JoshB's blog

Happy Holidays from the CollectionDX Staff! Spend some quality time with your families, and we'll see you after the new year. Thank you for all support, both on the site and our show, especially backers of our Indiegogo campaign!

Sincerely,

JoshB, Adam, Andrew, Andrew, Ben, Charles, Dan, Eva, JoshL, JoshR, Leonardo, Luis, Michael, Rob, Vincent, Arshad, Andy and team.

P.S. - Let us know what you got!

You may not know the name "Tsuyoshi Nonaka" but you know his work. He did the mechanical design for Mazinkaiser SKL, Shin Mazinger Shōgeki! Z-Hen and DICE among other things. Oh, he's also done work on some small series as Transformers, Super Sentai and Power Rangers. A lot of his work was credited to PLEX, the design studio he was a part of.

http://www.collectiondx.com/toy_design/tsuyoshi_nonaka

http://www.collectiondx.com/toy_design/plex

I've been seeing his hame around as guest of honor at various California conventions and wondered what the deal was. Turns out he's moved from Japan to the US to be head of “PLEX International Design, US division” for Bandai America. This means, as of 2011 - Tsuyoshi Nonaka has been designing toys for lines such as Power Rangers, Ben 10 and more.

Now I know why those Ben 10 toys look so great.

I did an interview with the Boston Globe last week. Apparently our YouTube account is one of the top accounts in Massachusetts! Who Knew!

We only get one paragraph, but it's pretty cool!

Check it out here!

Just caught the first episode of the new TRON animated series on Disney XD and I was blown away. It feels very much like the movie. The animation is top notch, the music is still there, and there are even subtle cues to the original TRON movie. (check out the effects when the guards use their staffs, and the design motifs on the bad guy gloves).

This is a must watch for me. What do you think of it?

For my birthday this year I decided I wanted to make a trip up to a flea market that I hadn’t been to in a few years. This is a great flea market because it is nothing but antique dealers and people selling their junk. There are no stalls selling bootleg purses, no Avon dealers – Just old junk.

I spy my first find just minutes into my trip. Sitting on a table is  a Styrofoam tray with a complete Gobots Puzzler set. I ask how much for the Gobots.

“$100” he says. “It’s unused”

“Woah, that’s way out of my range” I said. “Even with the outer box, that’s too much”

He says he has the box, and the instructions. Still, I feel that at $100 I would be insulting him with what I would be willing to pay. We’re just too far off. I tell him that I just got here and need to walk around.

He then asks “What’s the price you won’t walk away from?”

There’s another comic store in town that I have mixed feelings about. Technically it’s a better store, but the owner is an asshole. I’ve actually been kicked out of his store for being a regular patron of another store. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to go in there. But the sad fact is that it’s a better-stocked store, and my kids like it more.

We were killing time one day and my youngest son asked to go to the comic store that had the “Pringles”. This shop had a little snack area by the register and he just loved the fact that he can look at comics and get Pringles. Who am I to say no?

This store has a fair amount of toys, but most of them are crap. DC and Marvel hero toys, with some Spawn toys mixed in for good measure. Typically nothing I am interested in. But today, something on the counter caught my eye.

I’ve been going to my local comic store for about 20 years. While I don’t collect comics anymore, I like to stop in and say hello from time to time. Being a comic store, they also get toys and games from time to time.

It was during one recent visit that the owner, George, called me in back to see a lot of toys he had picked up recently. They were Japanese toys.

We'll be at the Boston Comic Con, April 21-22 2012 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston MA. I'll have a CDX branded dealer table - unloading a lot of excess toys and promoting CDX. We'll be right next to the Incubot booth!

Come visit and say hello!

http://bostoncomiccon.com/

As I do in every new city I visit, I look online for local toy stores. Yelp is a great resource for this. While looking for stores in the Bay Area, I came across a promising place called Boss Robot Hobby. With a name like that, I thought, this was right up my alley.

But why hadn't I heard of it before?

I asked Ken about it and he said "don't bother". It was small with some Gundam kits but mostly RC car stuff. I took Ken's advice to heart and really didn't think much more of it. 

However, when the group of us were done with Kimono My House, we had time to kill, and I suggested we go check it out. We were in Emeryville, and the store was only a few minutes away in Berkeley.

People lined up across the street for Ice Cream

No toy trip to San Francisco would be complete without a trip to the venerable Kimono My House. KMH may be one of the last shops in the US devoted to nothing but Japanese Toys.

Wait, didn't they close a few years ago? Sort of.

While the KMH store did in fact close, the owner Yuki opens up his warehouse one day a week for visitors to stop by and purchase some toys. It's a far cry from the store that opened in 1981.

Located a few blocks from the old location, the warehouse easy to miss due to there being no sign. If you don't know the address, you won't find it.

After calling to confirm that he was in fact open, Jeremy, Ken-A and Mr Soupy-Oh and myself met on a rather beautiful March morning. As we entered it was something like crossing the threshold into Narnia.

Whenever I find myself in a new or far-away city I always take the time to do some toy hunting. San Francisco has some great toy spots that make it a fantastic destination for shopping.

My first stop was the Japantown Mall over near Geary & Laguna. I was staying near Union Square so I decided to take the #38 bus over, but in my rush to catch the bus I tripped off the curb, twisted my ankle, and landed flat on my face in the street. What a great way to start my adventure. I limped onto the bus and once on actually got there quickly. Despite the injury it was a short ride and much cheaper than taking a cab.

The guys over at Swass Cast (http://heroenvy.com/ visit CDX's own Nekrodave and took a tour of his collection. Check it out!

Watch as two $400 lego sets ($400? Really?) get smashed into one $800 pile of Legos. Anyone who has experienced frustration trying to build something with lego will find this cathartic.

Trains really are the way to travel. I'm writing this from the Amtrak Acela express somewhere in Connecticut. After years of driving to Toy Fair we've decided to switch to train and couldn't be happier. I wish I lived in an area with more train service as I would take it everywhere. It's one of the many reasons why I love Japan - the trains run everywhere.

Getting to the station was an adventure. I thought I left myself time by getting up at 4:30 in the morning, but after all was said and done I didn't get on the highway until six. The train station is about an hour from my house and my train was due to leave in 55 minutes.

Just when I thought I was going to scream if I saw another one of those "hunter" or "wars" shows, along comes one what I might actually be interested in. It's called "Toy Hunters" and it chronicles toy dealer Jordan Hembrough as he tries to acquire items to sell at the New York Comic-Con.