figure set for a while now but couldn’t find anyone that still had it in stock 😦 Not sure where the shop I went to unearthed it but the pricetag on it said it had been checked into the store in 2003 and judging from the box’s condition I tend to believe the date. I am not sure why I found the premise of these two figures coming together as a two-pack so hilarious maybe it’s because I read the Killing Joke a few too many times, I realize it is supposed to be based on their Silver Age incarnations but it still kind of makes me giggle. This is actually my first Batgirl figure, I have no idea what number Joker figure this is as I am starting to get a fair number of them. I came to conclusion that I need to make an actual list of what comics I have and upload it somewhere on this blog (as it’s own page probably) so I can access it via phone so I can double check whether or not I actually have certain issues or not.

Pullip Elisabeth arrived late yesterday afternoon with her mini pullip entourage: March Hare and Queen of Hearts. I don’t think I have shared the story here about how I managed to track down an Elisabeth so I will do that now.. Pullipstyle had sold out of Elisabeth, I had planned to purchase her at Animadness as they had said they would have her in stock a week to two weeks maximum after the meet but I called them last week to see if she had arrived yet as I was planning on going up there this past weekend and well my email spam filter is a bit overly aggressive sometimes and I was starting to think maybe somehow I had missed their email. I called and they had changed distributors they said to call back in two weeks and they would have an estimate of when they would be in stock then, not that they would be in stock in two weeks but that they would have an idea of when they would be in stock. Patience is not really my strong suit, so I emailed Pullipstyle and asked when they would be expecting a restock of Elisabeth. I got an email back from them saying that they had one left but that she hadn’t been listed on their website because there was what appeared to be a spare eye chip rattling around inside the box- holy lack of quality control batman !. There had been a promotion that you would get a free mini pullip if you preordered the December/January dolls by a certain date but because PS orders more than what was actually preordered she still had a few spare minis floating around and offered me one with my order, I get another email back a few minutes later saying that I could choose two free minis because they had screwed up my order last time because of my addiction to Alice in Wonderland I chose March Hare and Queen of Hearts. I am extremely thankful I decided to try emailing pullipstyle as they are awesome.

I got two packages from BBTS as well as a package from Newegg that has a 620 gig hard drive I intend to stick in my PS3 (the 500 gig laptop hard drive I had in there went flakey on me) when I get a free moment. The first package had a K-ON! Yui nendoroid in it, I got Mio (pictured above) last week but somehow I don’t think I ever actually mentioned her arrival as I just kind of glossed over it as a few dolls arrived that day as well. Both of them are annoyingly cute, just like the show. I like the show but I can’t watch more than an episode at a time without getting cavities, I have a much lower tolerance for cute shows these days 😦 . The other package had my special edition of Mad Love and other stories that comes with Harley Quinn and Joker figures. I already have the 1st edition of the comic but I really Mad Love and well I decided to splurge a little bit. I’m a sucker for the sets that come with figures especially Joker figures I already have four other ones ^^;

Posted in 365 Photo Project, anime figure, Comics, Doll, Love that Joker, Pullip | Tagged alice in wonderland, batgirl, batman, Comics, dc, elisabeth, good smile company, groove, gsc, harley quinn, joker, K-on, mad love, march hare, mini pullip, mio, nendoroid, Pullip, queen of hearts, Yui | 3 Comments

87/365- DC lead figures & Harley Quinn pullip ?!

