My Hokkaido / Sapporo / Tokyo haul and tally, December 2013

I've been on many toy hunt trips. This time, I figured that rather than do a play by play, day by day, I'll just start and end with a 'bang' and go straight to the consolidated toy haul post.

Beginning from 14 December, E and I were:

• snowboarding in Niseko for approx 5 days;
• visiting various places and also toy hunting in Sapporo for approx 4 days; and
• visiting various places and also toy hunting in Tokyo for approx 4 days.

I visited various places on my maps and also a few new ones in between. All in all, it was a great trip, highly enjoyable and a fun way to cap off the year.

This trips haul consists of....

1. 08 - Streak MIB (missing lots of parts, but box is nice)
2. 10 - Inferno MIB, complete (missing instructions)
3. 18 - Frenzy MIB, complete, unused
4. 97 - Dirge MIB, unused (eHobby 'reissue')
5. Masterforce Aquastar MISB
6. C-67: Rewind MOSC
7. C-69: Ultra Magnus MIB (missing 4 missiles)
8. C-104: Brainstorm MIB, complete, unused
9. C-313: Hardspark MIB, unused
10. C-314: Hotspark loose
11. C-372: Star Convoy MIB, complete
12. D-88: Triggerhappy MIB, complete
13. D-304: Hydra loose complete (part of Darkwings)
14. D-305: Buster loose complete (part of Darkwings)
15. TF-03: Sixturbo MIB, complete
16. Thunder Clash MIB, complete, unused toys and unused paperworks
17. BT-08: Zoom Zoom MISB
18. BT-15: Prowl (blue) MIB
19. TV Artbook #27 - featuring Transformers 2010
20. TV Artbook #33 - featuring Headmasters
21. TF Artbook #43 - featuring Headmasters, beautiful Fort Max cover
22. TF Artbook #55 - featuring Headmasters juniors and others from Masterforce
23. TF Artbook #69 - featuring Masterforce
24. TF Artbook #86 - featuring Transformers Victory

I am back from Japan

After a week and bit at Niseko (snowboarding), and a week and a bit between Sapporo and Tokyo, I am back.

Snowboarding was good, but sprained my master-arm, which is not so good.

Toy hunting in Sapporo was good.

Toy hunting in Tokyo was good.

More to share later.

Oh, Seasons Greetings too.
~ HD

The Birthday Post

Today is my birthday.

Every birthday brings me one year closer to death. Happy Birthday to myself. Heh.

As many said, its not the destination, but the journey that matters. The journey is in turn enriched by the people around, and some of the really key ones are friends, collector buddies, if I may. Without them, I'm certain that my collecting life would lose a lot of its luster, a lot of its attraction.

A supportive wife, E, does wonders always as well.

This year's birthday happens to coincide with the exact day a year ago, when E and I moved into our new place. So, in a way, its 'extra' special.

I thought this year, I would do something special with my birthday post. I'm going to invite some collecting buddies and E, to talk about me, on my blog. I'm going to invite a few fellow collectors to say some things about me, about my collecting or any other thing about me, and I will post it on here, unedited (erm... except names and places).

The danger with inviting people to say something is that I'd end up inviting either too many, or not enough. Or I'd miss out inviting those who feel they ought to have been invited, but weren't and it then could be upsetting.

Now, if I then say that I have invited the collectors whom I talk to the most often, it may also cause offence to some who might think that I just haven't been talking to them enough!

Because what's worth doing is worth overdoing

It's a difficult decision, but in the end, I invited 3 collector buddies who at some point or other had actually given me gifts, and, also E (naturally). How shallow of me. I know right?

Once I identified and asked these guys, and they have kindly responded, I faced the dilemma of how to place them - in which order? I assigned a name to a poker card and I drew them randomly (I wanted to draw names out of a top-hat, yes that would be cool, but I don't have a top-hat).

So here we go, other collectors' thoughts about me will be presented in this order - E, Arkvander, VF-1 and Maz.

Am I a good guy, a bad guy, or just a non-entity in their minds? Find out after the jump.

Takara Transformers, Fight! Super Robot Life, 43 - Blitzwing MIB (#6 of 36)

After the debacle that was Generations Blitzwing, let's turn back the sands of time and talk about Generation One Blitzwing, which happens to be an awesome toy and character.

This piece, 43-Blitzwing,  is #6 of 36.

Here he is looking stunning. For this toy, I 'custom' trimmed all its stickers before I applied them.

In G1 cartoon continuity, Blitwing is one of the better known Triple Changers aside from Astrotrain. He featured in a number of episodes, most notably in the episode 'Triple Takeover'.

My Japanese boxed Blitzwing together with USA Blitzwing (who has a USA box somewhere).

Generations (2013) Blitzwing - this is not a review

The other day, I was rearranging my CHUG shelf because I needed to make space for this-super-duper-awesome-new-Generations-figure...

I cleaned the shelves out a lot, meaning I transformed and kept a number of pieces so that I had space to display new pieces.

Then I came to Generations Blitzwing. Yeah, he was on the shelf too. And I wanted to transform him into tank mode to keep him. In the process, I re-discovered, all over again, what a piece-of-fecal-matter-toy Generations Blitzwing is.

I don't think I want to waste more cyber space talking about this toy sucks giant slick beef balls, so I decided to take some shots and show them here.

Here comes Devastator (a third party toy)....

"Take that, you piece of fecal matter!" *stomp!*

"... and that and that and that..." *stomp stomp stomp!!! crush, crush!*

Next, Devastator stabs Blitzwing with his own Electron Scimitar *scene too gory and is censored*

Takara Transformers, Fight! Super Robot Life, 27 - Sludge MIB (#4 of 36)

Still on the matter of dinosaurs or Dinobots, we have Takara boxed 27 - Sludge for today's post.

I found it odd that Takara numbered Sludge as 27 after Grimlock's 26. Sure there is no logic to how they would number them, but because in the G1 cartoon there are always referred to as "Grimlock, Slag and Sludge", I always in my mind thought Slag should have come after Grimlock.

This is #4 of 36 from the mega loot.

Someday, I'm going to use my super secret ninja technique to remove the sticker residue on the top right of the box. Someday, but not today.

Sludge was one of the Transformer toys that I owned as a kid and so I would always have a soft spot for this guy. I used to love Sludge as a kid - the lumbering giant who is not so bright. In fact, I think he is probably the Dinobot with the lowest intelligence.

This is another minty MIB piece. I just have a weak spot for G1 boxes, really.

Takara Transformers, Fight! Super Robot Life, 28 - Slag MIB (#5 of 36)

This is Japanese Transformer #5 of 36 - Takara boxed 28 - Slag.

My brother used to have Slag when we were kids. Slag was his all time favourite Transformer, still is his all time favourite Transformer - remember the 'who moved my Slag' incident? heh.

I remember Slag as being one of the more powerful and no nonsense Dinobots. In G1 episodes, he is usually the one that rams enemies down or burn their weapons to... slag. In TFTM, he actually knocked Devastator down when the rest of the Dinobots had little success. Powerful!

I have always wondered why Slag just walked away after knocking Devastator down. Why not finish the job?

This is the bottom of the box. Very quickly, it can be seen that the toy pictured on the box is quite different from the actual toy in the box. What is pictured is the Canadian red-faced version of Slag with white upper legs - a kind of rare variant, which I talked about here.