Random Happy Time, 35 O’Clock - Overseas Stuff!

After chatting about importing games, Tiger and Rabbit take time to talk about other items they import. From CDs and movies to Vocaloid memorabilia and figures, Tiger and Rabbit chat about some of their favorite purchases and why they just had to have it.

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Rabbit: We talked about importing clothes before but what else have we imported?

Tiger: I know I import a ton of Japanese music and some anime as well. ♪ヾ(＾Д＾*)ノ

Rabbit: You also import a lot of Gundam figures too.

Tiger: I have seven, that’s not a ton. You import a bunch of artbooks and plushies. ＿〆(。。)

Rabbit: Artbooks are one thing I don’t think the west does well. That’s why I always love getting them from Japan. I have a few from different video games and anime but I need to get more. And yes, Japanese plushies are too cute.

Tiger: I really love the Okami artbook we have. I also have Kawamoto Toshihiro’s collection too. Do you have a favorite imported item?

Rabbit: ٩(^ᴗ^)۶ My plushie Charmander, the ICO artbook, and the Lucky Star OVA collection. You?

Tiger: I love the Đặng Thái Sơn CD I imported from Poland and the MS-07B-3 figure I got from Japan. The Destiny hoodie I picked up from a retailer in the UK is also really cool looking.

Rabbit: Oh, that one is nice but I like the Assassin’s Creed III jacket I got better. I still need to get the inFAMOUS vest.

Tiger: I want to import the Fuunsaiki Robot Spirits that was shown off this year.

Rabbit: ＼（^０＾）／ Ooh, I also need to get a Free! artbook.

Tiger: You know, I’m surprised you don’t have a Hakuoki artbook since you love Saitō so much.

Rabbit: The books don’t do him justice. Plus, most that I’ve found are from the anime series and not the game but I think I’ll have to remedy the lack of Hakuoki books in my collection soon. You know what else I like to import?

Tiger: What?

Rabbit: (*´ڡ`●) Food.

Tiger: No.

Rabbit: Yes, I haven’t talked about food in a long time. Japanese treats are the best. I’m a big fan of their drinks as well. While I don’t technically import them directly from Japan, I do shop at an import grocery store that carries all kinds of crazy things.

Tiger: We all know that you love to talk about food; you don’t need to keep doing it.

Rabbit: I’ll stop if you buy me that vest.

Tiger: No.

Rabbit: How about a Tachibana Makoto figure?

Tiger: Not happening. o(-`д´- ｡)

Rabbit: Import the Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei second season.

Tiger: (⋋▂⋌) Never.

Rabbit: Oh, see’mon!

Q Attack, Round 20 - Are Toys-to-Life Games a Fad?

When Skylanders first burst onto the video game scene, it seemed like the game was a novel idea but now, there are even more IPs in the Toys-to-Life genre. Rabbit has been collecting Skylanders since its first entry and now discusses with Tiger whether or not this new genre is a fad or here to stay.

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Tiger: Rabbit, what are you doing? Look at this mess.

Rabbit: What mess?

Tiger: *points* This! There are books everywhere. Why did you pull them off of the bookcases?

Rabbit: I’m reorganizing to make room for the new Skylanders figures I’ll be getting.

Tiger: Not this again, this is worse than Assassin’s Creed games coming out every year. How many figures do you have already?

Rabbit: A little over two-hundred and fifty.

Tiger *throws hands in air* Geez! And how many are coming out with the new game?

Rabbit: At least sixty, it’s hard to say since they have vehicles this time. I’m only picking up the Dark Edition on PlayStation 4 at launch though, so I won't have a lot of figures to start.

Tiger: So you’re finally not going to buy the game twice just to get all the figures?

Rabbit: Oh, no, I’ll get SuperChargers on PlayStation 3 as well; I’ll just wait until the Black Friday sale to pick it up.

Tiger: *shakes head* When is this fad going to go away?

Rabbit: Hey! I love Skylanders, I’ve been playing since Spyro’s Adventure and have picked up every game since. They are legitimately good games and they keep getting better and better. And now there are even more IPs in the Toys-to-Life genre.

Tiger: Now we have Disney Infinity, amiibo, and LEGO Dimensions. Please tell me you aren’t going to get into those too.

Rabbit: I actually thought about Disney Infinity just for the Marvel and Star Wars licenses but I’m not a fan of the figure designs. I do love the Stitch figure, but that’s about it. I’ve also played the games and I don’t like them as well as Skylanders games. As for the amiibo figures, they only work on Nintendo platforms.

Tiger: I think it’s cool that the amiibo toys will work across multiple games, not just specific ones but the crazy news about supply issues and limited functionality in games makes them sound like a pain.

