Toys: Mathly In Love

Another day, another parcel! (Help! I can't stop!)


OK the story with this one is, my mum thought I no longer play with it so she sold it to my aunt! Recently I asked my mum to check with my aunt if she still has it – she can't remember ever buying such a thing from my mum!

But it's OK, now it's back! :D

Like the name suggests, it's mainly an educational toy for learning maths. But it also has a Who Loves Who? Game (yes kids started young those days) where you key in birth dates of yourself and the person you have the hots for and see if you are a match made in heaven. Lovely.

Toys: Evil Olive's Vile Tokens of Love

The most expensive item I purchased from eBay so far. Originally I wanted to see how far people will go for this item and it turned out I was the one going furthest!


Anyways this is not what I had during my childhood but it's still fun to play with: Olive Oyl has loaded an entire humanity's supply of bottled drinks, pineapple and canned spinach in the trunk of her car and she's trying to sink Popeye's puny boat by throwing these items at him. Popeye's best friend Brutus is trying to knock some sense into him.

Made in 1981, this tit tit game has some minor scratches here and there but the sound, graphic and control are all in very good condition. It turns 30 next year.

Post Inception Syndrome (PISsed)

I knew I was in a dream and I was receiving this mysterious black envelope when I heard the music (in the movie the music is played through headphones by an accomplice to the dreamer so he knows that the kick [the sudden feeling of falling] that would wake the dreamer up is coming). But it's too soon! I haven't even looked at what's inside the envelope yet! However, unlike the movie, it's not Édith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien", the music sounded quite ethnic... I had to listen more closely (I sleep with ear plugs and my head sandwiched between two pillows).

When I finally figured out the music I was already wide awake (yes never to find out what's inside the black envelope). The music was unmistakeably Indian: there were the signature "Hoy! Hoy!" at certain intervals, hand-clapping as base rhythm and the occasional drumming.

MUUUUTHFUUUUKRS! It was 4.45am. OK maybe they would go away after a few minutes... so I sandwiched my head harder (any harder my head'd become a pâté).

5.05am: I gave up! I went to the window and saw a bunch of 6 to 8 Indians opposite my house doing the full set with dance and it didn't look like they were going to disperse any time soon.

So I did the most sensible thing any pissed dream agent would do when his mission was interrupted: 999. I told the police there's a bunch of merrymakers opposite my house and he understood immediately. I continued to observe them while waiting for the Police to arrive.

The dance moves included floor sweeps, squat and bounce, hands in air (with "hoyhoy"s) and they were using the large rubbish bin as drum.

Detaining journalist for flood photography is one thing but I must say the police are pretty efficient: they arrived in 10 minutes and I could almost see the panic on their faces as the police car approached. A few quickly walked away but the police managed to question 3 of them. And made them picked up the mess they made.

Joy! Most probably should get back to sleep (and maybe find that black envelope...)

*growl growl*

OK some instant noodles first.

Toys: Retro Gaming

My 6th purchase from eBay! This is a game cartridge for NDS which has two classic Nintendo Game & Watch games in it: Parachute (I can't remember going to a friend's/relative's house who didn't have one in the 80s) and Octopus (I didn't have it but definitely played the game before). And it has a hybrid game in it as well: Parachute + Octopus! The rower who fetches the suicidal parachutists also doubles up as diver stealing treasures from the giant octopus! Quite funny actually...

It's not for sale in gaming shops becuase Club Nintendo members can only redeem the game cartidge using the points they accumulated through purchsing other games. But like I said, you can find ANYTHING on eBay.

Fleeting Moments of Joy

You know how sometimes when you discovered something wonderful and you can't wait to share it with your friends / family / loved ones? Like you just won the lottery? OK not a very good example because some people would actually keep it a secret rather than sharing this kind of joy (and the prize money that comes with it). (And for the record, no, I didn't win any lottery.)

It's the kind of excitement you want to spread around, to the people you know, hoping that they might feel the same as you. But sometimes, they just do not have the time or mood for the things you want to share. It's almost like a scene in a movie where a little child, holding his new toy, ecstatically wanting to play with his parents but they were too busy with the stock market or soap opera so they shooed him away. Disappointed and heart-broken, the kid played alone and cried himself to sleep.

Even if the parents had finally come to their senses and wanting to spend some time with the kid and his new toy, the moment had passed and the child would later became a drug addict / gangster / hobo / etc.

Toys: Tomy AAAAGHH & YEEAGHH!

My 5th shipment arrived today! This time it's from US. It took 18 days to reach here, and the shipping cost a bomb! About 1/3 of the total cost!


