Unboxing: Yamato life-sized replica VF-1 helmet

Months ago, the opportunity to order one came up and believe me, it made me delay a few other things. This was effectively made-to-order since I don't blame any retailer for not wanting to stock this insanely expensive (but so freaking exclusive) item without a pre-order. In fact, it was so hard to come by, I wasn't even sure my order would ever arrive and if I would end up with just a refund 6 months later.There it was... Apparently nothing ships from Toy-Wave.com without some. Even if that's the original shipping box from their own distributors. Next I looked at was the declarations documentation. Frequently these make the difference between practically "free" and the likes of my Macross-themed jacket where I paid over a hundred bucks in duty and taxes. In this case, written all over the box was a declared value of $3000HKD (that's about $425CAD)... and for some mysterious reason, Customs didn't charge me a single penny for duty except for about $20 for federal sales tax and a handling fee. I've given up on figuring out the CBSA.Openning the shipping box reveals that it literally is the shipping box and nothing else. It's fit exactly to the retail packaging with no room to spare.Interestingly enough, the retail packaging is nothing more than a plastic wrap and a cardboard slip around a huge styrofoam affair.What's a nice touch of class is a pair of white cotton gloves so I can pretend this is a ridiculously expensive collector's item up for auction. No wait, only the auction part is pretend, the rest is real. ^_^;;;And there it is in all it's glory. This this thing is simply huge. The replica is made to imitate the line-art proportions from the Macross animation work. The visor is supposed to house the eye-tracking targetting systms but of course, this replica is made of solid fibre-glass resin... so while my head fits in it, but it's so front-heavy that it won't sit properly without tilting forward. What the photos don't really convey is how beautiful it is in person. It's painted to a pearlescent finish and there's not a hint of over-spray anywhere. It will definitely get a spot of honour above my display.

Planechase deck box

Two whole months after the Planechase sets came out, I finally found the Planechase deck boxes at my local comics and gaming shop. There seem to be only 2 models available - one themed for Grixis (and or Zombies in general) and I got this one which is combination theme for the artifacts deck and the "Strike Force" red-white deck which I happen to play.The box is a typical Duel Deck-Box with an interior space that would normally fit two standard sized Ultra-Pro deck boxes. However, this set comes with a plastic divider to compartmentalize the interior into a space large enough for Planechase cards and about a deck and a half of normal cards.The highlight of the set is that comes with Ultra-Pro premium sleeves for the Plane-chase cards. They are matte black on the back and have the Ultra-Pro hologram-seal on the fronts. Surprisingly, they are "top-load" - the cards go in oriented bottom-in-first even though the Planechase cards, unlike normal M:tG cards, are "sideways" (wider than they are tall). The set also comes with 60 normal sized premium sleeves. These are glossy on the back with an image of the standard back of a M:tG card (in case you forget what game you're playing in the middle of your match!).
The downside, which kind of annoys me, is that the unique divider provides way too much room for the Planechase cards. The divider board fits so that it divides the box into 2 halves and then the front half into two quarters. That means the thickness of a 60-card deck won't fit into one of the quarters and must partially be stored on the second quarter. This doesn't leave enough room for a second deck (but it should have, if the divider sat slightly farther back).

T-shirts delivery

A bunch of new T-shirts arrived in the mail this week so I wanted to share them.
Machine56 is an independent designer from Indonesia. You can check out his art on DeviantArt here. His last major line-up features some kind of cyborg skeleton guy with headphones. It's neat!I also pre-ordered these Mobile Suit Gundam shirts a couple of months ago. I was a little worried because at the time I had forgotten about the whole Japan standard sizing being smaller than elsewhere. Thankfully, for some reason these L-sized shirts fit me just fine.This shirt's colours and pattern is designed to resemble the uniform of a naval officer in the Earth Federation Space Force. Since I couldn't decide which to get (and they aren't terribly expensive as far as novelty-shirts go, I also ordered the brown base-command shirt as well).