Random crap.
First up is this black Urusei Yatsura sweatshirt. It features Lum on the back, and on the front breast it just says “Urusei Yatsura.”
I got this kick-ass Buck Rogers T-shirt from Ali Express. It’s neat that this website sells all sorts of unlicensed merchandise.
I get a lot of comments on the buttons covering my backpack. I appreciate it when somebody has something to say about a button they’ve identified as something they know and like so that I can have a meaningful interaction with somebody, but if they are a boring person and just commenting on the amount of buttons only because they noticed that I have a lot of buttons and that most people don’t have a lot of buttons on their backpacks then they’re just wasting my time as I’m not usually interested in interacting with normies since it depletes my Energon cubes or something.
A very long time ago, my cousin Bethany gave me a button that simply says, “Everything I need to know about life I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.” I think this was back in college. It just slowly increased from there. Many of the buttons I’ve purchased on my own, but several were given to me, particularly by people who were kind enough to just want to add to the collection. Over time, I’ve lost some buttons, unfortunately. I won’t show them all, but here are some I’m particularly fond of.
This is a button for Mugen Senshi Valis by Tokuma Soft for the Nintendo Famicom. While I don’t care for this Famicom port, I do like the PC Engine a lot and the Megadrive version somewhat.
These buttons are for a game called Pac-Man. Perhaps you have heard of it.
Here is Mai and her fabulous tits from King of Fighters 2001.
A few years back, Village Vanguard stores at shopping malls had plenty of Sega Megadrive merchandise. There were these blindboxed enamel pins. Here are Puyo Puyo, Tant-R (a spin-off from Bonanza Bros), Sonic the Hedgehog, and Bare Knuckle II (aka Streets of Rage II for the NA Genesis). I’ve never played Tant-R before, so I sent this pin to my friend Brian. That’s what friends are for: pushing stuff you don’t want onto others.
Here is Reimu from Touhou Project and Lum from Urusei Yatsura. Reimu was given to me by a former coworker named Eddie several years ago. I think the color may have faded a bit? Not sure. If you don’t know who Lum is, I hate you and I’ll never be your best friend.
More King of Fighters: Here are pixelated Athena and King buttons.
My friend Lou gave me these enamel pins: the Vic Viper from Gradius and Oopa Oopa from Fantasy Zone. He found these at specialty pop-up stores in Tokyo, I do believe.
Anyhow, I have many other buttons and pins on here: Uglydolls, Peanuts, Rilakkuma, Blue Impulse, Darius Burst, Star Trek, the Flatwoods Monster, Tamiya, Hasegawa, and other pins. If you don’t know what any of these are and just want to comment that I have lots of buttons because you’re a normie and find it weird that others aren’t normal like you, then don’t talk to me by saying, “Boy, you have a lot of buttons on your backpack, bleh” because that drains my energy. So shut up.
In 1982, I saw the trailers for the movie on TV and wanted to see the movie so badly. My sister was 3 years older than me and had decided that since the movie was about computers, it would be too complex and I wouldn’t understand it. Yet she hadn’t seen it either, so how would she know? Older sibling syndrome, I guess.
It wasn’t until later when Tron came to the Disney Channel that I finally got to see it. It was a celebration of early ’80s video game culture. Fantastic. Recently I did a search for Tron stuff on Pinterest and wanted to post some of the cooler images I found.
I’ve never seen this poster image before. Super neat.
Jean “Moebius” Giraud did a lot of the designs for Tron. His graphic novel, The Long Tomorrow, was a visual inspiration for Blade Runner.
More Moebius art.
And speaking of Blade Runner, Syd Mead also did design work for Tron, with these black & white illustrations.
I’ve never seen this poster with Flynn, either. Perhaps this is fan art?
This poster for the “Space Paranoids” arcade game featured in the movie. It’s amusing since arcade games back then did NOT look like that, unless it was supposed to be a laserdisc game. There is no way we had FPS-style games like that back then!
But we did get an actual Tron arcade game by Bally Midway in 1984.
The design of this arcade cabinet is simply captivating, complete with the blacklights and lighted joystick. While it was cool, I really enjoyed the Discs of Tron game far better.
This was a step-in, environmental cabinet. It really blew me a way the first time I saw it.
Too bad Disney is more preoccupied with sexualizing children and wrecking Marvel and Star Wars to make anything cool anymore. At least a good sequel was made before Disney went down the crapper, although that movie and its spin-off cartoon weren’t enough to sustain interest in Tron. As for me, 40 years later, Tron remains dear to me.
Here is my DVD signed by Bruce Boxleitner. I only talked to him briefly, but I could tell he is BASED.
I’m currently building Hasegawa’s 1:72 scale Armored Valkyrie Battroid kit and featuring it on my YouTube channel. Although I may not buy them, Hasegawa is already releasing variants on this kit, which is cool.
Imai did the same back in the ’80s. I have their standard VF-1J Armored Valkyrie kit in 1:100 scale, but they made others. from Macross. The artwork on these old model kits from the ’80s were fantastic and unfortunately once built, these models never really look as great as the box art. I found these box scans on the old legacy Macrossworld site.
Imai 1:100 scale Armored VF-1S Valkyrie Battroid. Macross fans will notice that an Armored VF-1S was never seen in either the TV show or the movie. This is an original design. Check out the cool “nose art” on the leg! I don’t have this kit, so I cannot confirm if it comes with a decal for that.
Another design not seen in the show or the movie: a VF-1A Armored Valkyrie. Neat stuff.