Tomy AAAAGHH! (left) is what I used to have as a child (it was the same game with a different name called Tricky Traps). And being a quick-tempered child (and now, a quicker-tempered adult, not that I'm very proud of it), I hit the plastic casing so hard it cracked (didn't shatter) because I couldn't get the balls to their final destination after 2 billion attempts. My bother, thinking it was broken, threw it away (yes he inherited my mum's excellent trait of compulsively trashing other people's childhood memories)! And now I got it back, in perfect working condition, and amazingly new! I'm so very happy!

The one in the middle is called YEEAGHH! and it's like 10 times harder (and louder, there must be a dump truck in there) than AAAAGHH! The goal is the same: to guide the balls up and down through contraptions to reach a spot right in the middle of the game. Unlike AAAAGHH!'s horizontal format, this is a vertical game. I didn't have this as a child but since they are from the same series (you can't tell from the weird sounding names?) and COMBINED SHIPPING (what a vile evil) costs less so I got it. And I'm glad I did. :D (I think there's another one in the series called WOW! but it's very elusive, googling "Tomy WOW!" will only get you to "what happened 'to my WoW' account?" haha. Here's a look.)

The seller also included a little surprise gift for me! (I must have paid a lot more for the above than what they cost! But I say they are well worth it). I haven't popped in a battery yet so I don't know what the game is like. Only comes with left and right buttons so most likely it's a game of dodging or receiving something.

His eBay store: http://stores.ebay.com/momandboysshop

Updates
The handheld on the right is an alien ship crushing game. On top of the screen there's an alien mother ship dispatching little alien ships to Earth. At the bottom of the screen is a rocket attached to a rocket launcher. You move the rocket and launcher left or right to crush the little alien ships as they advance towards Earth.

Toys: I Almost Mail-Ordered It...

Damn those Japanese! So cute but useless!

Source: http://www.strapya-world.com

Toys: Epic Packaging

This is my 4th shipment from eBay.


I got it pretty fast, within 5 days of payment. What I wanted to talk about is the PACKAGING:


It's like WAY TOO MUCH! 1. Parcel box; 2. Bubble wrap; 3. Fillers; 4. huge plastic bag containing the two items I bought; 5. Items are individually bubble-wrapped; 6. Before you reach the items, there is tracing paper; 7. One of them is shrink-wrapped!


I got these two pretty cheap and I was the only bidder haha. They are from MASK's Racing Series but they are not vehicles, they are more like props: one is a pit-stop that turns into a catapult;


and the other is a billboard weapon station. Which explains why nobody wants them. But I'm very happy to include them in my collection nonetheless. And they are BRAND NEW. I wonder how these Hong Kongers hide their MASKs so well, and for so long.

28 Days to Penang

And to get away from all the nonsense.


Source: http://www.alliefoodtalk.com/2009/01/03/penang-hawker-food-curry-mee-wantan-mee-chulia-street/

Caramel: Can You Serve?

No, Denise, the answer is a resounding and absolute NO. I don't even want to try anymore. I suck at customer service. If I'm good at it I would have become a customer-sucking whore.

Toys: MESS Production

The price we pay for mass production:


Cheap, messy, crappy products. Look at the colouring on the chess pieces: a lot of bleeding and some are not coloured. And the carving work is absolutely horrible. I can't make out what some of the pieces are trying to depict. Found recently in Chinatown for SG$1.25.


This is what I found in Penang a few months ago. Over 20 years old: you can tell from the traditional characters. Colouring and carving are clear and precise. From a game called Air, Land & Sea Battle Chess (海陆空战棋）

Toys: Tit Tit Game

A bit of back story on why I bought the Nintendo Game & Watch Donkey Kong Hockey:

I used to have this white Panorama Series Game & Watch Donkey Kong Jr. Unlike like the shared Octopus and Parachute, I can let others play with it, or not, because it was my reward for getting good grades at school. I had a great time playing with it and kept it nice and clean in its box when its not in use. Eventually I forgot about it as I got into high school, then college and went studying abroad, followed by working in Singapore.

A few years ago I asked my mum about it and she said my younger brother was playing with it after I went studying. When I asked him about it, he said he's broken it and threw it away. *ouch*

A search on eBay didn't get good results on this particular item. But it led me to Donkey Kong Hockey. And it's BRAND NEW! So there you have it.

Just a few days ago I googled "tit tit game" (the sound the game makes) and found this:


The blogger, KS, got his Donkey Kong Jr at the exact same place I got mine! The price label is unmistakably Super Burmah (now defunct Super Departmental Store, Burmah Road, Penang). And he's born in 76!

So I did the only sensible thing a nostalgic sentimentalist would do: I wrote him an email, asking him if he would sell it to me if he's no longer emotionally attached to his game. It was a looong shot.

And he replied two days ago! Guess what? He misplaced all those games after he took the picture for his post in 2008! Dang!

