Expanding on the Efteling Collection

 Yes, I'm a collector, and I decided to expand my beloved Efteling Luville christmas village collection with some more item types of my favorite theme park.

 

And that is with pin's, and yearbooklets.

 

 

The former will come to no suprise to my family, I have been collecting those since it became a hype in the early 90s, and while I did sell off most of them 15 odd years ago, I still for example have official McLaren Marlboro ones of Senna and Berger on my notice board.  And this year when we go, I'll be hopping the souvenir shops for the "location specific" ones.

 

Just as I have a lot of anime pins.

 

 

 

The second item are small picture books, sold every year with a new edition, in the park.  Thse booklets of around 40 pages tend to go for about 4 euro in the park, and starting from this year I'll be taking them along when we visit the park. 

So just some innocent fun that guaranteed will spin out of control rather soon... because I'm a collector!

June 2023 loot

 Here we are, already at the halfway mark of this year!

And it is a video with some awesome stuff to show for as well.

The links, as promised:

Marin nendoroid, Ichika: they came from Ami Ami, respectively a pre-order and a pre-owned.

Lunamaria Hawke: another fun find in the pre-owned section of Mandarake.

Mitsuri Kanroji: the love hashira found her way from the machines of TokyoCatch.

So albeit the list looks short, it is some very good stuff that has been added!

Streamlining the anime collection

 I have a lot.  Maybe to much...

Well, it's the regular mantra of any collector, and it is always fine until suddenly the room runs out of space.  

The room yes, not even the shelves, but the whole room...

So it is at that point one must decide to streamline the collection a little, and focus on some things, in this case characters, instead of going all over the place.  Which is just what I will be doing over the coming months.

The first step though is buying behaviour, and to only get models of series one will like, instead of the cool of the moment (aka, the last anime one watched) purchases.  YouTube is full of those kind of video's, so I guess I`m not alone in that.

For example, Eromanga Sensei was a funny series, but why did I get all those figures as I don`t really have anything with the characters.  But back then, I just needed to have a model of them, and one became two and so forth.

 

So to that end, I decided to slim down from figures of (last count: 84) various characters, to tone down to 8, namely of two anime franchises on the one hand, and 5 seperate characters (okay, I admit, Waifu's) on the other.

 

The anime franchises of course being Saint Seiya...

 

 

... and Gundam, because you know, apart from loving all the mecha and a lot of the various series, there is also uber waifu Lunamaria Hawke.

 

 

So no surprises on that front.  Do mind, the following characters are all for the part of my PERSONAL display cabinets, not for the communal ones I share with Noshi of series we both love and have various characters from, like That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime or Rising of the Shield Hero.  Those are figures in the living room displays, I`m talking about the mano-cavo displays.

Marin Kitagawa

Because of course, which otaku doesn`t like this female otaku from My Dress Up Darling.

Zero Two

She is sexy, she is hard as nails, and she is slightly off the bat.  So of course, combined with being a mecha show, Zero Two from Darling in the Franxx is on my to collect list.  And for that matter, also on my "have to get a tattoo with her" list.

Kurumi Tokisaki

I guess I might have a knack for slightly of the bat girls, as Kurumi fills that box just as well as Zero Two.  And the fact she is an epic gun-toting spirit makes her great material for lots of figures out there to collect.

Himiko Toga

Did I say of the bat?  Okay, so they probably don`t come further from the bat then Toga (okay, except perhaps Noshi's favorite Yuno Gasai, who still is strangely figureless) from My Hero Academia's League of Villains.  And her bangs make her look so innocent...

Ichika Nakano

Okay, this one is a bit more normal.  I loved The Quintessential Quintuplets, and Ichika was by far my favorite sister (I guess it's the tomboy hairstyle), so she is the one sister I`m collecting multiple editions from, especially the prize figures.

 

 

And yes, in the end I will have a tattoo of each and every one of those five!

 

While I will keep like one copy of characters I liked (like Ryder from Fate, MHA's Denki Kaminari or of course Yamcha from Dragonball Z), those will be the characters I will be aiming for and collecting mostly, hopefully granting every one of them a dedicated shelf over time!