Rabbit: I feel bad for the hardcore amiibo collections. If they want the exclusive figures that come bundled with the Nintendo versions of Skylanders SuperChargers, they’ll have to buy four different starter packs.

Tiger: Wait, wait, wait. Back up a minute. Four?

Rabbit: You heard me right. The WiiU starter bundle has Donkey Kong and the 3DS/Wii starter has Bowser. Then, you have to purchase both of them in the Dark Editions to get the Dark Variant of both characters. That’s almost three-hundred and fifty dollars!

Tiger: I wonder how much the figures will sell on eBay; it’s going to be crazy.

Rabbit: As for LEGO Dimensions, that one is probably the only other Toys-to-Life game I would consider getting because see’mon, it’s LEGO!

Tiger: When I saw the Portal Level Pack, I almost died.

Rabbit: That is pretty awesome but it sucks they won’t have Star Wars or Marvel since the normal LEGO sets of those franchises are awesome.

Tiger: Says the mammal who has a tub filled with Snowspeeders.

Rabbit: Aren’t you the one that told me it’s an “Incom Corporation T-47 airspeeder?”

Tiger: *shakes head*

Rabbit: Anyway, Disney put the kibosh on that when they bought the Marvel and Star Wars rights.

Tiger: I still really hate Disney for that too. They’re erasing Star Wars canon, erasing it!

Rabbit: At least we know they’ll be a part of Disney Infinity. We’ve seen Marvel already in 2.0 and Star Wars will be added with the 3.0 expansion.

Tiger: I have to hand it to Activision and the various developers of Skylanders for ensuring that all the old figures from previous games work with the newest version. Most of them even get new moves and a new level cap. Those worthless traps will even be slightly useful in SuperChargers.

Rabbit: I will admit, I hated the traps. Do you know how hard it was to collect all of them?

Tiger: We live in a backwater town; I know how hard it was for you because you made me help.

Rabbit: I had to take trips to different cities just so I could find a Toys R Us or Target in hopes of getting their exclusive traps. I bought them via eBay and Amazon for way more than they were worth. It was really hard to buy them through standard retailers because they used one SKU for the same element, no matter what the shape the trap was.

Tiger: You also roped in Eagle to help feed your addiction.

Rabbit: At least there aren’t any traps in SuperChargers, so this round of hunting will be a lot simpler.

Tiger: I don’t know, I kind of get the appeal of this genre, especially if you’re a kid but I think they’ve gotten out of hand.

Rabbit: You collect Gundam toys, what’s the difference.

Tiger: They’re called figures and they are highly detailed to-scale replicas based off of the original designs. There is your difference.

Rabbit: What about Eye of Judgment, you were all over that game when it came out.

Tiger: That was an augmented reality CCG video game. I don’t see the similarity.

Rabbit: It brought real world cards with monsters on them to life inside a video game; I think there are a lot of similarities. Plus, Skylanders isn’t just for kids. While it may be designed with younger gamers in mind, it offers a pretty robust gaming experience for anyone who plays it. The Diablo-esque style gameplay and light RPG elements makes it fun to play and leveling up characters to unlock new powers keeps the replay value high. While each of the Toys-to-Life games have their unique draws, I really think as a whole they have shown just how vibrant this genre can be.

Tiger: Does that mean you think they’re here to stay?

Rabbit: I do think that we’ll see Toys-to-Life video games continue to evolve and expand. Right now, Skylanders is the oldest IP but Disney utilizes multiple established franchises to sell its game. amiibo offers beloved Nintendo characters that can be used in a multitude of different games and LEGO Dimensions has a strong brand to help catapult its first entry this holiday. There’s something just inherently fun about having a physical figure in your hands and then seeing it come to life on the screen. I miss the days when I used to buy toys, now I just buy discs in a box that sit on a shelf for years and years until I finally get around to playing it. With Skylanders, even when I’m not playing the game-

Tiger: You’re playing pretend with the figures?

Rabbit: ^exasperated^ That wasn’t what I was going to say, stop interrupting. I was going to say, that when a Skylander sits on my shelf, it still has character. And did I mention the games are actually fun, solid games. LEGO Dimensions is still up in the air and we haven’t experienced amiibo toys in action first-hand, but Skylanders is an awesome game and Disney Infinity has become increasingly better with each iteration. The astounding amount of sales that each of these IPs have seen are a testament that Toys-for-Life games are here to stay. If it was a fad, I don’t think Skylanders would be on its fifth entry nor would Disney Infinity be releasing 3.0. And why would LEGO Dimensions join the party if they didn’t see growth here let alone what Nintendo has been doing since they released their first amiibos. The Toys-to-Life genre is here to stay.