The search for Donkey Kong Jr continues...

Source: http://patheticattempt.blogspot.com/2008/05/game-and-watch.html

Toys: Travelling 3300 Miles and 26 Years...

After much disappointment at Funan (see post below), I got an SMS from CK: "It's here."

YAY! I've been expecting my third shipment from eBay since last week! So I headed back to the shop to collect my parcel. Have I mentioned earlier that I LOVE PARCELS? :D


All the way from Chiba Prefecture, Japan.


Apparently in 2008 someone found a few cartons of unopened Nintendo Game & Watch Donkey Kong Hockey in a warehouse (in Japan?) originally headed for Hong Kong. So now you can find them mint in boxes floating around eBay. And cheap (as low as US$50+ at some sites), compared to other mint Game & Watches such as Parachute and Octopus (both US$1000+ to US$2000+).


It's a VS game where you play against another player or the computer. Me and CK got bored after 5 minutes HAHAHAHA...


But it's a nice piece of nostalgia to hold in your hand, especially when it's travelled so far and long to reach you.

Toys: "Ata.. What?"

So today I went to Funan in search of Atari Flashback 2 (see post below). Not a single person know what I'm talking about, not even the shops selling games. Some frowned at this thing that they don't understand: "A self-contained gaming console with 40 games pre-loaded and just plug and play"? Never heard of. Games come in square or rectangular boxes, or discs only. And even though Nintendo DS did come up with cartridges for old Atari classic games, none of the shops carry them.

If it ain't popular, don't expect to find it in Singapore. Not even in its Premier Digital Mall. They only want to sell popular games so everyone will be playing the same thing. A sales girl asked me to try the toy shop.

*Sigh*

Toys: Atari Resurrected!

I can so totally live with this! Pre-loaded with 20 classic games and 20 new games, plug and play! Awfully cheap at US$40 but shipping cost as much from Amazon! Need to find out if it's in Singapore already...

Source: www.atari.com

Toys: Very Desirable

This is the first computer system I ever played with, circa 1983. Again, our cousins had the console so we only needed to buy the game cartridges. I remember playing the classic Pac-Man and Space Invaders on this system but what fascinated me the most was a game where you have your pawns (? characters?) on a seesaw and there are 4 to 5 rows of square bits moving from left to right and vice versa at the top of the screen. Your goal is to let one of your pawns bounce off the seesaw, retrieve as many square bits on top as possible and land it back on the seesaw so the other pawn would get bounced off and do the same thing. You'll go to the next level when you finish collecting all the moving bits on top and game over if one of your pawns missed the seesaw and hit the ground.

I don't know if it's one game by itself or comes as part of a family of games. I haven't found out yet becuase according to this list there is a total of 544 games!

Source: http://yonoveotele.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/atari-classics-evolved/

Updates
Found it! It's called Circus Atari.

Toys: The Danger of Combined Shipping

This is actually the first shipment to arrive. But it is my second purchase from eBay. The first purchase is DYNAMO, but it arrived later than this one.

You'd noticed there are three very colourful action figures at the bottom. Now what I originally wanted was only PIRANHA. But most eBay sellers will always tell you to combine your shipping because just by adding a few dollars more you can get a few more items you don't really want to be shipped together with what you really want.

And that's how I got those Sky Commanders. I don't even know they existed, even though they are produced by the same maker of MASK toys, Kenner. Sky Commanders were not very popular as they lasted only one season according to Internet searches. The toys mainly involve hanging the action figures on strings and let them slide form a higher place to a lower place. Now that I got 3 I have to collect all 6 to make it complete! Yet I can't open up the packaging to play with them because they'd become "loose" items, meaning no longer "carded" (carded being with a backing card) and the value will drop significantly.


So this is what I really wanted. I've never had it back in 86 and neither any of my friends did (as far as I can remember). Maybe because he has this really bad ass look so it wasn't really that likeable. And unlike DYNAMO from the Split Seconds Series, PIRANHA is just a motorcycle with a side car which will transform into a submarine, with only one Sly Rax. Who's gonna drive the other vehicle?

OK why didn't I get VANDAL? That's what I used to have and couldn't find right? Because if I found VANDAL and DYNAMO on my next trip back to Penang then I'd have TWO VANDALs and TWO DYNAMOs! So for the time being I'm very happy with PIRANHA. Am I going crazy? Yes.

Toys: It All Started with A Missing Box of Monopoly

I've never had my own Monopoly board game when I was a child. My cousins had a set and since we all stayed together naturally we didn't need to get another set. We (me, my elder sister and my two elder cousins) had loads of fun acquiring land, building houses, hotels and making each other bankrupt. I especially love those metal pieces representing each player. My favourite pieces were the hat and shoe.

