Toys - Takara 1/72 Dougram Soltic H8 Roundfacer Diecast

This is one of my old favorites - It's so nice, I've owned two of them. The first one was a gift from my parents, which a friend lost. The second one, I found in Greenhills and immediately bought.

It's a 1/72 scale diecast toy of the Soltic H8 from Fang of the Sun: Dougram. It's from Takara, and the heft of this toy is, quite simply, satisfying.

I also have its "brother", the Dougram itself:

Toys: Darth Tater - Together we shall rule as Father and Spud!

Okay, this is quite possibly one of the quirkiest items my partner and I have collected.

It's from Hasbro's Playskool brand, and it's a Star Wars tie-in: DARTH TATER. It's basically a Mr. Potato Head with a set of Darth Vader parts.

It's so cute - and to be honest, what I find most amusing is that it's wearing black sneakers, haha!

*If you look at the item in the Playskool shop link, you'll notice that it's particualrly different from mine - I guess it's a different run for here in Asia? I also had different packaging, aside from a different sculpt of the Darth Vader parts and having no cape.

**EDIT/UPDATE: I've apparently lost the cape, somehow. BOO. Must make new, snazzier cape.

Toys: One Piece Wednesday - Thousand Sunny

This is a Bandai Candy Division (is that Banpresto?) toy that my partner bought, as he is a bit of a One Piece fan. Pardon the state of the sails - a failed attempt at cleaning them. Anyway, here's the Thousand Sunny. The ship can also be seaprated into little playsets, each one representing a a section of the ship's innards. And of course, it has the smaller vehicles, too.
 















Here's a shot of the crew - Luffy and company:

Interesting, this sort of SD fixed figure type seems to be popular these days.







Finally: A shot of the smaller vehicles:

Gundam Exia "Display"

I've been working on something for the exhibit - and yes, there has been some planning. This may be the last time that you guys will see this in an assembled form, as I'm going to start stripping this down to pieces and work my way up.

Anyway, here it is:

HG00 1/144 GN-0000 / Odachi Weapons System

 At the behest of Mike Tan, Who has correctly warned me about doing too many kits at the same time, I'm concentrating on this one.

I got this idea for a 00 variant shortly after I received my MG Astrays. So, I did research on what exactly was the term for "big sword" in Japanese, and came across three: Daikatana, Nodachi and Odachi. At first, i wanted to call this project Nodachi, but after reading the fine differences between the terms, I've decided to stick to Odachi.

Here are the weapon parts, along with one of my assembled 00 units:


So far, I've started with the basic chest. much to my concern, it turns out that the areas near the injection marks are slightly concave, so aside from doing the preliminary sanding in the pic, I may have to use some putty to flatten the areas at the shoulder/armpits. Also, After checking the top of the shoulders, am tempted to make an extra line and then paint the top of the shoulder area Grey, given that one construction seamline already makes it look like a moving part.


More to come, I've allotted at least an hour each day to this project - no hurry, really. I haven't built a kit in years, and I think this is one I should do slowly.