One of my prizes from the ’80s I’ve had since I was a boy. Here is the front and back of it. It’s a bit beat up, but I’ve had it for nearly 40 years!
My old Return of the Jedi metal trash can
Alien pixel animations
I found these on Pinterest. I always preferred Capcom’s Aliens vs. Predator arcade game over Konami’s Aliens game. I played the Konami game in the arcades on occasion, but it never impressed me much. I’ve lately come to appreciate it more recently via Final Burn Alpha on RetroPie.
Han Solo sofubi figure kit by Kaiyodo
I was actually looking for Kaiyodo’s R2-D2 sofubi kit when I found this. These kits are 1:6 scale, making Artoo twice as big as Bandai’s 1:12 scale kit. Plus it’s hollow inside, making it perfect for lighting. I found Artoo for a decent price on YAJ, but the seller said that he couldn’t verify the contents. Then I noticed that Artoo’s main barrel body was not in the photograph. Good thing I noticed that before bidding! There was another one listed on YAJ, but it was actually a link to Yahoo Flea Market and the seller would only accept PayPay. PayPay is a form of digital money (somewhat like PayPal), but the only way to have a PayPay account is to have a smartphone. It’s bad enough that some places only provide coupons to smartphone users or the only way to make an appointment at the tax office is via Line on a smartphone, but between payments only attainable through a smartphone and the totalitarian push for “vaccine passports” on one’s phone, it’s easy for anyone with pattern recognition ability to see how we’re being herded towards the Mark of the Beast. It makes me sick.
Seeing that Artoo kit only available through PayPay was my motivation for getting a Mercari account, as I mentioned in my previous post. There I can find that kit listed and I can pay cash at a convenience store for Mercari purchases.
Anyhow, while I did not get an Artoo sofubi, I did see this figure of Han Solo, and it was only like 3,200 yen! The detail is exquisite. The previous owner had already cut off the excess vinyl and fit the arms onto the torso. Look at how well-sculpted it is! This is definitely Harrison Ford’s face.
His head looks big because I am up close with my camera. There is also a Princess Leia kit, but her head looks too big. I can’t tell if it is sculpted like that, or if it is just the way it was photographed (like how I inadvertently made Han’s face too big in my picture). Like Han, Leia is dressed in her white gown from A New Hope. Unfortunately, she isn’t holding her laser pistol in that kit. This Han kit includes his blaster molded in black resin. So cool.
Of course, I’ll paint this with V-Color paints. I think I’ll get the Artoo sofubi kit next month since I’ve got a bunch of crap to pay for and I’ve already paid too much on model kits this month.
Nautilus submarine model kit by Bandai
Recently I signed up for a Mercari account. It’s an online fleamarket. Often you can find stuff cheaper there than on YAJ, and a greater variety of smaller items. Lots of neat Sega stuff and whatnot. I’ve sometimes asked my wife to get stuff for me through her account and I’d pay for the items at the convenience store, but I decided to create my own account.
Although I bought the newer 1:1000 scale Nautilus model by Kotobukiya, I wanted to build the old 1:700 scale Bandai kit and give it another go. It is OOP and goes for a bit on YAJ, but I found it cheaply on Mercari (about half of what it goes for on YAJ). I built this when I still lived in America, and it was the first fully-airbrushed kit I ever built. This time, I want to drill lots of holes and use clear UV resin to try to light it. This Bandai kit is from the ’90s, back before they made all of their models snap kits. While this Bandai kit does not have as great of detail as the smaller Kotobukiya Nautilus, since it is not a snap fit model , I believe it has more hollow sections. I think I can drill out the window portals and replace them with Wave H-Eyes lenses, as well as casting the captain’s quarters on top in clear resin to light it up. That would be neat.
I made a page for my old build on my model gallery I stopped updating about 10 years ago here. It comes with a small 1:20 scale Nadia figure, and it was the first figure I ever painted.
Oh my gosh… Ash is Bilbo.
Well, I’m a doofus. As many times as I have watched Alien and LOTR and having seen the name Ian Holm many times, I never made the connection between the creepy, sociopathic Ash and the jovial, lovable Bilbo.
My nerd cave late at night, updated August 2024.
I took a photo of my nerd cave late at night, two years ago. I have a better camera this time. I also have added more stuff since then, like my light-up Starship Enterprise atop my monitor. This is a better view of the iron bead pixel art on the wall.
