Hoth-Con 2016

Last Saturday, 26th of November, Helsinki's own Star Wars convention returned! I visited the second ever Hoth-Con and while I was a little disappointed at the event last year, this time, they stepped up their game! It was bigger and better! The venue place was still the Gloria Cultural Arena, which still is a bit too nightclubby for my taste, but it didn't bother me as much like it did last year.

This time, I had company! After I told my brother that the guest of honor would be Jeremy Bulloch, the man who played Boba Fett in the original trilogy, he willingly joined me at the convention. We both got Mr. Bulloch's  autograph, which is freaking amazing! :DDD Four or five years ago, I hadn't even watched the original trilogy and now I have an autograph from someone in the film! Feels so crazy! XD I'd say Hoth-con sure found "that something special" it was missing last year.

People in line for autographs

First time for everything! Even though I have seen my fair share of anime conventions, I'm a little ashamed to admit I've never seen a cosplay competition before, but now I have. Star Wars style! And it was amazing! They were 20 minutes behind schedule and at parts it felt a little rushed, but overall it was a very good show for a first time viewer. 

Strike a pose!

Darth Revan!

Queen Amidala: 2nd place

Boba Fett look a like

Competition winner: Ahsoka Tano

Jeremy Bulloch Q & A panel

"Never go home empty handed." 

The original Boba Fett's signature that shall be treasured. 

In honor of the occasion, I just had to find a Boba Fett figure to bring home, and this chill looking mini Boba melted my heart. It was affordable, and the vendor said it was their last one. Just a sale tactic? Well, it worked, this bounty hunter is now mine! Of course, before we left the place, I wanted to find something Darth Maul to bring home and the only thing I found was this all blue "hologram" one that comes with a bonus miniature figure (all red!). I can't say, it's one of my favorites, but it will look interesting among all the red&black figures.

Flea market findings 6

Photo dump warning! Originally I was going to make this into two separate posts, but apparently I'm feeling really lazy this month so here's everything all at once! Just to be clear, all of this stuff wasn't bought at one place, but rather from different vendors at various locations over a long time frame (about 3 months). It would be nice to find a flea market where they would only sell toys, with flea market prices and not with "specialty" store price tags. There is a limit how much I'm willing to pay for a used toy even though I might not always seem like it.

I was really happy when I spotted this Sakura Miku Hatsune, but I was very disappointed to learn later that this is actually a bootleg! It doesn't stink like a cheap knock off, the paint job is really good and the plastic isn't soft and all bendy like bootlegs usually are. For what it's worth, it's the finest looking bootleg I've ever seen!  Shame on me, I was fooled....

I'm suspicious that I may have been fooled twice :D I found this Jolteon plush at a flea market that was full of bootlegs of many kinds (Lego, Minecraft, MLP).  There were also similar looking Eevee,Vaporeon and a Flareon plush there, but this Jolteon stood out because this was the only one with that Pokémon Center tag with appropriate copyright belongs to Nintendo, the Pokémon Company etc. text. The other eeveelutions only had a very basic tag that only reads "made in China". I find it very unlikely that a genuine plush would have ended up amongst all the bootlegs.

Free Elsa! I don't really care for Frozen, this was just me acting out a childhood dream! Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to bust open anything that slightly even resembled a snow globe, to get my hands on that small figurine that is held captive by a translucent sphere! Finally I did it! When cracking it open, it occurred to me that I probably should have used some protective gloves when that foul smelling liquid was dripping down my hand and causing a very distant feeling of a burning sensation.

SSJ Goku, a very disturbing looking Luke and Lil' Anakin Skywalker. I'm always on a lookout for anything Dragon Ball Z (and Star Wars) related stuff, but I'd say 98% of the time you're looking for DBZ items, the search is futile. When you do actually find something, it's either a manga volume or a video game. Whenever I find a figure, I'll always feel extra happy!

Horses,horses, horses......because I love 'em! I have from before a smaller version of the striped one, a bigger version of the spotted one (in different color), I want to repaint the black one and the Carousel horse is just something I've never come across before! Such beautiful and unique thing among all the boring and regular horse toys!

Completed my Lion King Pez collection with these three! The toys need a clean up, you can see they have been well played with! Now I need to update my Lion King collection post too with all these new additions!

Dino time! ;D

The Land Before Time's Chomper! I didn't even know such toys even excited!

Safari LTD. tiny Dilophosaurus, Raptor and Spinosaurus.

Brachiosaurus(?) by unknown and T.Rex. with JP logo on it's thigh.

Jurassic Park 3 Velociraptor and 1998 Godzilla baby.

Chap Mei's Dimetrodon and Raptor. Dammit, I'm loving these colors. *_*

Mattel mystery item repaint

For a while, I had been looking for a big beautiful picture, only so that I could cut it into small pieces!

