As a kid it always annoyed me that the toy aisle was chock full of wacky variants but I could never find the characters in their "stock" costumes.



Now those weird variants have some strange charm to them?

I decided to perform a major operation on this thing:



I've bought three of these and only the third one had properly functioning electronics, but also a badly corroded battery compartment. After unsatisfactory attempts at clean-up, I decided to take the more drastic measure of a complete batter compartment transplant; replacing the entire bottom of the hull with one from one of the busted up ones, re-soldering some wires was required, but I was ultimately successful.

Now I just gotta figure out what I'm gonna do with the other two.

I did a recent thing like that on an electronic chess set I picked up at a thrift store about 8 years ago.
Very cool set that you can play by yourself, had badly oxidized contacts but plastic was fine.
Had to replace the metal tabs with new, picked up some years ago for another project on ebay, cheap like 2 bucks for 20 pcs.

Anyway solder and it worked great.
Did pickup some of these Queen Alien watches but they are all messed up and insides are goner due to the battery leaking, have to figure out how to buy
another cheapie watch and replace the entire clock part, if I can and when I have time for doing such things.

I have some electronic Aliens toy from the early 90s that also had badly corroded contacts but much like with this one, I sanded the contacts with a dremel to get the current going except I never got around to trying to clean up the compartment more troughly.

I sold a keyboard and the guy sent pics of cleaning with water and backing soda, really put it on and after the clean pics let it dry.
Next time I get a battery leak I'm doing that, just glopping it on clean it and let it dry for a few days or longer than it will be good as new.

I used to do the dremel thing but never got it all.
May even use my wet dry shop vac for this to clean up after I put the solution.

These came in today. Third run, so they were quite reasonably priced. They capture these characters well.

not so long ago, it seemed SUCH a rarity for Anime likenesses to get even remotely effectively captured in three dimensions.
these days, it seems unusual when an Anime Merchandiser actually fails to do so.

indeed, many of them actually seem to knock it out of the park with amazing regularity.

for one who so clearly remembers the days when they had to make quite due with the once-dismal standards
of such Japanese Pop-culture merchandising for what felt like an absolute eternity,
today's general high-standards indeed feel like one of the Wonders of the Modern Age.

for my part, i was ecstatic when i found these two, easily among the most accurate Anime character likenesses i've ever had;

Oh look, another moneysink!

Arrived today after a 2 year wait.

i took a risk on The Squid Girl a while back, and it turned out to become an instant classic,
and one of my all-time favorites after but one viewing.

indeed, i found the lead character so instantly, overwhelmingly endearing,
that i simply HAD to have the AZONE brand "Pure Neemo" character doll series rendition of her.

She's an early-2010's P.N. offering, with the early ver.I Pure Neemo doll body.
it so turned out, that her head carried over to the far-better-looking 2018 OBITSU 26cm. aftermarket doll body,
as if it had been originally designed to do so all the while;



(ORIGINAL FACTORY DOLL)



(ORIGINAL Pure Neemo BODY, -with stand-in doll head- V.S. NEW OBITSU 26 BODY)



(CUSTOM FACIAL DETAIL ADDED)