A closer look at my Pac-Man light. It’s actually LEDs, made to look like a neon sign.
My Pac-Man lamps, with a Dragon Quest Slime in between, atop my Megadrive game collection.
My blue paper lantern now lights up the far corner of the nerd cave.
My Aliens and Empire Strikes Back posters, and to the left side are my Record of Lodoss War action figures.
My video gaming pillow collection: Megadrive, Saturn, and Dreamcast cushions, pillows and tissue covers, as well as Pac-Man pillows. Ulan likes to plop on these pillows and chill out. I’ve shown the Sega stuff from Shimamura previously on this blog.
1:72 Y-Wing sofubi kit by Argo Nauts
On my nerd shopping expedition with my friend Lou at the end of April, I was at a Book Off Plus in Maebashi and took a look at this kit. I’ve seen it at that store for many years now, but they had reduced the price from something like 4000 yen down to 2400. I peeked inside the kit, thinking that it was a resin kit. It turns out that it’s a sofubi kit, with resin and metal parts. I couldn’t resist! I’ve already begun cutting the vinyl parts. I’ll put videos of this build on my YouTube and Odysee channels.
Argo Nauts was a sublabel of Aoshima’s in the early ’90s. They made sofubi kits of subjects from Robocop, Terminator, and Predator. They also made several Star Wars kits, and until Fine Molds got the license, these Argo Nauts kits were the best ones available. A few years ago, I built the Argo Nauts TIE Interceptor that was resin and metal. (Here’s a link to my photoset of this build on my Tumblr feed.) The detail on it is pretty fantastic, but despite it being 1:72 scale, it is a bit smaller than the Fine Molds TIE Interceptor (I built that one too). Argo Nauts’ X-Wing fighter kit is also a sofubi/resin/metal kit. That same Book Off Plus in Maebashi once had the Argo Nauts X-Wing Fighter, but that was sold a few years ago. They also made resin kits of the Millennium Falcon and the Star Destroyer. I have a 1:6 scale sofubi Stormtrooper by Argo Nauts, but the figure stands a bit too short, proportionally. It looks a bit like Luke Skywalker when he wore the Stormtrooper armor because he is short in stature and looked awkward wearing the armor. I think I will try to modify the knees with some PVC pipe or something to try to make it stand taller.
I had known of Argo Nauts for a while, but I did not know that it was an Aoshima brand until I worked for Aoshima in 2016. I had a conversation with an employee named Iizuka-san who had been with the company for a very long time and said that Aoshima had once made Star Wars kits. I was like, “No way,” and he told me that Argo Nauts was their sub-brand.
Transformers IRL
Delorean replica spotted at Aoshima’s booth at the 2023 All-Japan Model Hobby Show!
This time machine replica was on display at Aoshima’s booth. Unno-san has made a completely all-new tooling for a new model Delorean! It will feature gull-wing doors that can be opened and closed. They will be hinged with pins so that you can position them as you like. Fantastic! I’ll have pictures of it in a photo gallery of the event in my Greg’s Life section soon.
My Star Wars Rebel fleet plamo diorama is nearly complete
I’ve been slowly working on this project for seven years. It started out with me just wanting to build and light up the Rebel Transport. This was back when I worked for Aoshima. I had wired it for lighting, took it to work to show a coworker, then placed it on the front seat of my car so as not to upset the bosshole because that grumpy dingbat bitched about everything. But the sun shone on it for many hours, causing the air inside the empty shell to overheat and warp the plastic. It was a lost cause, but fortunately my friend Steve (SMKR on YouTube) sent me a replacement!
These model ships came from the old MPC/AMT Rebel Hangar diorama from the early ’80s. There was the Hoth Battle and this hangar, and both came with lousy vacuform bases. I had the battle with the AT-ATs and Snowspeeders when I was a child. The Falcon isn’t too bad when looking at it from the top and bottom, but the sidewalls are crap. The back engine is completely featureless, as are the docking rings on the side. I added greeblies and pipes to the sides to spruce the kit up. The same for the X-Wings, where I added sewing pins to recreate the laser cannons properly. The Snowspeeders aren’t too bad, but the Y-Wings were sculpted without proper reference material and were obviously made going off of someone’s memory. Nothing is really in scale with others, although the X-Wings are in scale with the Falcon. I’ve been chronicling the process of this build on my Tumblr account and will update it again once I am finished. I envision this as a scene between the events of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.
