I'm home alone this morning since Tobie has a family activity that will take a better part of the day. The weather is quite cold right now - a consequences of the rains intermittently drenching the city. Meanwhile in the south, Typhoon Sendang (International Name Washi) rages and has brought massive flooding to Northern Mindanao. Tragic, quite frankly. But such are the consequences of living in a tropical country whose weather toys between the limited options of blazing hot and muggy rains.
Long story short, we ended up at the Christmas Toyfair last night thanks in large part to Urim's prompting. He had more serious errands to address - buying a few more last minute Christmas presents for relatives. For Tobie and me, it was just down to looking for interesting deals and possibly new Transformers to acquire.
We arrived past 08:00pm, which is fairly late even for the mall. But it couldn't be avoided - the weather combined with the pay day weekend Christmas crowds has naturally resulted in pretty bad traffic on the streets. Plus we had to wait for Tobie to finish his work for the day while I finished up the Jin story mode for Dynasty Warriors 7
, hehe.
Anyway, the crowds weren't too bad by the time we had arrived at Megamall plus it looked like the cosplay events for the day were already over and thus those folks were already gone for the day. So that left us enough room to peruse the stalls at our leisure with time being our only enemy.
At first I didn't really see anything of interesting other than Takara Encore Devastator
, which is still a fairly new figure and thus was still at the rather hefty price of P5,500 for the box set. It was tempting, I have to admit, but that alone would use up all the cash that I had brought with me, and that didn't seem like a good deal at all.
I was close to giving up until I stumble across the more recent release version of the Transformers The Ultimate Battle: Optimus Prime vs Megatron (2-pack). The original Classics edition had come out some time ago including an exclusive DVD, this one didn't have that, but was cool enough all the same. Plus I got it for about the half the price of what the Classics set tends to demand, which was more than decent. While I'm not a big fan of Optimus Prime figures, I couldn't quite say no to a Generation 2 style Megatron in tank mode. Awesome sauce indeed and I've been eyeing this two-pack for more than a year now, just waiting for the right price point.
I figured that was a good enough find for the day and I could probably quit while I was still ahead. But then Tobie insisted that I keep looking around some more
. That led me to a stall which prominently had the Hasbro Masterpiece Rodimus Prime
on display. And I had searched through his wares, I was surprised to find the Takara Transfomers Animated Arcee
figure. This was another figure that I had been eyeing for the past year, but the Toys R Us exclusive version was always being priced at P2150, which was crazy for a Deluxe-class figure. The one that I had found was being sold for less than a third of the price! So I know I had to make a deal with this guy.
As I examined his booth further, I also found a decent enough Henkei version of Classics Mirage
, which is not quite a must-have figure for me but was definitely at a good price. And if I wanted to get a better deal, I needed bargaining leverage. Plus he even had the recent Dark of the Moon Shockwave
for just P1000 despite how it had already disappeared from most local toy stores given the marked down price of P1200. While I'm not a big fan of the movie figures in general, I've always wanted to have a Shockwave figure and this one isn't all that bad to look at. Sure, he had a pretty lousy non-role in the movie, but otherwise the toy was okay to get...at the right price of course.
So now I had some major leverage and the guy and I started going back and forth about how much he'd give me for all three figures. The negotiations were going pretty well, but the Masterpiece Rodimus kept beckoning me. I had been holding out for the Takara version which comes with a proper trailer so he can truly become Rodimus Prime instead of just Hot Rod, but the Hasbro version game with a fun Targetmaster, just like his original G1 release version. Torn! I eventually checked with Tobie as to what he thought about all this and of course he was all for it. And after a bit more trepidation while considering the whole thing, I finally gave in and added him to the negotiation.
Fans have always thought of the Takara version as being the ultimate masterpiece edition of the Rodimus Prime character while the Hasbro version is more the ultimate Hot Rod. I think it's safe to say that I'm more game to have him as Hot Rod more than as Rodimus Prime. Trucks are so overrated.
The final amount was pretty good, but it still drained my funds quite significantly. I was pretty much tapped out but more than happy considering I was going home with 6 new figures for generally the same amount of cash that I would have spent just to get the Takara Encore Devastator. Good grief!