I finally found what I was looking for at an elementary school's yard sale. The school was closing down for good and they were trying to get rid of all the remaining excess stuff. There were piles of kid's magazines laying on a table, I looked through a few and notices some of them still had folded up posters inside. A poster would be perfect for my intended use! I searched the magazines for more posters, and the one I finally picked up and brought home was this beautiful picture of the Orion Nebula. And I got it for free! :D

Some time earlier, I found this thing..... a screen, room divider, triptych? whatever it is, at a flea market for 0,50€. I'm guessing it belongs to a Barbie doll, because it is Barbie sized and it says "Mattel, 2005" on the backside. I tried looking it up on google, but I must be using wrong search words, because nothing even remotely resembling this came up. Well, anyway, I bought it because I thought it might work as a good background for some figures too, but first, something needed to be done about those awful colors.

I removed the original, all buckled up cardboard from the frame, spray painted it black and lastly, I dry brushed it with some dark red.

I used the old riverside view card boards to trace the shapes onto the nebula poster, which I also laminated. Then I cut out the pieces and put them in back in the frame, which wasn't as easy as it sounds. I tried my best, but the pieces I cut still wouldn't fit right. In the end, the nebula pieces also buckle a little, although not as much as the original cardboard pictures.

mandatory before & after picture

Crystal T-Rex

I was visiting the first time the  Science Center Heureka's small shop in Helsinki and there I saw these beautiful crystal 3D puzzles for sale. I walked out of the shop without buying anything, but I decided that next time I was visiting Helsinki that I would come back and pick one up. Some time later I did it! I had to decide between getting the T-Rex or a human skull. It's pretty self explanatory which one I ended up buying. I didn't really like the color choices for the skull, either black or clear.  The king of the dinosaurs won in the end because of the more vibrant color and the dynamic pose it had.

After I opened the package, I found this two sided paper describing many other puzzle models available. THERE'S A DARTH VADER!! OMG!! But of course, there was none in the shop's limited selection. Dangit.

"It would be very interesting, challenging to one's mind if it is fixed randomly"
If not downright impossible! I had a hard time putting this together, even with the instructions! As I started putting this Rex together, I was wearing cotton gloves, because I didn't want to have fingerprints all over it.  Bad idea! The puzzle pieces were more slippery than a wet bar of soap in my hands. So the gloves had to come off.

Through steps 4-44 there is nothing holding the pieces together, you just have to carefully balance it like I'm holding it in the picture. BTW, it was not a very good idea trying to take pictures in the midst of building it. I was focusing on the camera, and didn't really pay attention to my other arm which was holding the puzzle upright, I tilted my hand a little bit too much and all the pieces come crashing down! I had to rebuild it once or twice, just for wanting to take a picture. Thank goodness for the plastic screw on step  45! I could finally put my headless T-Rex down!

The last piece...

It is a little disappointing that the arms, legs and tail are so see through. They stand out a bit too much from the rest of the body. Otherwise it's awesome! I like the sculpt and pose, even though the pose might not be scientifically accurate, being too upright and the tail dragging the ground. My pictures are lying about the color too. Seeing it live, it's far more orange-y or almost like bronze in color. (Depends on the genius in charge of the lightening,  I guess.)

Tsum Tsum

I never intended to buy a Tsum Tsum, mainly because I thought they only made characters out of Disney movies and I'm not that big of a Disney fan. Then I learned that Star Wars Tsum Tsum actually exist, which means I at least have to buy one of them, a certain red-black faced fellow..... and so I did. ^_^

Since Finland is such a backwater country that they don't sell any SW Tsums here (as far as I know) I had to order them from the UK. The Darth Maul Tsum Tsum was a must for me, but why not buy a another character for the same shipping cost? First, my gut instinct was to get Obi-Wan Kenobi, but I took one look at Qui-Gon Jinn's mean little eyes and I knew he was the one I needed to get. I suppose I have to get a Kenobi sooner or later, otherwise my "Duel of the Fates" is incomplete.

Three labels sewn into them. I hate those things.

I know I can only blame myself for not "researching" this stuff beforehand. When the duo finally arrived, I was a little disappointed over how small they were. I was expecting them to be closer to the size of a Guinea pig, but instead I got plushies in hamster size. I could have saved myself from the disappointment if I had bothered to convert the inches into centimeters, but I didn't. Boohoo for me.

And another thing I'm slightly annoyed of. It might not translate well into the pictures, but little plush Maul's face is a little uneven. Most of the stuffing has been packed on the other side, leaving the other half of the face somewhat flat. I've tried to shuffle the insides, but not much improvement has been made.

The last thing I'm annoyed about is that the price of these little thing's shipping cost was more than the total of the product themselves. That is bullsh*t. But hey, you want it? You got to pay for it.