Vintage Japanese boxed "39"- Perceptor

Perceptor, one of the key season 2 characters and one that continued to play a central role post TFTM. I was always very fond of Perceptor and had secretly wanted him during my childhood (but never voiced my desire).

I really like Transformers that transform into everyday life things and devices like Reflector, the casettes, Soundwave, Blaster and Megatron (which could be an 'everyday life' kind of item depending on which part of the world one lives in).

Yesterday, I got this Perceptor fresh off the boat from Japan. The shop owner had hardly finished unpacking all the stuff he bought back from Japan and have not even began to label them with prices when I walked in, asked about Percetor and bought it. It was a very very good price for a vintage 1985 MISB piece and I am very happy with the purchase.

 

Sealed, but tape looks like its losing its stickiness

Back of box. A pity that there's a flap crease.

Silly as it sounds, the green magnified pictures at the bottom right of the box is what piqued my interest in Perceptor when I was young. For an unknown reason the green on the red of a Transformer box intrigued me - that, and its a working magnifying glass, to an extent. The extra images there also make the Perceptor box stand out as one of the more different and unique Transformer boxes because it has an image on it that is not of the Transformer in the box or other team members or related toys.

Back in Hong Kong acquisitions

Back in Hong Kong from Singapore. Went strolling around during lunch time and went into one of my favourite shops in the CC Wu Building. Very fortunate that the owner had vintage stock arriving from Japan today. 

Managed to pick these up hot off the press even before he had a chance to sort them out and put price tags on them.

39 - Perceptor MISB! Wow!

Singapore acquisitions

Was in Singapore to attend a wedding over the weekend and managed to pick up some stuff.

Very happy to have the chance to meet up with Automorpher and zfeakye from TFW2005. I exchanged goodies with them - I handed over D-306: Darkwings giftset to zfeakye and he handed me the Henkei Ratchet and Inferno he helped my pick up a few weeks ago. 

I also managed to pick up Generations Blurr for SGD$20 and the BTS-03: Matrix of Leadership custom kit from my long time buddy D. Even got 2 transparent fists for G1 Optimus Prime that is exclusive to D in the Asian region. Woot!

Here they are...

Large haul of vintage Japanese paperworks

Got my hands on an amazing lot of vintage Japanese Transformers paperworks today. I am pretty amazed I can still find a stash as large as this in HK, in the present day - lots of bio-cards, unused sticker sheets, some instruction sheets and the sealed paperworks bags for Galvatron and Hun-Grrr.

And so the story goes... iPad, iMac 27", Nikon D90 and Unicron

I was absolutely delighted when E gave me an iPad for my birthday (and baked me a cake too!). I tried running it on my MacBook, but that just would not fly. I could not set up and activate my spunky new iPad on the MacBook. 

Why? My MacBook, which dates back to 2006, does not and cannot have iTunes 10.0 and above. My MacBook runs on Tiger OS X 10.4.11 and cannot be updated to OS X 10.5 or later. It must be upgraded. In tech-speak this means the entire operating system has to be reinstalled to Leopard OS X 10.5 or later. The Leopard pack, unsurprisingly cost a whooping HKD$1400 (approx AU$181 or SGD$235). It is a lot of money to pay for an OS upgrade. However, I don't get to use the iPad I got for my birthday if I don't upgrade.

So what do we do?

E suggested 'why not buy a new computer? The 2006 MacBook is old enough as it is'. I thought about it and thought, 'why not?', after all, our workstation/fun room was designed with having 2 computers side by side (for occasions when E and I both have to work from home). The new computer has to be from Apple we thought, so we can run and activate the iPad on it (damn you Apple!). Ok, no, we can buy a PC and run iPad using the (very antiquated) Windows XP with Service Pack 3, but PCs are so uncool. So we're going to get an Apple, which is a lifestyle choice as my buddy KJ puts it.

Since we already have a laptop (MacBook), the new computer should be an Apple 'PC'. We had to decide between 4 models - the 21.5 inch 3.06GHz, 21.5 inch 3.2GHz, 27 inch 3.2GHz or the 27 inch 2.8GHz (quad core). Me, being me, I started out saying I wanted the cheapest model - the 21.5 inch 3.06GHz. We looked around the store and found that, hey, the 27 inch is pretty cool too. It's incredibly humongous! *cut-to-the-chase-after-almost-45mins-of-non-stop-pacing-and-deliberation* - we decided to go for the 27 inch 3.2GHz and set ourselves HKD$12,980 back (nah, don't need the quad core one).

We had to lug all 19.5kgs of it back from the shop, to home, on foot, in a box the size of a travelling luggage. Now that its set up, I'd say its awesome. I can now use my iPad too, awesome too.

So now I tried connecting E's newly bought Nikon D90 (nope, she didn't want the new D7000) to the iMac and guess what? The Nikon D90 software only supports up to OS X 10.4 (iMac is on OS X 10.6)....

... and so the story goes.

Classics Superion giftset

Thanks to the eagle eye enthusiasts at OZ Formers who alerted the community to Robot Kingdom's 'retail' price Superion appendage sets. RK is now selling these sets for approximately US$60 per set, a very good price even be HK standards. After scouring the shops here for a month, I have concluded the the prices for the appendage set ranges from HKD$800 to HKD$1200 (US$103-155). US$60 per set is massively cheap. Needless to say, my slight interest in this set became a real interest since the deal was so good.

I ordered the set from RK before going out for lunch. Told E the good news during lunch and she said, what about the pieces that make up the body? Why don't we get those too? Told her I knew a place that has it and so we went there after lunch, and guess what, bought the Classics Superion giftset MISB for HKD$398 (US$51.26; AU$52.27).

Now, I just have to wait for the FansProject Aerial Appendage set to arrive....

Vintage Masterforce promotional vinyl; Generations Thunderwing & Bumblebee

I picked up another vintage promotional vinyl from the same shop I bought the Headmaster promotional vinyl from - this time, its a Masterforce vinyl. Like the Headmasters one, this Masterforce vinyl has anime art of the key Masterforce characters in the front and shots of the toys at the back.

Very interestingly, it also includes a promotion for Lander ("Landmine" in US continuity), which was never released at retail in Japan. See bottom of front. Lander has a designation number of "C-200" (ie: it comes before C-201: Metalhawk, one of the 3 humanoid pretenders released in Japan together with Wave (Waverider) and Phoenix (Cloudburst)). From what I can gather, 500 Landers were given out (or part of a mail away offer) every month to a maximum of 3000 in total. It'd be interesting to see what kind of packaging Lander came with.

On another note, the next wave of Generations has hit HK. I grabbed Thunderwing for HKD$168 and Bumblebee (from previous wave) for HKD$108.