ToyMuchInformation! - Mermaids? MOREmaids.

 Listen, Shimmer wanted friends, okay?  It's hard to say no to that face.

 

One of these is a brand seen before - the Philosopher has a post about the LuckyDoll ones.  I'm including the brand she didn't get to - the Aiye Mermaid Island blind box dolls.  Since I seem to be getting into the habit of backtracing these companies, of course I looked into both brands shown on the packaging.  Koitake and Aiye both seem to be in the toy business; Koitake looks like they put out Nendoroid-style static figures based on Chinese series?  It appears they do a lot of collaborating (like I thought Penny's Box was doing).  So it makes sense they'd join up with Aiye (Insta page is all I could find for them and they only have two official released series?), whose specialty is BJDs.  The result is the Mermaid Island dolls.

 

Spoilers as to who I got in my box.  Translations seem to differ on the storyline blurb and I couldn't find one that made 100% sense, but SpaceStudioBJD comes to a soft rescue, batting cleanup for Google.  Apparently searching for the holy land of the pandas turns you into a mermaid.  I don't make the rules.

I got TianTian.  No frills packaging; it's a big box mostly because of her chair, and everything comes in plastic bags.  There are two copies of the instructions for some reason, so I get to show both sides.  He character art card is definitely cute.  Her bikini top is also a separate piece, but doesn't actually come off.  It is a little loose though and can ride up or down if you're not careful.

I'm less a fan of TianTian's stringing than I am of anyone else I have constructed this way - her arms are fiddly as hell and won't really hold a pose.  It's difficult to get her to stay in her little chair, too.  Partly because it's smooth plastic on smooth plastic and partly because of the stringing issue.  She has a lot of little molded details on her tail, but the transparency doesn't really add much.  If they'd just left it on the tail fin it would have been fine, imho.

My really big beef is with her hair.

Hold my scalp, please?

TianTian's unique among my crew in that her entire scalp comes off.  If you zoom in on the instructions you can see this, and the fact that her head also opens up for eyeball access.  The issue is the hairpiece itself feels aggressively, disagreeably rubbery.  It's rubbery in the way water slimes are wet - you feel it, your nerve endings are telling you this hair is sticking to your hands and attracting every stray hair and lint molecule in a two mile radius...but when you drop it, you're not sticky and it isn't covered in fuzz.  I kinda hate this, lol.

her eyes also go weirdly reflective from some angles.

Granted this does open up a lot of avenues with her.  The removable scalp means wigs are an option; I'd guess she would take whatever wig size an 11cm head does.  The removable eyes are a big help, too.  I could definitely repaint her tail, or con a friend into doing some 3d printing maybe.  She has a cheerful little face, so there's that.  It's mainly the hair and the stringing that kills it for me, I guess.

But that's not all!  We have a little scholar in the house as well, since I'd had these sitting in my wishlist for ages.

 

I got The Librarian from the LuckyDoll/"ChuChu" series, and honestly?  She's stinking adorable.  I love her goldfishy fins.  The ombre on her tail is well done, even if it's starting to show some friction rubs in the paint.  I had to experiment with some clothing options because that joint at the waist really is distracting in the anatomically worst way.

Hiiiiiiiiiiiii~

She can wear Nendo clothes!  So this little sailor suit is hers for now, I guess.  She's much easier to pose than TianTian is, since her fins actually are jointed and will help to hold her up.  Plus, I love the wide hipped proportions on these dolls.  It's worth noting Libby here doesn't match her character art - she's purple on paper and pink in person!

Stupid cute.  Her facial screening puts me in mind of another one we'll take  look at some other Tuesday.  For now, it's raining and I need to take the dog out.  We're supposed to become Hurricane Buddies with Moon Girl in a couple days.  The Cone currently covers both of us, haha.

