STREET FIGHTER FIGURES!!!

I seized the opportunity today to finally scour the hobby shops for SOTA Street Fighter action figures and I might say it was a very productive day.

I have been a die hard SF fan ever since SFII came out in the video arcades here over 10 years ago. My brother was the one who first discovered this great game and I found myself playing in the arcades day in and day out against other fans of this great game. My friend Winnie and I would go straight to Robinsons Galleria every friday afternoon and play there until the mall closed.

When RESAURUS came out with SF action figures about 10 years ago, I managed to get a few of them courtesy of a friend in the US named Jason Soloway who bought them for me and I would buy him pirated PS1 games in return. Sadly, I could not complete the set since we fell out of touch and I put off buying them locally until one day, I found out RESAURUS went out of business and the toy line was discontinued! WAAAH!!!

When SF celebrated its 15th anniversary, SOTA came out with a new line of SF action figures. At the time, I didn't have a whole lot of cash so I couldn't buy any. Recenrtly, they have been on sale and I seized the opportunity to buy what I can.

I've made some sort of a resolution not to bother buying EVERY variant of every character. In SSF2, there are 8 variant colors. All the toy manufacturer has to do is come out with a different color for the same mold and have me buying all of them until I go broke, which is ridiculous! So I am making it a point to just buy 1 of each character. That excludes Gouken, who is a rarity, and Ryu who has an evil version. The rest only have color variants and I am not too piccky with that.

Thanks to BEST TOYS of VMALL, HOBBY POINT & COOL STUFF of SHOPPESVILLE PLUS, GREENHILLS & 2RATS of EASTWOOD LIBIS for these really good buys!

Here's what I have so far:

(Pictured Above): My SF toy haul on the sofa.

(Pictured Above): Discontinued Resaurus SD (Super Deformed) SF figures. Akuma is on top, The only available one was already opened.


(Pictured Above): T. Hawk (SSF2), Birdie (SFA), Ibuki (SF3)

(Pictured Above): Gen (SFA), Chun Li (SF2), Sodom (SFA)

(Pictured Above): Guile (SF2), Remy (SF3), Sakura (SFA2)


(Pictured Above): Adon (SFA) and Evil Ryu (SFA2)

(Pictured Above): Master Gouken (brother of Akuma, master of Ken & Ryu)

And now for something a little scary...

(Pictured Above): What I got in my computer when I put the Chun Li figure in the scanner. Note that I didn't remove the toy from the box. So where is she???

GUILTY PLEASURE: ORIGINAL DVD HAUL

NOTE: For the extremely popular mega-post of my collection, please check the archives.

I found these original DVD's on sale in Astrovision and I saw no need to put off getting them since they are priced pretty low already. I can't believe some titles were going as low as P150. If it weren't for DVD piracy, the price of originals would still be at around P1,200 apiece.

I have always loved watching movies. Back when Betamax and Laserdisc were the predominant formats in the rentals, I would borrow lots of LD's and make copies to watch over and over in my room. This was the time when there were tons of action movies in the US and once big time action stars like Stallone weren't fathers yet and were at their prime. Every so often, they would make films that I would find myself watching over and over, sometimes I even have the dialogue memorized in my head!

Here are some DVD's I bought, all on sale:


(PICTURED ABOVE): Mr. & Mrs. Smith. I finally found it on DVD! This was out of stock for a while. When I saw this in the cinema a few years ago, at the time I thought they lacked on screen chemistry. However, watching this on cable this year was a different experience and I found myself liking it. Also, it was directed by Doug Liman, who also directed another super-favorite of mine, "The Bourne Identity".


(PICTURED ABOVE): Batman Begins Collector's Ed. I couldn't believe how cheap it was! When I saw this in the cinema it made me wish that all superhero movies were made like this, and Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith (I saw it on the same day) sucked by comparison. A close favorite of mine next to Spiderman II.


(PICTURED ABOVE): Street Knight. Now THIS is definitely a guilty pleasure! This is a well-made B-movie action flick about a cop who ended the rivalry between two street gangs. Jeff Speakman is a kenpo master in real life and I love his films because of the awesome fight scenes. I am still looking for his first hit movie, "Perfect Weapon".


