Some of you may have seen a little mention of this guy on my Instagram stories a while ago, after I found him in a joblot of junker Transformers. Well he’s had a fair bit of TLC and after some significant research and hunting for parts he’s had a full restoration! (Swipe to the last photo for a ‘before’ shot.)

Redfoot Optimus Prime started as a bit of a myth, some people remembered having one or seeing them at a friends etc, but over time they started showing up at collectors fairs (in fact I almost bought one from a fair over 10 years ago for £20).

In reality, Red foot was a quirky variant of G1 prime made by ‘Ceji’ in France, who had the rights to make and distribute the toys in certain areas including some European countries and the UK.
His most notable qualities are his red feet, but he also has more vivid red paint on his cab than a ‘standard’ prime, his inner leg is stamped with a ‘3’ and his trailer is stamped as ‘T2 Made in France’. You may also notice that the shape on his forehead is just a silver outline rather than solid silver on most primes. The trailer itself also has a slightly different sized back door to a ‘standard’ prime.

Refurb-wise he’s had a thorough clean, bumper repair, replacement tyres, re-chrome and been completely re-stickered!
Through sheer chance I already had the correct T2 trailer and accessories which I’d picked up previously without even realising! I’ve also stumbled upon the correct ’Ceji’ instructions for him.

Really pleased with the end result, another increasingly rare variant added to the collection and another junker saved from the scrap heap.

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First appearing in Timothy Zahn’s ‘Heir to the Empire’ storyline, Mara Jade is a character from the old Star Wars Expanded Universe (Now the ‘Legends’ line). Originally being ‘Hand of the Emperor’ she was a villain of sorts, but Mara was drawn away from the dark side by Luke Skywalker and became his Wife.

This is a fantastic figure, and it’s a bit of an oddity that it actually exists. It was released back in April 2014, just over a year before ‘The Force Awakens’ effectively rendered the old expanded universe redundant. It also falls more so under the Koto/Starwars ‘ArtFx’ branding than the Bishoujo one, despite still being designed by Shunya Yamashita and keeping the bishoujo art styling.

There’s also one other figure in this set; Jaina Solo, another character now relegated to the legends line. There was also talk of a female stormtrooper design which was sadly never released.

Still, thankfully Mara was released, and what a great figure it is. Also seems to be a very sought after item these days as there’s probably very little chance of a re-release.

Here we have the iconic Street Fighter character Chun-li in her new ‘Battle Dress’ costume from her most recent appearance in Street Fighter V.

SFV featured some nicely redesigned costumes for many of the series classic characters. This costume has quite a different appearance than her original blue & gold qipao dress from Street Fighter 2, but in much the same way as her Alpha costume did, it feels like a fitting evolution of her character and style.

This is a great figure by Kotobukiya, although it has a less action-packed pose than the original Bishoujo Chun-li figure’s high kick, it still has a definite sense of motion to it…

Released in 1990 as the home-based counterpart of the Neo Geo MVS arcade system. The Neo Geo was sold as the system that allowed you to bring the arcade experience home, and they weren’t kidding!

Although arcade MVS carts and home AES carts are not directly interchangeable, the games themselves are identical and effectively run on the same hardware. Hence this beast of a machine earned itself a reputation as the Rolls-Royce of 90s gaming with a price-tag to match!

The system had a wealth of iconic games, from Metal Slug, to Samurai Shodown which had some astonishing graphics for their time.

There’s no denying though, that even the console itself is one beautiful machine

Jumping back to the 80s/90s Beat-em-up theme, here’s a little shoot featuring Capcom’s Poison. Designed by Akira Yasuda for Capcom, her debut appearance was in 1989’s arcade release of Final Fight, but later went on to cross-over into the Street Fighter games.

Here she’s shown in her original outfit on the iconic Final Fight stage 2 subway, where she made her first appearance as a street-fighting punk-styled member of the Mad Gear gang. (Ironically her lesser known pallete-swap buddy Roxy appeared before her on the first stage.)

She recently had a redesign for her appearance in Street Fighter V, but her 80s punk-inspired original appearance is still pretty iconic!

Just tagging onto Halloween it’s Evil Dead’s Ash – in Kotobukiya Bishoujo style!

Plus it’s also the Evil Dead’s 40th anniversary this month!