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Klein

It started this past Sunday, a fairly systematic sweeping of my local and semi-local (ie. two hour radius) comic book shops I am not really sure what sparked this crazed endeavor or what exactly I was hoping to find but I was pretty determined that if I looked hard enough I would find something even if I wasn’t sure what it was I as looking for. I hit Buried Under Comics in Manchester on Sunday, I picked up Batman: Cacophony written by Kevin Smith.I am still kind of torn about what I think of Smith as a writer, for the record I loathe his films (not a big fan of stoner films in general) but I am trying to be fair when judging him as a comic writer. I am not always a fan of the directions he takes certain characters like Poison Ivy in Widening Gyre for example but I had heard a lot of mixed reviews about Cacophony and knew it had a lot of Joker so I decided to pick up the hardbound collected edition of it. I was not a fan of the art, the story was somewhat interesting though it wasn’t a bad read but it wasn’t really reinventing the wheel either. I did really enjoy the scene where Batman visited Joker in the hospital after Batman had chose to save the Joker’s life versus apprehending Onomatopoeia. There was some interesting ideas in Cacophony but I am still unsure of what to think of Kevin Smith as a writer. I am really just a novice when it comes to comics, so maybe it’s just me. Anyway, I digress Cacophony and whether or not I actually liked is not the main purpose of this post… I did find something else interesting at Buried Under they had the DC lead figures, I had seen them before at BBTS but hadn’t really thought much of them but seeing them in person they looked pretty damn unique and interesting. The figures, are actually lead as in lead poisoning lead so needless to say they were not made by an American company but an European company called Eaglemoss Publications. They come with a 20 page magazine summarizing the character’s history and background, they are actually a kind of interesting read and a large warning label proclaiming the dangers of lead (including a stern warning not to place product in your mouth :O ). They had a Harley Quinn which I enthusiastically snapped up.

I stopped at the local Newbury comics but I didn’t find anything of interest at all plus they were super crowded and I was losing my patience but another shop had opened next to them and they had a bunch of really old stuff. They had a lot of interesting stuff but nothing perked my interest enough to buy, I did kind of impulse buy a Silent Mobius figure as it was on clearance for like $3 mainly because I hadn’t seen one on the shelves anywhere in years. I was pretty happy with having found Harley but I had the day off yesterday so I decided to make a pilgrimage to Toy Vault‘s first store located in Rhodes Island. The mall it was located in was rather creepy as it was kind of small, which isn’t remarkable but somewhere about 80% of the stores were closed and long gone so just walking in there kind of gave a Dawn of the Dead vibe. The store itself was kind of unremarkable, I picked up some back issues of Batman but that was about it. Since I was already in the area kind of in the area, I decided to stop at Newbury Comics as well and they had the Poison Ivy lead figure so I picked her up to go with my previously purchased Harley Quinn and a Kick-ass poster (hitgirl) . I realized my chances of finding the Joker on the shelf were probably pretty slim so I ordered him as well as a Kia Asamiya Harley Quinn from eplantetx.net last night.

I plan on hitting one more shop tonight to pick issue 8 of Kick-ass as well none of the local stores seemed to want to keep to the street date on it and a few are already sold out. I leave with you an in-progress picture of pullip Harley Quinn by Requiemart

Posted in 365 Photo Project, Comics, Love that Joker | Tagged Comics, dc, harley quinn, poison ivy | 4 Comments

86/365- Ende the vampiric dal

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Klein

I finally deboxed my Ende, Salem yesterday. I was somewhat anticipating Elisabeth in the mail yesterday but it turns out there was no postal service yesterday, and the mailman seems to really be running behind today (normally he is here around 1:45 pm now it is two hours later and no sign of him). I don’t know why I was hesitating to debox her, she is absolutely stunning in person.

I have never seen such a dramatic dal before, I didn’t expect to like her as much as I do but she is amazing. The only thing that isn’t absolutely amazing about her is that she comes with stick on vampire fangs, they are just absurdly cartoon-ish and don’t seem to match her style at all (even more worrisome they come with a warning label saying they may in fact harm the doll if left on too long). I decided to name her Salem as I wanted all of my dals from 2010 to have place-based names (2008 was food based names and 2009 was alcohol based names) and I thought it rather fitting. I had toyed with the idea of naming her Transylvania but frankly I was concerned tranny would become her nickname ^^;

Posted in 365 Photo Project, Dal, Doll | Tagged Dal, ende, salem | Leave a comment

85/365- What’s in the box?