(PICTURED ABOVE): Rambo Trilogy Box Set. Whoever loves huge action flicks where the good guy is near invincible, has unlimited ammo and kills all the bad guys has to love all three of these films. I can't wait for Rambo 4! I hope it's as explosive as Die Hard 4...

OVERDUE POST #1: MY COLLECTION

This is the first of two overdue posts. The other one will contain pictures of 2 business establishments that I used to own, more on those later.

For the longest time, I have taken these pictures of my aging collection of toys and posters. It was also for this reason that I got my friend, John who is based in the US, to buy me a digicam when he came home for the holidays some 4 years ago. For the longest time, for some reason, my browser kept crashing when I try to look at them in my computer. Yesterday, I tried copying them all to another hard drive and found out that my pictures weren't ruined. YAY!

This is an assortment of toys that I have kept Most of the Transformers toys were bought when I was a kid. A lot of the newer ones are either store-bought or from Ebay.

My original plan was to make a website to showcase these things, but the plan got put aside until I learned about blogging and now I have a chance to put these up so easily.

So here is my ever-growing and still-growing collection. My apologies for some lousy picture quality. Click on the picture for a bigger view.

Please note that this is not my entire collection. I still have a lot of original DVD's, Laserdiscs, manga, artbooks and action figures, that I have amassed over the years. I will try to post those later, as I haven't photographed them yet.

LUPIN III TOYS

This became one of my favorite anime since the Tagalog dubbing was so hilarious. I was watching this late nights on Txtube. The Tagalog dub pioneered comedic dubbing, which injected a lot of Pinoy humor in the dialog, something not found in the original version. This paved the way for the success of Slam Dunk and Hajime no Ippo on GMA because of the extra comedy. GMA (the TV station, not the president), please bring this back, forget about Richard Gutierrez and your pathetic ripoff of this great show! LUPIN!!! KAM BEK (come back) !!!

COWBOY BEBOP

As recommended by Meowok, this anime was an acquired taste. It suited me just fine! The soundtrack is amazing, BTW, and I have become a Yoko Kanno (the composer) fan ever since. I also bought the original US release of the DVD. I got the chance to be a part of the dubbing cast when this show was dubbed by Telesuccess here in the Philippines. Among the many characters I dubbed (guests), my favorite was Andy the cowboy and the video maniac (the nerd who Spike and Jet bought the Betamax player from, the one who extensively explained to them the difference between Betamax and VHS).


SLAM DUNK

When I first saw this on AXN, I was instantly hooked to this extremely entertaining anime. That was when my fascination started and I just had to buy any SD item I could find. I even went through the trouble of recording every single episode from AXN and converting them to VCD. During that time, digi-subbing and downloading fansubs via bit torrent haven't been so widespread yet.

I also had the honor of being the scriptwriter for the Tagalog version (TSP) and was the voice for many characters in the show such as Kogure and Dr. T. The show still airs on afternoons on GMA and continues to do well in the ratings.

SIDE NOTE: I have to admit that when I first heard that TSP bought SD and that we were going to dub it, I was a little apprehensive. The idea that we were going to dub at least 6 basketball teams with just 8-10 voice talents was not something I welcomed. I loved the show and I wanted it to be done right as much as possible. A co-worker even wished our company wouldn't buy the show because in her words, "mabababoy lang" (it would only be bastardized). However, despite our wishes that this show wouldn't be Tagalized, the fact remained that it was going to happen, and who would be better among the dubbers to write and be in the cast than true blue fans? This was my chance to be more than just a fan of SD, this was my chance to have a bigger part as far as SD is concerned so I still took on the task (and so did she). Besides, I also thought to myself, that if I let the chance pass, and someone else ended up doing a piss-poor job of writing the script, I would have no one to blame but myself for turning the project down, and I would look like a complete fool bashing it in the forums. The simple point is, I had a chance to do what I thought was right for the show and I did it! And as it turns out, I wasn't wrong in making that decision. SD became such a big thing in Philippine anime history and has been re-aired over and over.