 

Now to start sorting and finding back the boxes of the ones that won't be making the cut...

 

Did I manage to build my mangatheque in 2022?

 So, one of the goals for the nearly closing 2022 was rebuilding my manga collection, or mangatheque I like to call it.

And this in part of the goal of reading 100 books this year.

Now, about the goal itself, you could read about that a few days ago, but this post will focus purely on obtained manga's.

Starting with this short clip, showing the ones now in my collection:

 

 

 

Yeah, that pile is the ones that I still need to read, some are very recent additions from right before I closed this post and taped the clip, but also volumes of series I follow, but lack previous books from...

 

So while still not a library at all, that cabinet saw some SERIOUS growth over the past year. And it seems 2023 will have the collection at least doubled for certain, so next year's update will be a tat longer hehehe...

January 2022 Loot

 So here we are, the first video of all my monthly loot.

And this post is actually the summary of where you can get the goodies if still possible.

 

 

So, with that being my blabbing, here are the links:

Quintuplets summer blankets, Veldora and Gobta figures: TokyoCatch crane game, downloadable in the app store as well.

Gundam Merchandise: Limited series Gundam crate by Loot Crate.

Ichika: Nendo Addicts whom has a great physical store in Antwerp as well.

My Hero Academia christmas charms: Sweetbbyfox on Instagram.

Nintendo Switch Blue Reflection game: Game Mania which is a belgian chain of game stores new and used.

Cosmo Memoir Aiolia: Cremas2 crane games, downloadable in the app store as well.

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime volume 2 manga: I had an Amazon.nl voucher from work, so hey.

Nitocris: those where obtained through the end of year action over at Toreba Crane Games as well as with "regular" play. 

Nanachi, Saint busts: These all came from AmiAmi.

 

There we have it, the first "monthly overview" and all the links of stuff I got this january, and it certainly was a blast al ready to get the new year going!

A small disclaimer: if you watched my Lucky Bag unboxing, you'd see more obtained figures.  But as I have nothing with non-anime models, I don`t consider them loot as they didn't end in my collection, but are going to be used as some trade away figures.

 

Dual Unboxing: Veldora and Gobta!

 A double unboxing in today's video, as these two loveable characters from That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime came in from TokyoCatch recently.

I grabbed both of the models within a few days of each other near the end of december, so I had this "wave" in one go.

So let's have a look at these Otherworlder range models, of whom we already have a Shion and of course Rimuru in our cabinet, as I really like this range in size and quality.

 

So here we go, let's unbox these characters!

 

 

As a result, our shelf is being nicely filled up some more.

Unboxing Fate Grand Order Nitocris

 Okay, I like the Fate franchise, even though I don`t really bother about the chinese puzzle called the Fate timeline.

I just watch the series and enjoy it, and the servants based on historical characters makes it great fun.

And I won this Sega SPM range figure at Toreba crane games, so let's unbox this figure!

Now, I personally like the SPM line, they are nicely detailed for a prizefigure, and they aren`t teenyweeny small either.

So now this lady stands nicely in the cabinets, great figure!

Building a huge gashapon tube

 Okay, so this is just some fun project for the coming year.

I got one of these christmas ball tubes from this year's tree, and I thought "what if I fill this all up with gashapon balls"...

And so I'm duly going to do.  During the year I'll frequently be going by Akiba in the Central Station, and spend my small change there when I pick up some manga to turn balls.  These will then be added to the tube, in the hopes of filling it completely towards december 2022.

Once that happens, I`ll be doing a massive opening of the balls inside, by then long forgotten in all probability what is actually in them, if there are duplicates, etc etc etc.  

Just seems like a fun little thing to do on the side, so to kick it off I already inserted the two gashapon balls from this december's manga purchase in there, now to get it gooooiiinnnggggg!

Two new Lunamaria's from Solaris Japan

 The collection grew nicely again the past week, with a lovely box from Solaris coming in the 13th.