ToyMuchInformation! - The Little Things

 I love ramen.  It's one of the last available inexpensive yet flexible foodstuffs out there (I noticed even house brand frozen pizzas are $8 now.  Ya girl got borderline-gubmint frozen tenders instead - they'll be made to last a month, lol).  Normally I go for the Maruchan packets, portion them out, and add my own meats, veggies and whatever to up the nutrition factor.  Cup ramen has its place, though, and probably the best known and most beloved brand is Nissin.  Yes, I do own that model kit.

Lately, they've been doing some collaboration thing with Walmart and shocking the shelves with flavors like Breakfast, Everything Bagel, S'mores, and apparently now also Pumpkin Spice.  I'm not sure about that last one as I have moral objections to the Basic-Beckyization of pumpkin spice, but since I tried all the others I'm honor bound to try that one too.  If anyone wants my opinions on the other flavors, though, feel free to ask.

Ramen-esque and themed toys have been appearing in recent years.  The "sensory" and fidget craze includes rubber noodles, for example.  Today I came across a new cup-ramen style blind box doll series and grabbed one, as well as another cup noodle surprise toy I've had before and not mentioned.  Both are under $10 each at the moment, fairly cute, and the water aspects of both are actually avoidable if you're not into that.

 

Let's begin with the doll - Cup O' Style seems to be a new line (at least to me, I have a bad habit of scooting through the toy section whenever I'm at walmart just to looky-loo).  In the usual move, the ten surprises listed include the chopsticks you're supposed to use to get the items out of the cup, if you use the water feature.  I will note this one also comes with a stand, though.

According to the top of the packaging there are 12 dolls in the series, but only six in rotation right now?  "Some dolls coming soon" would imply this, anyway.  Personally this seems like the perfect setup for future themed releases, such as zodiac signs.  The character art is very cute.

 

Getting the contents out, if you follow these 13-step illustrated instructions, seems fairly easy.  The faces on the ramen cup are cute, but personally, I tried not to think about it being involved that deeply in the process.  The speed lines had me hearing anime sound effects.

So here's what you get when you peel the top off.  Chunky-crayon extendable chopsticks with a training clip, two mystery packets, and a cup of unseen objects with a few pieces of meltable paper on top.  Note that the one with the noodles printed on it seems to be what the instructions imply you should use as a parasol, which....nah, I ain't seeing it.  The two foil packets contain bath bombs, essentially.

Luckily, the melty-paper/bath bomb fizz aspect is entirely avoidable.  You can just take the noodle print paper out and tear open the fish cake and ramen egg printed packets.  No fuss, no slimy paper muss.  But what's all that raffia-looking stuff in there?  Shades of Boxy Girls...

It's hair!  I got Rory Rainbow.  Her facial features are both molded and printed, and very glossy.  I thought at first they might be a color-change feature or stickers, in fact, but they're not.  She has molded hair for the most part, with a couple of rows of permed-looking rubber noodles in pastel rainbow colors.  I'd say overall she's a Hairdorables-sized Shoppie, to be honest.  Rory comes with shoes (left and right, btw), a simple dress, some sunglasses, a cell phone, a purse, one rainbow-themed object that I can't figure out (it may be a hair clip, idk), her stand, and the molded noodle insert from the top of the cup that acts as a kind of secondary stand, based on the instructions.  So yes, counting the chopsticks that is in fact 10 items.

She has the Basic 5 when it comes to articulation, and it's good she comes with a stand, because she needs it.  These dolls are pretty top-heavy, given the rubber-noodle hair design choice.  There are pegs on the stand for her feet (both the feet and the shoes have holes btw), but she'd still lean back without the chopstick there to help with her posture.  Rory is cute, though, and can very likely wear Hairdorables clothes no problem, though I think she's a little smaller than your average Shoppie.  I'll have to tinker with that later.

ETA: People have already found out how to get around the blind box aspect - the cups each have a code on the bottom.  If you're looking for a specific doll from this line, this post has all the known codes.