So it was a pretty productive toy run indeed, although somewhat scary considering all this took place in less than an hour of bargain-hunting. I promise not to buy any more figures...for the 2011, haha! On to 2012!
Beyond that, the three of us eventually ended up at Luk Yuen for dinner. I've always enjoyed eating there - I guess it's more of a childhood nostalgia thing. While the service can be terrible and most of their branches seem to scrimp on air conditioning, their congee will always be my favorite compared to all other Chinese restaurants.
The conversation was pretty crazy - and one thing led to another and we ended up conceptualizing a pretty crazy idea for a series of romance stories well centered in geek RPG culture. Urim is sort of the showrunner for this idea since he has the most time to write but Tobie and I will do our part to contribute accordingly. Exciting times when geeks pool their crazy creativity together.
Still home alone. Rains seem have stopped for now. Watching the second season of Merlin. Ho-hum.
Long story short, we ended up at the Christmas Toyfair last night thanks in large part to Urim's prompting. He had more serious errands to address - buying a few more last minute Christmas presents for relatives. For Tobie and me, it was just down to looking for interesting deals and possibly new Transformers to acquire.
We arrived past 08:00pm, which is fairly late even for the mall. But it couldn't be avoided - the weather combined with the pay day weekend Christmas crowds has naturally resulted in pretty bad traffic on the streets. Plus we had to wait for Tobie to finish his work for the day while I finished up the Jin story mode for Dynasty Warriors 7
, hehe.Anyway, the crowds weren't too bad by the time we had arrived at Megamall plus it looked like the cosplay events for the day were already over and thus those folks were already gone for the day. So that left us enough room to peruse the stalls at our leisure with time being our only enemy.
At first I didn't really see anything of interesting other than Takara Encore Devastator
, which is still a fairly new figure and thus was still at the rather hefty price of P5,500 for the box set. It was tempting, I have to admit, but that alone would use up all the cash that I had brought with me, and that didn't seem like a good deal at all.
. That led me to a stall which prominently had the Hasbro Masterpiece Rodimus Prime on display. And I had searched through his wares, I was surprised to find the Takara Transfomers Animated Arcee figure. This was another figure that I had been eyeing for the past year, but the Toys R Us exclusive version was always being priced at P2150, which was crazy for a Deluxe-class figure. The one that I had found was being sold for less than a third of the price! So I know I had to make a deal with this guy.
, which is not quite a must-have figure for me but was definitely at a good price. And if I wanted to get a better deal, I needed bargaining leverage. Plus he even had the recent Dark of the Moon Shockwave for just P1000 despite how it had already disappeared from most local toy stores given the marked down price of P1200. While I'm not a big fan of the movie figures in general, I've always wanted to have a Shockwave figure and this one isn't all that bad to look at. Sure, he had a pretty lousy non-role in the movie, but otherwise the toy was okay to get...at the right price of course.
Fans have always thought of the Takara version as being the ultimate masterpiece edition of the Rodimus Prime character while the Hasbro version is more the ultimate Hot Rod. I think it's safe to say that I'm more game to have him as Hot Rod more than as Rodimus Prime. Trucks are so overrated.
The final amount was pretty good, but it still drained my funds quite significantly. I was pretty much tapped out but more than happy considering I was going home with 6 new figures for generally the same amount of cash that I would have spent just to get the Takara Encore Devastator. Good grief!
So it was a pretty productive toy run indeed, although somewhat scary considering all this took place in less than an hour of bargain-hunting. I promise not to buy any more figures...for the 2011, haha! On to 2012!
Beyond that, the three of us eventually ended up at Luk Yuen for dinner. I've always enjoyed eating there - I guess it's more of a childhood nostalgia thing. While the service can be terrible and most of their branches seem to scrimp on air conditioning, their congee will always be my favorite compared to all other Chinese restaurants.
The conversation was pretty crazy - and one thing led to another and we ended up conceptualizing a pretty crazy idea for a series of romance stories well centered in geek RPG culture. Urim is sort of the showrunner for this idea since he has the most time to write but Tobie and I will do our part to contribute accordingly. Exciting times when geeks pool their crazy creativity together.
Still home alone. Rains seem have stopped for now. Watching the second season of Merlin. Ho-hum.
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