Tiger: Everything you said was great except you’re missing a few key points. Like how Activision releases so many different variants of the same figure as a cash grab to get the completionists like you to spend hundreds and hundreds of extra dollars for nothing. Or that while IPs like Marvel and Star Wars are cool, they’re just slapped on the box like other Disney properties to sell units. They do a huge disservice to the hardcore fan when they diminish an IP like that. Or can we mention about the supply issues Nintendo had and knew they would have just to create buzz. And that the figures never look as nice as what they show in the promotional videos and images. I’m not arguing that the games can be good and fun to play, I’m arguing against the entire business model of the Toys-to-Life genre. A few figures are neat but then there are the variants and the exclusive retailer figures. With Skylanders, you practically are forced to buy a new starter pack every game because they keep messing with the base you need to put the figures on. With starter packs ranging from seventy-five to a hundred dollars; that gets pricey real quick. Then what about the fact that while you can beat the game with the figures that are included in the starter, most of it is inaccessible until you buy the right figure. It’s gotten out of control; you have two-hundred and fifty Skylanders already! When is enough, enough?

Rabbit: How many Star Wars LCG cards do you have?

Tiger: Why does that even matter?

Rabbit: How many of the expansions have you bought?

Tiger: *stammers* Maybe half, I don’t know.

Rabbit: If Fantasy Flight turned the Star Wars LCG into an augmented video game, you’d play it, wouldn’t you? Even though you’d have to buy expansion after expansion and booster after booster.

Tiger: That’s not a fair question, these are totally different scenarios. I play the LCG game, it’s an actual game.

Rabbit: Skylanders is an actual game too.

Tiger: Well, you don’t have to buy the expansions to play the LCG.

Rabbit: And you don’t have to buy extra figures to beat Skylanders either.

Tiger: *shouts* Fine! At least my compulsive collectable game takes up less room than yours!

Are Toys-to-Life Games a Fad?
Tiger     vs     Rabbit

Random Happy Time, 26 O’Clock - Gotta Catch ‘Em All!

After talking about Rabbit’s extensive Skylanders collection, she quizzes Tiger on some of the other collectable games they’ve had in the past. From Pokémon to Pirates and everything in between, Tiger and Rabbit have had a long history of compulsively buying collectable games.

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Rabbit: Talking about collectable games got me all nostalgic. We’ve had so many different collectable games in the past.

Tiger: ⊙︿⊙ Too many, way too many.

Rabbit: I know we were huge into Pokémon cards for a long time.

Tiger: I think we stopped when we got over five thousand cards.

Rabbit: Do you remember NakNaks?

Tiger: Those were the humanoid figures that stacked like Jenga but had random skins. Geez, we bought a ton of those. We also got really into Pirates, The Constructible Strategy Game.

Rabbit: That one was really cool! You could pop out components from the styrene cards to build ships to use in the game. They broke easily and the ink tended to wear off quickly so I know that annoyed you a lot.

Tiger: I got one of the rarest ships from the Crimson Coast expansion and the mast snapped the first time I popped it out of the card!

Rabbit: Remember Pogs?

Tiger: Oh, that one really dates us. （//･_･//) Yes, I still have about ten tubes of my favorite Pogs in a locker somewhere.

Rabbit: That was probably our first real collectable game.

Tiger: But we’ve had a ton of others like the X-Wing Miniatures game, Young Jedi CCG, X-Men Trading Card Game, and various other card games. Remember Perplex City?

Rabbit: That was an ARG CCG or would you call that a TCG? Anyway, that was a really awesome game but someone beat it before we could get to the highest level.

Tiger: Yes, you bought booster packs which contained puzzle cards. You would solve the puzzles and enter the answers via their website. The more points you got, the higher the level you would go and the more clues you would get to find The Cube which was hidden in the real world and worth two-hundred thousand dollars. I still have the pins they sent us for every level we reached.

Rabbit: Last time I heard there were still two puzzle cards that were never solved.

Tiger: I liked how some of the puzzles where actual Millennium Prize Problems such as the Riemann Hypothesis. The game actually encouraged all the players to work together to solve it.

Rabbit: I wonder if they would’ve split the prize money from CMI too?

Tiger: Do you remember My Perplex City Trades? We would make deals with other players to trade our extra cards to them, since duplicates didn’t help you at all. So I guess you could call it an ARG TCG.

Rabbit: Do you still play CCGs?