Insta Poodles have been around a little bit longer - I think I found my first one at the local Kroger around Easter?  They hit walmart a while later than that, though.  Personally, I like the packaging on these better, but that's my bias as a miniatures addict - the cup and chopsticks have more potential as accessories for larger dolls or plushies.  They're still cute, inexpensive, the process is pretty simple for them and they can serve as toys for other dolls as well.

 

The cup is more Nissinesque, too, and I like the presentation of the chopsticks better.  Plus the barcode is a doggie bone.

Once you pull off the lid this is what you get.  The training clip for these chopsticks is a rubber sleeve that comes wedged into the saucer-looking "stand".  There's a molded noodle topper inside the cup with a fizzy bath bomb cake under it, hiding the contents. The topper can be pried out with minor amounts of effort, but be warned it is slotted in there pretty securely.  I just use the chopsticks to pry it out.

With the fizzy cake removed, you have immediate access to your surprises.  One play house (with opening door), one ride-on, and five Poodles.  Pretty instant!

 I think my first one had this same Poodle Palace, but the Poodles and ride-on are different.  Left to right, I got Goldie, Luna, Belle, Crystal, and Kiki.  Luna is listed as "special" on the collector guide.  The ride-on is the shopping cart.  The Poodles and the cart are all made of a squishy soft rubber, and the Poodles have holes in the bottom so you can sit them on their playhouse, ride-on and saucer stand.  The instructions imply the Palace is supposed to be able to sit on top of the saucer, but I may be extra uncoordinated because I can't make it look good, lol.

These are very small figures.  And I should rinse them off, because they keep shedding bath bomb sand everywhere.  But they're also very cute and undeniably "collectible", probably much moreso if you're a little kid or just into super kawaii aesthetic than if you're me.  Like I said, the packaging on the Poodles is more versatile, and you could repaint the Palace pretty easily to add detail to it.

Both would make decent stocking stuffers or just impulse gifts for the ramen fanatic in one's life.

ToyMuchInformation - Of Course, My Deer

 Penny's Box just keeps saying "hold my beer".  What will it be next, Fu dogs?  That would be pretty awesome though.  Anyway...

I spotted these on amazon not long ago while cleaning out my wishlist.  Sigh.  I have no regrets, though.  I was thinking at first they were bipedal like fauns, until another reviewer on Youtube posted a Short and mentioned they're centaurs.  So then I started wondering if they were Kirin.  Nope; they're deer.  Nine-Colored Deer, to be precise (?).  This was a myth I'm not familiar with.  Google Translate seems to have pulled a semi-Babelfish moment on trying to translate the box...

 

I went looking for some other details, because what Google had given me seemed egregiously Engrishy.  That search turned up this Twitter post (I refuse to call it X).

Better, but that seems more like a whole storyline.  Still, pretty good.  This implies that Antu is/are an individual character/s with some agency.  As it turns out, that is in fact true.  I went down a rabbit hole, lol.  Antu is in fact a standalone character.  She's based on a resin doll released by Penny's Box's parent company, DollZone.  Adou is a different situation, being entirely original (except the dragons series apparently added a female variant).  I still want one from the Little Witch/Little Painter line - Dream specifically.  Not today, but maybe someday.

So yeah, all this time I'd been thinking these were some street-artist or manga artist collaboration. Today we all learned a thing.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I got Shu Zhi!  Honestly, with this series there can't be disappointment - they all look amazing.  No complaints here. Kikagoods has a much better translation of what's on the back of her character card. This time I went looking for the meaning behind the name, and found...varied results, lol.  I tried matching the characters to what was on the box and had no luck.  Behind the Name helped out with something that sounds like it matches the character blurb, though.  I don't think those characters match either, but I'm willing to stop here, to be honest.

She comes with some extra hands as per standard, jewelry, and a lovely two-piece gauzy outfit that falls in line with the things you usually see East Asian fairies depicted in (in my experience, Chinese and Korean, specifically).  The top has a snap and the skirt velcros at the waist.  The little scarf/sash is wired to be poseable.