My Serbian friend Aleksandar took these pictures in Novi Sad, near his college. It had just rained.
Incidentally, I had found a Delorean in the wild once, at a shopping center in Scottsdale, AZ in 2009. This was when we still lived in America. The man was kind to let me take a picture, so he posed with his car.
But wait… there’s more! In my first year living in Japan, in 2012 Christopher Lloyd visited a movie theater in Shizuoka City for autographs. I had him sign my Back to the Future DVD. In front of the theater, a Delorean time machine replica was parked. The interior is replicated, but the exterior is a normal Delorean and it doesn’t have the big vents in the back.Here are the pics.
Complete with time circuits!
A Flux Capacitor!
There was even a Mattel Hover board.
This was inside where Mr. Lloyd was autographing.
Here he is signing my DVD box set. One of my treasures!
There’s a scene in Project Eden which Mughi is watching a video screen in which several Easter egg still frames were inserted. Here they are, not necessarily in order.
Crusher Joe! Yes, before Haruka Takachiho wrote the Dirty Pair novels, he wrote Crusher Joe.
Images are rapidly flashed of the original version of the Dirty Pair from the SF novels written by Haruka Takachiho. These original character designs are by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu (Gundam, Crusher Joe, Venus Wars, Reideen, and many more anime).
Want ads from what appears to be Starlog Magazine. You see the ad with the Enterprise? That’s Space Station Studios from Massachusetts. I learned about them from ads in old Starblazers and Robotech comic books. I sent away for a catalog, and half a year later they finally sent it to me. I ended up writing a check for about $50 worth of stuff, which they cashed and never mailed me the merchandise I ordered. This was in the early ‘90s, and I’d never spent that much money before and was pissed. Fortunately I was a member of the Robotech Echo at the time via the local Anime Archive BBS in Phoenix, Arizona. I was able to bring about the wrath of Harmony Gold upon those buttpuppets and it turns out they were selling bootleg Macross/Robotech merchandise which landed them in a heap of trouble with HG’s lawyers, who don’t mess around. I very promptly got a refund. I’m glad that HG has finally worked out a deal with Bigwest to bring Macross officially to viewers internationally. They’ve been villains since the ‘90s for preventing Macross to be officially released globally and expecting everyone to only care about Robotech. Still, I’ll always be grateful with how they stuck up for a teenager who got rooked out of his money by a retailer that was either crooks or extremely half-assed and incompetent at the very least.
You see, due to an ignorant jury, Harmony Gold was able to win a case they really had no right to win, and since then they’d been using that ruling to stake a claim on the international rights of Macross that they actually do not have. This whole time, they din’t want people to be interested in Macross Frontier, etc. but just wanted people to forget about all of that and only like Robotech. But now it seems that those bastards are finally going to let international Macross fans own legitimate, English-language versions of Macross. It’s crazy. HG would even allow American toymakers to produce DYRL movie-version Valkyrie toys, but have refused to allow the movie to be released officially in English. Bastards. Well, hopefully things will start to change now. I still couldn’t care less about Macross 7 though. The first time I saw it, I was rolling on the floor laughing at how stupid it was. Anyhow, back to the easter eggs.
More want-ads. This one is for conventions.
Spock! The creators of the Dirty Pair show were definitely Star Trek fans (the design of the TV version’s Lovely Angel ship is definitely Trek-inspired). It came full circle with Star Trek: TNG with plenty of Dirty Pair references. The show’s set designer (I forget his name) was a big fan of the Pair. Even the robot Nanmo was used in the show as a robot that services the ship’s Jeffries’ Tubes. IIRC, there’s a Dirty Pair poster in one of the characters’ living quarters, but it was never shown on-camera.
She looks familiar, but I dunno who this is. Is she from Gundam? If you know, let me know.
There are some other freeze frames, but I couldn’t make any sense from them.
(This article is reposted from my Tumblr feed.)
This is my most recent addition to my nerd cave. It’s a Starship Enterprise lamp made of etched acrylic. I peeled off the protective plastic wrap from the acrylic pane and plugged it into the base. Light is sent through the acrylic and catches on the acrylic etching. I can choose the color for it to shine, or elect to have it cycle slowly through colors. This lamp is USB-powered, so I have it plugged into the back of my computer monitor. It’s not an officially-licensed item. It only cost just over 2,000 with free shipping from Yahoo Auctions Japan, so I couldn’t resist.
Up for some science fiction movie viewing for summer? 1982 was the most prolific movie for science fiction films. I have set about collecting Japanese promotional flyers (chirashi) from Yahoo Auctions Japan. Here they are.
Blade Runner
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Tron
The Thing. In Japanese, the title is 遊星からの物体X (“Object X from Outer Space” is the best I can translate that as.)
The Dark Crystal
Fire Fox
Mega Force (this one I actually do not own. It’s a pretty silly movie, but I may get this later.)
E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (another one I do not personally own)
Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie
And although it isn’t a movie, it is worth noting that in 1982 Super Dimensional Fortress Macross aired on TV in Japan.
The Dall-E image generator allows you to create images as though they were painted by famous painters. My friend Brian did Ryu from Street Fighter as painted by Picasso, and Hillary Clinton as painted by Rembrant. I gave it a shot with Darth Maul painted by Georges Seurat and it looks pretty cool. I entered R2-D2 by Claude Monet and these pictures are beautiful.
It looks like Artoo is having a nice day by the waterside. That’s nice.
BONUS: Indiana Jones, as painted by Vincent Van Gogh.