Tiger: I don’t, I don’t do collectable card games, trading card games, or deck-building games anymore. I just have the one living card game and that’s the Star Wars LCG. Oh, but I did wish I was able to really get into the Gundam M.S. War TCG. That came out during our pre-internet shopping era and the local hobby shop never carried the cards. I was only ever able to pick up a few boosters. I do remember getting Heavy Arms, which I was really pleased about.

Rabbit: That’s the thing that was always disappointing; we only lived in one town that had a decent hobby shop. It was actually pretty awesome, downstairs had your general toys and educational garbage but in the back there was this unmanned counter with manga. It was the first time we had ever seen manga, and then you’d take these super narrow stairs to the second floor, which was just a converted supply closet, and they had all the card and board games up there.

Tiger: That was the first place I ever went to that made me realize I was a geek.

Rabbit: ╭(♡･ㅂ･)و ̑̑Good times, good times.

Tiger: I hate you right now. (#｀皿´)

Rabbit: (っ- ‸ – ς) What? What’d I do?

Tiger: Talking about all our old collectable games has me itching to get into a new card game now. Fantasy Flight has a couple games that are interesting and I haven’t even looked into what Wizards of the Coast is into nowadays. I just miss the smell of a brand new binder filled with card sleeves. I also miss the sound when you tear open a new booster pack and how your heart races to see if you finally got Dratini because he wasn’t rare but you couldn't catch him. Man.

Rabbit: ^pats Tiger on the back^ Poor Tiger, what have I done. I might as well have taken you to the card aisle at Toys R Us and gave you a hundred bucks to go wild.

Tiger: It still amazes me that as much as we loved Pokémon that we didn’t turn into Nintendo gamers. I still have the soundtracks and you still have the movies.

Rabbit: I still have a few Pokémon posters in a tube somewhere in the black hole that is my closet.

Tiger: I have a plushie Charmander in a box.

Rabbit: I have a plushie Pikachu in that same box.

Tiger: Admittedly, I’ve seriously looked into buying a 3DS so I could play the Pokémon games along with the SMT ones.

Rabbit: But you have way too many games as it is.

Tiger: *sighs* Exactly, collecting games is like a collectable game in its own right. (︶︹︺)

Random Happy Time, 13 O'Clock - Movie Toys!

Tiger and Rabbit discuss one benefit of movie remakes, new toys. From Star Wars to Jurassic World, read further to see what toys Tiger and Rabbit are looking forward to the most.

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Tiger: So there is one benefit of our favorite movies getting remade or rebooted.

Rabbit: And what is that?

Tiger: New toys.

Rabbit: Yes! I want a new Stormtrooper with the spangly helmet.

Tiger: I’m after those Jurassic World LEGO sets.

Rabbit: We used to have the original action figures from Jurassic Park even though we never saw the movie when we were little.

Tiger: ¯(°_o)/¯ Remember how we made Ian a drug addict who was hallucinating that he saw dinosaurs?

Rabbit: Yes! And the Alan and Ellie characters were the psychiatrists sent to help him only to discover that he wasn’t hallucinating, that the dinos were real. (*ﾟﾛﾟ)

Tiger: Yup, good times, good times. I think the LEGO sets are going to be awesome, can’t wait to add them to my collection.

Rabbit: Aren’t you a little old for LEGOs though?

Tiger: Says the Rabbit with a hundred stuffed animals?

Rabbit: It’s not the same thing. They have personalities and feelings, they aren’t made of plastic. ⊂(^(工)^)⊃

Tiger: *shakes head* Right. But no, you are never too old for LEGOs. Plus, I only get a few sets here and there. The Star Wars ones are pretty awesome too.

Rabbit: I like the City sets; I always wanted to have my own street sweeper.

Tiger: I think it’s fun to see the toys again though. Of course Star Wars toys have never seemed to leave store shelves, I wouldn’t mind picking up some new Sith action figures if they look cool. But for me, all next year is about the dinosaurs. Yeah, can’t wait to see that trend return.

Rabbit: (●｀･(ｴ)･´●) I have a couple stuffed Wookies, I wouldn’t mind getting some Ewoks if they have them.

Tiger: You and your stuffed animals. I don’t even know why you have some of these. Like that guy. *points at stuffed animal* What is he even?

Rabbit: ^gasps^ That’s Martin! He’s a donkey. ༼⁰o⁰；༽

Tiger: He doesn’t look like a donkey. More like a deformed goat.

Rabbit: How can you say that about Martin! Apologize at once!

Tiger: It’s true, look at his fat head.

Rabbit: ^to Martin^ Don’t listen to her Martin, she’s just a big ‘ole meany. You don’t have a fat head. It’s proportioned just right for your body. (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡

Tiger: *sighs* Okay, that’s it. I’ll leave you two alone now.