The usual insert appears, showing the characters, the details, other lines available, how to change heads and hands and all those other goodies.  I'm realizing the first-page pictures, where you can see Adou there in the middle, are probably pointers on which lines you can most easily swap heads and clothing pieces between.  I did not bother trying to Gtranslate this as it likely would have instead managed to tell me how to summon Cthulhu.  Hang on a second..... that's not the worst idea I've heard this year...

major Fantasia centaurette vibes

Excuse you.

Out of the box, she has the same joints as Neon, just on a slightly larger scale.  Her knees (I got a huge laugh out of the fact that the official art depicts a deer-taur with human knees on its front legs, by the way) and hocks are both double jointed, but can be fiddly and could definitely use some sueding.  All of my elastic kids need it, tbh.  I didn't check to see if her tail is removable like Neon's is - it was attached in the box and I'm leaving it that way if at all possible.  As with Neon, Shu Zhi's hooves are also somewhat poseable, though this doesn't accomplish much.  I feel like a joint at the fetlock (basically the ankle, for the non-horse-girls possibly reading this) would have been better, but eh.  It works!

Her facial screening is great, even among the Antus I have, and mine may have her eyechips out of alignment, because she doesn't look quite like the promo photos.  But I do love how her entire expression changes based on the angle.  As usual there isn't any body blushing, but she does have a lot of molded fur detail.

P̴̧̟͉̩̊̍̑̀̇́͗́̍͐̉͗͘A̷̢̡͍̗͎͍̎T̸͔̖͍̼͚̙̪͔̘̈́̀̀̇H̷̻̟͚̱̙̤̙̗̪̿͌̋̑̍͛͑́̓͆̌̕͝E̷̡̧̼̣͙̰͈̓̅T̸̢̨͕͙͇̝̬͉̹̼̥̖̳̗̈́̌̇͛̉͒I̴̗̭͍͖̒̍̋̾͗̊C̶̪͜͝

I had to guess on the jewelry based on her pictures, but it should be on right.  The large cuff is on her driver's side foreleg, which you can't see here because the skirt is very voluminous for its size.  Honestly, the quality of the clothing impressed me.

Qing Yao (Adou Loong Fantasia) vs Shu Zhi (Antu Silk Road Souvenir)

Shimmer (Antu Tidal Secret Language) vs Shu Zhi (Antu Silk Road Souvenir)

Neon (Antu Dreamlike Tea Party) vs Shu Zhi (Antu Silk Road Souvenir)

Shu Zhi is about the same height as Shimmer, actually, although I had her posed sitting in that photo.  She's not too much taller than Neon (it's mostly legs tbh).  Overall, I feel like she's most comparable in proportions to Shimmer and Yao.  Poor Neon fits in the chibi category pretty firmly.  At least she can share with the Nendos.  With a basic pattern for Shu Zhi's outfit at the right size and a little floral wire for more scarves, you could fairy out your entire crew if you wanted!

...I just realized her necklace is in the wrong position in every single one of these last three photos.  FFS.

ToyMuchInformation! - Splatoon/Splatoon 2 Buki Weapons by Bandai

thisiswhyi'mbroke.com

Mom wake up, new preorder just dropped

The mini-weapons sets have been nothing but a joy to collect thus far. I have my suspicions, since they haven’t announced more after the subweapons set, we won’t be getting future installments, but what’s out is definitely worth looking into.

a little small

definitely too small

go ahead and jump, I dare you.

you ordered chip damage?

accurate size

junior grande and zink mini

frighteningly accurate

way too small, lol

this is not how dualies work, squiddo

The details on these are just as amazing as the ones on the kisekae figures, and for the most part they fit perfectly with the 4″ Inklings. There are a few exceptions of course (the Brella, Aerosprays and Splattershot Jrs notably), but overall if you’re looking for options… the full box runs about $20 (or they did preordered), but you can find single items on ebay for around $10 each if you look hard enough. Older ones will of course cost a little more.