TRIGUN

I had an attachment to this series since it was one of the first dubbing projects I became a scriptwriter for. The show is a sci-fi western and the sound effects of the guns is something you will really love. Trigun items were pretty expensive too. I also bought the original US release of the DVD.


POSTERS

I have always loved posters. I don't really know why. Wait, now that I think about it, it's probably because we always had boring abstract paintings hanging in our house, either that or the walls had wallpaper on them. When I had my own room, I felt like putting posters up to make my room a little more "me" (does that mean I've always been searching for my identity?). However, no more room in the walls didn't stop me from collecting. In fact, with the exception of one Voltes V poster, NONE of the posters pictured below are actually on the wall.

SIDE NOTE: I used to collect posters of the actress Phoebe Cates. My room had posters of her, even stuck to the ceiling! I took them all down when when rumors spread that she was dead. It turned out to be a hoax by some dumb college kids who wanted to see how fast a rumor would spread as their thesis. Remember that back then, there were no cellphones with text messaging or even beepers, so rumors don't exactly spread at the wildfire speed that you would expect today with text messages and email. Anyway, I believed it, and I took down the posters. I still keep those posters somewhere in my cabinet, but I think the termites got to them.

ANOTHER SIDE NOTE: (Sorry, I feel the need to explain myself.) When I was a kid, it used to matter to me whether a favorite character or actress was alive or dead, and if they were dead, I would stop collecting them. Phoebe Cates was one of such. When the first quarter of the 5th grade came, my friend Tim, who spent the summer in the US came back and told me there was this super cool movie called "Transformers The Movie" (the animated one, this was 1986). I obviously haven't seen it, but my friend told me that Optimus Prime died. It was for that reason that I never bought the G1 Optimus Prime and only bought the Powermaster Optimus Prime, because years later, he was resurrected in the comic book.

Most of these posters were bought on my last trip to Hongkong at the Causeway Bay Computer Center.

(PICTURED ABOVE): MAZINKAISER POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): GETTER ROBOT POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): GAIKING HOME VIDEO PROMOTIONAL POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): GAIKING POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): SHIN GETTER PLAYSTATION GAME PROMOTIONAL POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): SHIN GETTER ROBO OVA PROMOTIONAL POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): GREAT MAZINGER HOME VIDEO PROMOTIONAL POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): REAL ROBOT REGIMENT PS2 PROMOTIONAL POSTER. (This is one of my favorites because Daimos is in it)

(PICTURED ABOVE): MAZINGER Z CROSSOVER MOVIES HOME VIDEO PROMOTIONAL POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): VOLTES V VIDEO COLLECTION MAGNAVISION PROMOTIONAL POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): VOLTES V LASERDISC PROMOTIONAL POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): SUPER ROBOT WARS ALPHA FOR GAMEBOY PROMOTIONAL POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): SUPER ROBOT WARS IMPACT FOR PS2 PROMOTIONAL POSTER

(PICTURED ABOVE): VOLTES V POSTER. In the original release of the Magnavision English dubbed videos, each volume came with a card and if you get all 20 cards, it forms this poster. This poster of mine is the uncut version. This was redrawn in the Questor office from a picture of the robot Godsigma from the artbook "Super Robots Viewed Broadly".

(PICTURED ABOVE): UNKNOWN SUPER ROBOT WARS POSTER FROM THAILAND

SUPER ROBOTS

Okay, it's no mystery that I have loved super robots (Japanese mecha) ever since I got to watch Voltes V and Daimos and others back in the 70's. Whenever I had a little extra money, I try to buy some. However, my fascination with these things seem to be fading...

(PICTURED ABOVE): MAZINGER & GETTER DOLLS, COMBATTLER & RAIDEEN RUBBER PLASTIC FIGURES

(PICTURED ABOVE): A HUGE MAZINGER Z STUFFED DOLL THAT I FOUND IN THE TYANGGE (No, I don't sleep with it), & 2 MAZINGER Z SD COIN BANKS ON SALE AT COMIC ALLEY.