And in it, two more Lunamaria Hawke's for my shrine, figures Noshi found on the website and promptly made me order.

So of course, I dug in and unboxed my lovely waifu...

 

 

I got two different ones, and for the two together pre-owned (and I must say, once again excellent condition, I love the japanese grading system) I paid about 40 euro.

 

The biggest of the two is the RAH.DX one I missed of the three in the line, Lunamaria in her jumpsuit with her helmet.

 

 

The other one is already driving Noshi crazy, as it is one of the Voice I-doll range, so now I have a talking waifu as well in my collection.

Great looking figures, that are now in the shrine as well, which now looks nicely filled like this:

Two less to collect, only about two dozen left to go, as you can see on my MFC account.

Another LunaMaria Hawke: my first MFC purchase

 In this little post, I can show another little LunaMaria for my ever growing collection of the waifu.

And she is the very first figure I bought second hand through the My Figure Collection collector's forum.

A lovely person in Canada sold her, part of a large Gundam SEED Destiny lot of figures, for 30 USD total.  Adding tracked shipping and of course the dreaded taxes, it still was a good deal as she doesn`t show up a lot on auctions at all.  I payed her the 9th, and she went on the mail the 10th.  And then, on the 27th of august she was at my doorstep, ready to be grabbed out the package and go to my shrine!

With all the figures in the lot, she comes to about 3 EUR for an item from the bundle, so I am perfectly fine with that.  I am going to keep all the others as well for the collection, so I`ll be adding quite some stuff to my collection database as a result.

 

But, a positive experience, and I am going to be using the website for sure to grab things left and right!

Lovely little chase find

A HUGE AmiAmi order came in

 Hello everyone,

In this video, I'll be sharing the unboxing of a BIG box from AmiAmi.

Pre-orders, pre-owned's, there is a bit of everything in it, both for me as well as for Noshi.

Like her birthday present, which she knows about (like I do about mine).  If we buy these sorts of collectibles, we tend to tell each other to prevent the other one ordering it themselves, ending up with doubles.

So, at a total order of over 350 euro, and 90 euro shipping by EMS, the stress would be if customs took a peek at it or not, and to bad they did.  Now, as I used the combine monthly order, something always possible if there is a pre-order in it, I saved quite some euro's on shipping as it could all come in one go, and that compensated a bit for the 137 euro tax hit.

There are some more things for Noshi in there as well, but I ain't telling nor showing those as she doesn't know what it is (well, 1 thing she does, if she remembers) as that are small gifts for Thorin to give to his mommy.

But there is also a nice heap of goodies for me, though all smaller then the huge set for Noshi, some from pre-orders, and even a LunaMaria for my waifu collection.  So take a look at the video and see the haul!

 

Now, here are all the itemsin picture, a great heap indeed, and I`m going to do some unboxing videos for the Hawke Sisters and Rider in the near future.

 

 

And a good look at Schwi and Shiro, who are now part of our living room decoration.

Luckily, I didn`t have to do all that unboxing alone...

So, did you like the stuff I grabbed?  Feel free to comment down below, and until the next one!

2.11.0.0

Transformers Tiny Turbo Changers blindbag opening

With the Last Knight came a series of blindbags for the Transformers line, and I found some of them in the Intertoys in Geldrop.

Now, I don`t want to just grab at random and end with a couple of doubles, nor do I want to collect the whole series.

So a quick search gave me the bumpcodes for the wave, to be found HERE.  These codes are located at the back (sorry, the picture doesn`t really show them), but slightly to the left above the Hasbro logo, there is a number imprinted on the bags.  About a centimeter further left of this code is a single letter, and that is the model that is in the bag.

So that would mean I picked out the Grimlock (I always loved the Dinobots) and Crosshairs, because, well, my criteria of buying a Transformer is that he is
a) an Autobot
b) usually transforms into a cool car

This is a general rule of thumb, as as a kid I liked for example Superion far over Defensor, though in the new series I bought neither.