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Klein

A package came last week, it was rather large and I had no idea what was in it. I was told not to open the package until Valentine’s Day which was yesterday. The package was here almost a week, I don’t think I can adequately put into words how much the very presence of this unknown package drove me mad as I literally had no idea what was in it, anything could have been it the package was huge and fairly heavy.. it could be dolls, comics, figures, hello kitty stuff.. just about anything.

So what was in the box, you ask? An unexpected surprise of epic proportions ~ desu

I was floored when I opened the box and realized it was Suiseiseki, I never expected to receive her as a gift in my wildest dreams. I honestly never even thought she was what was hiding in the box all that time. I was just utterly speechless when I seen her, there is just no way to describe the emotion it was like pure joy.

sui&hina

Hina has always been my favorite Rozen Maiden character but Suiseiseki has always been the character I most identified with. I had never expected to get the Volks Hina Ichigo but now I have her as well as the Volks Suiseiseki. She is so precious, I am literally almost afraid to photograph her I am slightly scared to touch her knowing how much she cost and how irreplaceable she would be if something was to happen to her. She is just utterly gorgeous though, I so very badly want to take more pictures of her so expect a flood of photos of her soon.

Posted in 365 Photo Project, BJD, Doll | Tagged BJD, rozen maiden, suiseiseki, volks | 4 Comments

New arrivals – Youtsuzu & Arion

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Klein

One last post before I head off to bed…VOTD had another OOB sale recently, for those of you who don’t know they periodically offer returned dolls (broken in some way but most are easy fixes) and/or old display models from their storefront for sale at discounted prices via their forum. The broken dolls can be a real bargain, yes their arm might be broken but that isn’t anything a body swap to either an obitsu or another body of the same type won’t fix. I managed to score an Another Alice during their last sale with full stock for $35 the catch was she had a broken wrist and there was no body match for the Another series at the time Requiemart has since figured out a solution though, so Elise will be going on an obitsu very shortly. This sale was not as large as the last one but there were still a pretty fair large amount of dolls available, I don’t always check the forum that often but I happened to refresh the day after the dolls were posted and while some had already been sold, there were two dolls that really sparked my interest. Initially I was just going to get Arion who came with a broken arm but after some internal debate I decided to be brave and adopt the Youtsuzu with the broken eye mechanism as well.

I took this picture upon their arrival, I was a little surprised I actually got Arion’s box as this is the first time I had actually got an OOB doll with a box. Just ignore the nendoroid..

My first Maguna taeyang had an arm break a while back, I was kind of horrified at the time until Requiemart explained what an easy fix it was. The thing is it isn’t a true break, the arm just kind of slips out of joint and becomes detached. I was hoping that this was the problem with Arion as I now knew how to fix it and sure enough upon inspection that was the issue. I decided to share some pictures of the process in case anyone else manages to dislocate a taeyang arm or gets a broken one.

I basically just had to line it up his arm correctly and then pop it back in place.

As soon as I popped his arm back in, he was as good as new. So with less than two minutes of work I basically had a brand new Arion on my hands that I had only paid $70 for instead of $115 on VOTD or $125 on PS. I had actually been wanting Arion since he was announced but somehow I had never managed to pick him up, I am glad I waited for him. I have decided to name him Strife as he kind of vaguely reminds of me of Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII it’s probably just because FFVII is on my mind as I am playing through it again on my PSP at the moment.

Youtsuzu was more of an impulse purchase, I absolutely love her stock look but I had been looking at pictures of her rewigged and outside of her stock recently and I had kind of been thinking it would be rather nice to have one to play with a little bit more. She came with a broken eye mechanism, so she was pretty cheap. I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into from the kind of blanket description of a broken eye mechanism which could be any number of things. When I took her out and started handling her I noticed her eyes moved side to side without issue but the blinking mechanism for her right eye was stuck and wouldn’t wink. I opened her up and the newer designed blink lever on the right side was just kind of stuck so I fixed it and she too is as good as new.

I haven’t decided on a name or a new wig for her yet, I am still in the process of trying different things on her and seeing what works with coloring before deciding if I need to order her a new wig or if she will suit one of the wigs I already have on hand.