Fast forward to circa 1998 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was studying for my art diploma and stayed in a mother-fucking shit hole of a rundown rented flat. The place was so dilapidated I had occasional nightmares about the slime in the bathroom got attached to my feet and started devouring me. However two good things came out of the living hell: I made friends with a bunch of very cool seniors – it was the first time I ever saw a woman parading her bare tits, realised a person will not die instantly no matter how much a person smoked (that person was not me, for the record) and a person can have so much sex until they lost consciousness (again, not me, I merely helped dragged the unconscious back into the room he just had sex in); And the other good thing: I found a box of 1970s Monopoly, almost mint, apart from being yellowed by age.

I checked with everyone in the flat if it was theirs as I found it in one of the many unused cupboards in the living room. I also checked with the landlord and nobody seemed to want it. So I took it back with me to Penang when I finished my study. And in my room it stayed, untouched, for a few years. I would occasionally marvelled at how new and complete the game board and its bank notes were because it's obvious they've only been very gently played with (my cousins' board were almost torn in two and most of the notes were all curled up at the corners from the heavy play).

I started working in Singapore 10 years ago so my room in my grandparents' home has not been occupied since but the door was not locked just in case my visiting aunt needed a room to spend her nights. At this point my cousins and their parents already moved to a new home of their own and so did my parents and siblings. The occupants who were still there were my grandparents, my uncle TB and his son SP.

About 7 years ago, my grandparents' home went under renovation during mid-year. It was a spur of the moment decision by my grandfather after his visited one of his friend's refurbished house. It couldn't wait until I came back to pack my things up. They told me all my stuff would remain in the room while they renovated the place.

By the next Chinese New Year, when I had my spring break, I went back to my grandparent's house to re-organise my room and hopefully able to move some stuff to my parent's current home (which was small and didn't have a room for me but they did have a store room of sort). Guess what? I couldn't find the Monopoly.

I was extremely upset but what could I have done? It could've been the renovator, uncle TB (who has a habit of selling things at Penang's famous Thief's Market for some spare cash) or his son SP. So upset as I was, I told myself it didn't belong to me in the first place, so hopefully now it's gone to some caring hands. I tried to just let it go but the memory of it never really went away.

5 years ago, my parents moved again to another house. The house came with TWO storerooms so it was really great for me to store all my childhood stuff I didn't bring with me to Singapore. When I was going through my stuff, something which I've totally forgotten about after Primary School (1988) caught my eye and fond memories came flooding back:


Source: http://www.toydreams.co.uk/mask/maskboxed.html

There are tonnes of MASK literature online so I'm not going to repeat here. As you can see from the box, DYNAMO is an off road vehicle which will split into 2 – a chopper and an assault cart. It also comes with two action figures, neat. The other one I had was VANDAL, a bulldozer which splits into a plane and a jeep. Also with two action figures. This is a bad guy. I was very happy to have re-found them! BUT...

YES BUT! Just 3 months ago, I had a break in Penang and I was going to bring these two toys back to Singapore. GUESS WHAT? I COULD NOT FIND THEM! I've looked everywhere in both storerooms but I just don't know where they were hiding. Over the years my mum had shifted things around and added other stuff to those storerooms but she assured me she hasn't thrown anything out (when we were younger she threw away a working Polaroid camera citing expensive films, she threw away MANY things...) and I trusted her on this one because I've nagged at her (haha role reversal) over the years not to simply throw away my childhood memories and certain things become valuable with age. (07 Dec 2012 Update: Apparently there is a THIRD storeroom! Mum shifted my MASK toys and some other stuff there!!)

This frustrating incident, my sentimental feelings working overtime coupled with the sad memory of the missing Monopoly opened a flood gate on, you guessed it, eBay! And what a wonderful place it is! One can find anything, SIMPLY ANYTHING! As long as you have the money for it and know when to stop, it is one of the best places on the Internet.

My quest begun with getting back the one I used to have: DYNAMO. And it arrived yesterday! I LOVE parcels!



And I think the two Bruce Satos are very happy to be here!

This is for back-up just in case I really can't find the old one when I go back again to Penang this coming August. I'm gonna move everything out of those storerooms and open every boxes!

Anyways, DYNAMO came in a sealed box with the cardboard insert and the stickers are still not applied yet! It's like buying a new 80s toy! And I think it's been stored in a warehouse that's built underground because the colour on the box are still vividly clear and nice (ad agencies should build a warehouse like this to store their precious precious Pantone charts).

Oh I just noticed my previous entry was dated 17 June 2010, about the same time I started my eBay frenzy (sometimes I bid till 5am), which I had to put a stop to yesterday haha. So yes, more things from eBay to come!