Turbo Changers are small 2 - 3 step transforming, rather softish plastic models of about 4 cms in height, and come only with the most basest of paint jobs on them.  Perhaps their biggest attraction is their sort of Chibi style robot forms, like those mono-pose bags that where on sale here about a year ago and just contained small, non transforming, G1 lookalike characters.

The first bag contained indeed Grimlock, in a beige colourstyle compared to the more traditional grey and golds.  The dino looks actually quite nice bar perhaps the "blocky" part of his feet hanging under the T-rex'es maw.

Transforming him is simple, turn around the hindlegs and split the head open, and he is all done, but he looks fine for such a small little fellow.

Crosshairs, the irish sniper in the movie, is perhaps well detailed in his carmode, but it suffers from his non painted windows on this mode imho.

Again he has a simple transformation of putting back the hubcap (which becomes a big block at the backside) and pointing the arms forward, but the seen from the front, and even with the limited paintjob, he looks fine.

These are cute and small models, nothing to fancy and just nice little gimmicks in a collection if you ask me.

And they stand nicely in my toy display cabinet now, Grimlock in his dino mode, while Crosshairs is displayed as a robot.

Haul Report 83

Hello everyone to another weekly oversight of stuff I obtained for the hobby.

And other relevant geeky thingies ;-)

The first thing I picked up this week was a bit of light reading, in that I grabbed the may / june issue of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy, on which I gave my 2 cents worth of opinion a few days ago on this blog.

A fun little thing was picked up by my mum at a garage sale, with some little pots from The Hobbit, and this for an absolute superb price of... FREE.  Free stuff is always cool.

Wayland Games delivered my first part of an order with them, in the form of a box of skirmishing ACW infantry, but the bases are still on back order unfortunalty. 

And that's about it for this week, a small and modest haul, but I can say already that this hobby is actually way cheaper then LEGO ;-).

Less "must have" buying pressure I think hehehehe...

Kablamo Store Re-opening

Hey all, today I'm taking you all along for the re-opening of the Kablamo store in Mortsel, near Antwerp.

Ran by fellow BeLUG member Iban and his lovely wife, they moved the store from it's old venue to this spacier new one.

It's still located in the same stores gallery, just 4 doors down the hallway now.  And today at 13.00 hours, the festive moment was there: the grand re-opening in this new location.

The store is about a quarter bigger in surface then the old one, but the fact they don`t have to cope with a winding stairs in the middle of the shop makes it far spacier and with a lot more room to display their goods.

Kablamo is known for it's huge assortement of Funk Pops vinyl figures, ranging from the basic ones up to the special editions and large sets.

Now, that isn`t everything they stock, as they also have a great selection of other action figures.

Like this "anime" style Harley Quinn...

(Honey, if you read this, consider it a "silent hint" for my birthday btw).

Some glass cabinets adorn the store, containing some lovely statuettes and merchandise.

The service was great as always, and if you go to their Facebook page, there are vouchers for the opening weekend, which ends on sunday.  Some great deals are to be found with them, and even I bought my very first Funko Pop for myself like, ever...

Because it's Harley Quinn... and Limited Edition... and in a great black and white colourscheme!

Build Report: LEGO nhow De Rotterdam

Today's build report is something very special, namely a non-licensed set, De Rotterdam.

This set was made for the hotel of the same name in The Netherlands, and part of the nhow chain.  It has been designed by H. Beuze, and the build by J. vd Molen.

Consisting of 51 pieces, this small architecture like set comes in a small white box with a picture of the build and some artwork on it. 

This is how the hotel looks in real life:

Opening the box we get the instructions leaflet and the bag of parts, mainly grey.

We start the build with a 4x8 plate to which we attach small 1x2 transparant pieces on both upper- and underside.

Grey bricks are then placed on the model to show the main walls of the building.

The set comes with a single printed transparent brick, which has the logo of the NH hotels. 

This is installed at the front of the build.

All that`s left to do is to place some more grey bricks on the top, and the build is completed.

This is actually a nice little 51 piece set, and will be a very lovely little thing to have in my `oddities` cabinet...