So with a little bit of work I effectively got both dolls for the price I would have paid to buy either one of the two new.

Posted in Doll, Pullip, Taeyang/ Namu | Tagged arion, h.naoto, Pullip, taeyang, youtzusu | 4 Comments

84/365- My to do list..

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Klein

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have been quite ill recently plus I have just been extremely busy in general so I haven’t been updating this blog like I should. I never made posts for a few of my 365 photos and I haven’t been sticking to my ideal of a post a day so I decided today’s picture of the day is going to kind of poke fun at how far behind I am running. Some of these things have been here from as long ago as early December (Vocaloid figures) but have still yet to be opened. It’s not too bad until you realize this is just the stuff I haven’t actually opened as of yet I also have stuff I have opened but haven’t bothered to photograph or blog yet like my Hujoo Berry that just arrived today, who knows when she will actually be photographed ^^;

I am really behind on blogging pullips so I am going to try and get those done all within the next week or so, I already know what I want to say but I haven’t sat down and actually photographed them yet. I had intentions of doing so today but I didn’t wake up until after five pm when the sun was already down so that kind of put that out of the question as the sun was already down.
I also have somewhat of a ticking time bomb in the form of more stuff coming in the mail so I need to get the stuff here blogged before more stuff starts arriving..
Still incoming-
– Cassiopea Spice blythe
– Elisabeth Pullip & March Hare mini pullip & Queen of Hearts mini pullip
– K-on!- Yui Nendoroid by Good Smile Company
– Lucky Star x Macross- Tsukasa cosplaying Ranka Lee Figure
– Mad Love & Other Love Stories- Box Set
– Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon- Season 1 Volume 1 (Region 2) DVD
– Vocaloid- Miku Plush
– Vocaloid- Miku Figma WF 2009 Exclusive by Max Factory

There is also a box of unknown origin that has somehow made it into my apartment that I have no idea of the contents of, there was a note saying that it was not to be opened until Valentine’s Day so whatever is in there will probably be tomorrow’s (well today as it is now after midnight in my timezone at least) picture of the day. The package has been here since like Wednesday and it’s presence has been driving me absolutely mad ever since as I really have no idea what could be in it.

Posted in 365 Photo Project, anime figure, Dal, Doll, Pullip | 2 Comments

83/265- BJD- Littlefees Bisou & Ante

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Klein

For anyone wondering about the flurry of activity today, I have been rather ill these past few days so I am trying to get all caught up with my past few pictures of the day. I am still going on my 365 day project without having missed a photo yet but I have fallen behind in blogging them all.

Yesterday’s picture of the day was of my new Fairyland Littlefee BJDs: Marie and Honey Child. Marie is a fullset Ante (Macaron Pink) who I have more recently rewigged in an acid green fur wig and Honey Child is a fullset Bisou (Bear girl). I think Yo-SD is my favorite bjd size, they are just slightly smaller than a pullip and both of my Fairyland girls handle beautifully and are absolutely gorgeous. I like how well Honey Child and Marie compliment each other, even if their skin tones are noticeably different they still like they belong together. I do have one more Littlefee- Littlefee Leah coming in a few months but somehow I don’t think I will be able to stop myself at three ^^;

Posted in 365 Photo Project, BJD, Doll | Tagged ante, bisou, fairyland, honeychild, littlefee, marie | Leave a comment

82/365 – Darth Konata- Star Wars x Lucky Star

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Klein

I received a 1/4 scale Darth Maul as a kind of gag gift from a friend of mine for Christmas, I say gag because anyone that knows me knows I am not too fond of Star Wars and I have yet to make it all the way through watching any of the Star Wars films and if I can help it I never intend to either. I am just not a fan of sci-fi in general, ironically I would still be absolutely excited to meet Mark Hamill but I would presenting him with an Arkham Asylum Joker poster to sign not Star Wars merchandise. As soon as I seen the 1/4 Darth Maul I began to get curious if his clothes would in fact fit Konata or not, the other day I finally decided to debox him and test this theory.