Wandering around the show I came across Maruione.jp a Japanese website that specializes in selling both traditional and trendy fashion items. I looked at their site and was quite impressed with variety of goodies ranging from t-shirts to kimonos. They also have an affilaited editorial website called livej.maruione.jp which covers music and anime in addition to fashion. While most of the items are aimed at fangurls there wre a few cool items aimed at fanboys like anime and hobby items.
Beware of booth #639! It was quite hard to walk around the Kaching Brands display without reaching to get my credit card — so much of what they had looked amazing, from the detail in the craftsmanship to the vivid sense of imagination. I’m not sure who the cute guy is on top (but I’d love to take him home), but the series shown below him are the Hoko-Ten Harajuku trading figures by MD Young.
The first thing that greeted me at the New York Comic Con was an amazing gallery of over sized figurines of characters from Yoda to Halo. The craftsmanship on these animated sculptures was wonderful, you could see dozens of people posing with their favorite fictional friend. I loved how there designs had a nice sense of whimsy and captured the personality of each character:
From page ten of the Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalog from 1984:
“Meet the Tomy Robots. Omnibot is a sophisticated butler who amazes children and adults alike with his charm and intelligence.”
Omnibot is shown above and below, also featured were Verbot which “recognizes his mater’s voice” and Dingbot who “always seems a bit confused”. Omnibot featured a remote control, alarm clock and an audio cassette player and cost $224 if you order him before December 3rd, 1984.
One of my favorite childhood toys was a treasured but slightly abused die-cast Yellow Submarine toy made by Corgi. Sadly while it was a high quality toy I recall damaging it at some point, so I was pretty happy to read that Corgi has entered into a licensing agreement for a range of Beatles and Yellow Submarine goodies:
“Celebrate the Beatles legacy with the album covers die-cast collection, featuring London Taxis and Buses fully decorated with Beatles album covers of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road the Magical Mystery Tour Bus and a range of others. They roll into shops around spring/summer time.”
I can’t go a day without my daily fix of lolcats, and one of my favorite in-jokes are the constant references to the mysterious creature known as ceiling cat. In honor of this net meme tubbypaws has created a papercraft kit so every household can now sport ceiling cat!
Takeji Nakagawa is a Japanese craftsman who makes his futuristic toys out of our types of wood: keyaki (a Japanese tree of the genus Zelkova), teak, walnut and white ash. There’s an interesting article on him at coolhunting.com, and his website is take-g.com.
“Each Guy Robot is a one-of-a-kind handmade creation. The piece parts that go into each Guy Robot flow from a range of industrial tributaries: aerospace and avionics surplus suppliers, automotive salvage yards, long-haul microwave equipment recyclers, decommissioned plumbing and refrigeration remnants, vintage hand-tool swap-meet winnings. And, yes, truth be told, sometimes the perfect Guy Robot find is that gem that is spotted and rescued from among the flotsam hauled to the curb by the neighbors and otherwise destined for final disposal.”
Shown above are Shock who urges you to spay or neuter your pets, and Euclid who remains shy about discussing his special surveillance capablities.
Italian artist Tokidoki has collaborated with Sanrio to create the above Hello Kitty plushie. Right now she’s only available in Japan, but she will be available in the States in select stores. Below is another fashionable Hello Kitty item that Tokidoki also collaborated on:
Sure you can spend thousands of dollars buying sleek urban designer toys, but why do that when you can build your own for free?Cubeecraft Papercraft Toys updates their site every week with a new cute paper toy that you can download and assemble yourself.
Shown above is Neptune’s Sandcastle, the largest sandcastle in the world, which was sculpted for the 2006 Virginia Beach Neptune Festival. It’s from this fun article I came across:
Shown above is the Tokidoki “Kaiten Sushi” Journal by artists Simone Legno which will be released on July 2nd from Dark Horse Comics:
“Back by popular demand! You cannot stop the popularity of adorable Tokidoki. Our first journal and stationery set sold more than any other sets, so we’re extremely excited to present a second journal, designed by Italian-born artist Simone Legno. The image speaks for itself. This journal will be sought after and treasured by many!”
How can we get the kids to eat more pasta? A single serving of Macaroni Twiki only contained 12 grams of protein, but if you’re a Buck Rogers fanboy (or fangurl) in 1979 this was the pasta you’d prefer. The late 70s series always reminded me of Battlestar Galactica with just that extra touch of disco. I’m surprised the producers of the show never used the character “the Hawk” (who had the worst costume in the world) to sell eggs. But getting back to the robot character Twiki who inspired this carb creation, it’s interesting to note that the voice acting was supplied by uber talented Mel Blanc.
And now if you’re still left wondering just what that pasta looked like, here it is:
Shown above is the new design for the vinyl figure Miao the Lucky Cat by Zakka. Only 500 limited edition cats will be produced Zakkamono and will be released in April.
Shown above is a video that shows the construction of a Blythe Doll — the amount of craftsmanship is pretty amazing. I was blown away by all of the work that went into creating the hair, in fact I’ve had haircuts which were much less complex.
I was blown away when I saw the above paper model kit for Penelope Pitstop’s car from the vintage Wacky Races series from Hanna-Barbera. You can download the acrobat file here, but be warned it looks like quite a bit of work!
It isn’t easy be trendy! Supreme is releasing it’s Spring/Summer collection headlined by the Supreme x Terry Richardson x Kermit pieces including two t-shirts and three skate decks (shown above). In addition they also have t-shirts that feature the work of famed animator Ralph Bakshi:
Hasbro has just launched a mass market series of urban designer flavored 6″ tall toys based on characters from Star Wars and Marvel — the product line is called Mighty Muggs and you can find them here.
Anime fanboys (and fangurls) should take note that National Console Support is now shipping the Haruhi Suzumiya Bunny Figure v1.5 which is shown above. Here’s the description:
“We’ve talked about the Citizen Astrodea “Moon Age” and “Celestial” watch series many times, and it seems we’ll have to keep doing it forever since they update the watches yearly. For those unfamiliar with the line, these are very detailed watches that keep perfect “celestial time” as the face rotates in real time. You can perfectly tell the placement of the stars just by using the watch’s many measurements (which I will never understand completely).”