Happy Kongday!

Happy Birthday to the original King of Kings, Kong! His movie debuted way back and 1933 and has yet to be toppled as my favourite movie of all time. If you wish to dig back in the archives of King Kong in this very blog, you can do so by clicking that link or the label below. One of those entries has had over 1500 hits! See if you can guess which one.

Without rummaging through boxes and just looking around my desk, I discovered a couple of few items of note.

I bought this photo about 35 years ago from a dealer in Toronto. It was only $4.00 way back then and it claims to be a true movie still from the original movie. Even if it isn't, it's still a wonderful photograph!

Other than that, I don't have any Kong per se, though I do have some giant gorillas hanging around. This is Giant Gorilla about to pummel Pepsiman with a boulder (I assume they couldn't use the term "King Kong" for copyright reasons.)

This Gorilla is hanging from a few wires plugged into my PC.

This Ichiban-kuji Drangonball Z Oozaru figure was a lucky win from a year ago. (Click that link for an out-of-package pic.)

And finally is this giant gorilla head that I used years ago as part of a Halloween caveman costume. Cute, eh!

R2-Dcaf.

Yay! I landed the A Prize in the latest 7-11 Lucky Draw. It's an R2-D2 figure!

 The head opens up to reveal a ... coffee cup? I'm not exactly sure what to do with it.

But it does look cool!

I also managed to get the last of the J Prizes, the fifth mini-towel.

So now that I'm getting all kinds of doubles, I suppose I don't need to buy any more. Aw, who am I kidding? I still need the B and C Prizes before I can give up.
(ASIDE: On the first weekend this contest began, I had almost completed all the ones I needed. Only one of the 7-11s that I'd visited had even begun the lottery and I had cleaned it out of much that I'd needed. I decided that I'd go back the next day and buy up the remainder, hoping to get the A, B, C, and Last One Prizes in one fell swoop. Ironically someone had beat me to it and there were NO more prizes for sale! I had ignored a lesson that I'd learned decades ago, "When collecting nerdy stuff, if you snooze, ya lose!")

I recently landed a very nice Yoda via UFO Catcher.

It is so cool, that I had to open up the box and actually admire the model. 

Less impressive are these capsules that you can buy off the shelf. The black ones are 300 yen and within are "Bottle caps". It doesn't look too bad but I don't plan on buying any more.

Even more unimpressive are the grey-capsuled "Desk Top Figures". I got a Darth Vader Light Sabre that may be an eraser, all I know is that I shan't be buying any more even at the cheaper price of 200 yen.

These aren't very ubiquitous, I've only seen them in one store so far. Yet these SW Art Cards are very nicely done. At only 280 yen, they are not unreasonably priced and would make a nice gift.

Finally in the latest wave of goods, you can pick up an R2-D2 Bath Tablet. Once I decide to take a leisurely bath, I'll let you know how it bubbles.

 What's next on the Star Wars Swagathon? Stay tuned...

Zoryani Viyny

Zoryani Viyny is a transliteration and Зо́ряні ві́йни is the actual Ukrainian spelling of Star Wars.

Why am I bringing this up? Because one of my ex-co-workers-and-Facebook-friends (too many hyphens there) responded to my "Let's Fill Facebook with Images of Star Wars" with the following pictures. They are TOO incredible to keep to FB alone, so I'm sharing them on the interwebs for the world at large.

The colour and detail on this are amazing and I'm not sure what all the little symbols strewn throughout are symbolic of but they certainly add to the pictures.

This is some info on Lego Darth for those of you who understand the language.



The person that started this all off for me challenged me to a Boba Fett and so I snapped a photo of the nearest item I had at hand, and Surprise-Surprise, it's a bottle cap.

This was her initial picture that got the ball rolling for me.

Some other photos that have crept into my feed follow:

Here are 30 Star Wars characters as chosen by Empire Magazine. I can't argue with the picks, maybe just quibble with the order of them.

Lastly, this little item was picked up in a Mandai grab-bag yesterday. I seem to recall buying a few of these in 2005 and may have them stuffed in a box somewhere, or I gave them away. Anyway, handy little knickknack, it's an R2-D2 Snack Clip to hold ones potato chip bag closed so they don't go stale. (Never mind that I rarely leave an opened bag of chips unfinished.)

Furuta My Loins.

One thing that Japan does magnificently is make Kinderesque choco-eggs with awesome presents inside. Over the last while, I've acquired a few Disney eggs and the most recent series hasn't disappointed. Furuta makes great toys with yummy chocolate (which I usually give away to co-workers) though they aren't very good at spelling the word, Musium (click that for a tour of toys since 1999.)

From a previous series, I acquired Nemo's shark friend, Bruce.

Last weekend, the latest series was released and though I didn't acquire the secret one (damn...I gots ta know!), I got the best of the bunch and thus can stop buying anymore (unless they're on sale.) Apart from Beast, Tigger & Pluto, the awesomest one has to be Sleeping Beauty's マレフィセント Maleficent (blurry photo not withstanding.)

In other non-egg news but from a Capsule nonetheless are these from the wonderful Epic-Mickey Motion Collection. I would have gotten all five but they're a little steep at 300 yen a pop. Fortunately, my Gatcha-dealer allowed me to pick & choose so I grabbed Oswald and a random Mickey. I see that they come in colour or B&W and I'm rather pleased with my selection. The greatest annoyance is that the little blue rabbit doesn't affix to the inkblot and I'm sure it'll go missing in the next big quake. I didn't even know it was a Wii game, I just thought it looked cool.

I finally got a chance to witness the revamped, refurbished, renovated Disney Store and I must say, "I'm unimpressed."

What did impress me is this Penguin/Pig combo done entirely with Pet Bottle Caps!

You Say PoTAto And I Say POtaTO.

Either way you say it, I'm talking about PotA (Planet of the Apes, duh.) I recently reread the original novel by Pierre Boulle, a book I haven't read since I wrote a book report about it in French class in Grade 9 many (many, many) years ago. I never realized how many differences there were to the movie and frankly, it was pretty dull in parts. Thank goodness, Rod Serling gave it a rewrite.

Alas he wasn't around to give Broyles/Konner/Rosenthal script a once over. After reading the above, I read the Quick adaptation of Burton's movie and much to my surprise, I didn't hate it. (To be perfectly honest, I also didn't despise the movie either, contrary to the opinions of everyone else in the world.) Let's hope the next movie, Rise of the Apes, supposedly a follow-up to Escape to the PotA and has nothing to do with the reimagining.

What I really liked about the movie was the merchandising in Japan! It took me a lot of Pepsis to complete a set and even more to try and get some of the special caps for Movie Maniacs (I only got 3/10 and two of those were bought second-hand.) But all in all, they do look pretty darn cool. My favourites are Urko Attar on a horse, Limbo and the Effigy. I have several doubles if anyone wants to buy them but first I have to go through them all again. According to the  Cap line-up, there are several variant versions that I need to peruse. Without any further ado, here are 29 character, 13 heads and 3 Movie Maniac caps.

Other merchandise that came out included these potato chip clips, a mini-pen, mini-yoyo, a pen cap, some print tape and other stuff.

While I'm at it, though I may have posted these before, here are: Cornelius' bust that holds the entire movie & tv series, a Kubrick-Zaius and several action Ape-figures that I have.

I am really looking forward to the merchandising in June/2011!