(PICTURED ABOVE): VOLTES V COIN BANK [MY NEPHEW'S], SRW HARD RUBBER VOLTES V, AND A MACROSS BATTROID.

(PICTURED ABOVE): SECOND HAND SOC MAZINGER & GREAT MAZINGER, & SOC APHRODITE A & MINERVA X. THE APHRODITE A WITHOUT THE STAND IS A POPY FIGURE, I THINK. (I got the second hand SOC's and the Mazinger & Getter dolls for a real cheap price from a guy in Cuba)

(PICTURED ABOVE): HARD RUBBER MAZINGER Z & GREAT MAZINGER, YUJIN MAZINKAISER

(PICTURED ABOVE): ZAMBOT 3 RUBBER FIGURE THAT DISASSEMBLES INTO THE VEHICLES. (Pepsi can is there to give you an idea on how big the toy is).


(PICTURED ABOVE): MY SOC BLACK MAZINGER Z. (This is my first SOC. This was what was left of it after my nephew, who was very young at the time, played with it and got a little carried away. I think he was pretending to be Ankoku Daishogun. LOL)

(PICTURED ABOVE): SOC HOVER PILDER (second hand from the guy in Cuba) & SOUL OF POPYNICA MAZINGER Z HEAD (from Ebay)

(PICTURED ABOVE): SOC GAIKING (from Best Toys)

(PICTURED ABOVE): SOC UFO GRENDIZER (I bought it when I was in Hongkong)

TRANSFORMERS

This was my first real hobby that I got to start when I was in the 4th grade and I had just transferred from Trinity College to Brent International Manila. I found about these robots and the show from my American classmates who saw it in the US and eventually when it was shown here on RPN9. Among the roomfull of toys I had with my brother, I had always kept these with me. And I am glad I did, because they eventually became a part of my nephew's childhood as well and one of the reasons why my bond with my nephew is so strong to this day.

(PICTURED ABOVE): My pride and joy. My extremely adorable nephew at age 3 (He is 8 years old now)

Most of these were bought from Best Toy store, either as gifts to me from my Tita or parents. The rest I bought myself. I think that is why I helo onto these toys - I bought most of them with my own money, unlike my other toys, which were given to my by relatives. I still keep them all in a big plastic box.

NOTE: None of these TF toys are fake or knockoffs. I know that China-made fakes of most of the G1 combiner robots can be bought in Tyangges. These are all either Hasbro or Takara original toys of the G1 TF line that I bought when I was a kid.

NOTE: the big piece of cardboard behind the robots in the picture that seems to look like sand and a railroad is actually from an original Transformers TRAIN SET that I had when I was a kid. It was the size of a pool table and I used to have all my transformers in fighting form on it like a battlefield. Of course, all Autobots were on one side and all Decepticons were on the other.

(PICTURED ABOVE): COMBINERS (5-6 robots that transform into other things but each team transforms into one big robot. My fascination with this line still stems from my love for Voltes V) - Terrorcons, Seacons, Constructicons, Predacons, Combaticons, Technobots, Aerialbots, Protectobots. (For some reason, I can't find my Stunticons. WAAAH!!!)

(PICTURED ABOVE): FORTRESS MAXIMUS W/ HEADMASTERS (human cyborgs transform into the robots' heads) & POWERMASTERS (human cyborgs transform into the robots' power source)

(PICTURED ABOVE): ASSORTED AUTOBOTS & DECEPTICONS

(PICTURED ABOVE): "BIGGER SIZE" TRANSFORMERS, LIKE THE CITY ROBOTS FORTRESS MAXIMUS, TRYPTICON & METROPLEX, W/ ULTRA MAGNUS, OPTIMUS PRIME (POWERMASTER VERSION), PREDAKING & GALVATRON.

(PICTURED ABOVE): METROPLEX & TRYPTICON IN CITY MODE

(PICTURED ABOVE): METROPLEX & TRYPTICON IN CITY MODE, BIRD'S EYE VIEW

(PICTURED ABOVE): TRANSFORMERS PRETENDERS.

Anyway, that's all for now, more picturess of other items in my collection later.