After a night of fighting evil, (alternative) Ash appears disheveled & battle-worn, whilst still wielding the series trademark chainsaw outside the iconic cabin in the woods!

Had a lot of fun experimenting with the lighting on this one as it completely alters the mood of the photos.

Groovy…

The 1992 X-Men animated series is one of my favourites from the 90s. I re-watched a few episodes recently which inspired me to do a little photo shoot with the Kotobukiya Bishoujo version of Mystique in her classic 90s costume.

Whilst experimenting with the lighting for this shoot, I discovered that this particular statue has an Easter-egg feature of sorts. Mystique’s hair is obviously made from a transparent plastic, so glows nicely when backlit, however to my surprise I discovered that her eyes are also made from the same material. So the backlight effect also makes her eyes glow!

Is this a ‘feature’? Well I tried backlighting a few of my others, but to my knowledge none have semi-transparent eyes like Mystique, even if their hair is the same material. So I sincerely hope it is.

Maybe Kotobukiya can answer that question… Either way it’s a nice touch!

So it’s been a while since I completed my Street Fighter II arcade cabinet, so I thought I’d post my latest project – the legendary Neo Geo MVS! Rolls-Royce of the 90’s arcade…

I picked up this cabinet as a bare shell a while ago, it was a generic uk cabinet made by ‘Europacoin’ which judging from the NeoGeo game names written on the back, had once been home to 4-slot Neo. However it was very rough and had lost pretty much all its original parts, but this made it a perfect candidate for restoration and customisation.
It ended up becoming my lockdown project and I did a lot of work on it during 2020.

I decided to re-design and re-build it in the classic red & black USA style livery. Finding an original ‘Big Red’ Neo Geo cab here in the UK is likely to cost you an arm and a leg, but given that I already owned the original hardware, making my own ‘tribute’ to the big red seemed the the perfect solution, plus this cabinet has several features to its design that are very similar to those USA versions.

There was a considerable amount of work involved, from woodworking to repair the original structure, to filling, sanding & painting the chipboard panels.

I custom designed my own graphics for the control panel, marquee, bezel & side art and had them professionally printed, then assembled it all myself.

Inside its running a real Neo Geo MVS 1-slot MV1FZ board, which is capable of running my collection of ‘real’ mvs carts or the 161in1 cart.
I also decided to add a Pandora Box 6 which I can swap to by just moving the Jamma connector. This combination of these 2 systems gives me access to pretty much any Neo Geo Game!

I really couldn’t be more pleased with this build, it all came together perfectly and is a beautiful tribute to the original’s iconic design.

A little restoration project that I got hold of recently for a very reasonable price. 

He arrived with me in a bit of a sorry state, and had suffered the same fate as many of his brothers, a weak-spot in the design (where the panel holding his head meets the windscreen) had snapped, consequently his head had fallen off plus the panel behind and the roof had detached. 

On a more positive note all the pieces were included (except for one screw) and he was otherwise in pretty nice condition with almost all his original stickers, minus the ‘RR’ Real & Robo sticker from the broken panel above.

Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea of how to fix him. Making an improvised wooden jig out of an ice lolly stick and blu-tack, I attached the broken parts back together with some jb-weld 2-part adhesive. After giving the glue a good 24 hrs to set I started the re-assembly. Replacing the missing screws and adding an extra dab of glue to help secure them.

The following day with everything securely attached, it was time to replace the missing ‘RR’ (Real & Robo) sticker on the back of his head. After a bit of searching I managed to find a decent reference photo from which I could photoshop a replacement. I printed out my repro sticker on some adhesive-backed paper and finally put it in place.

So he was now essentially repaired, but sadly lacking his trademark shoulder launchers and other accessories. Luckily I already had some missiles, a rifle and even a dianaut pilot, but I had to track down those distinctive white launchers.
A few trips to ebay later and I found a matching pair transformers g1 smokescreen launchers in the US, for a surprisingly decent price even with import charges. These are probably as close a match as I’m going to get, so I placed the order and just over a week later and they had arrived here in the UK and it was time to accessorise!

So here he is in all his glory, ‘Diaclone Fairlady Z Racing Type’ repaired and complete. Another rewarding project done on a budget and yet another figure I did not expect to own.

So I just thought I’d share a little something I’ve gradually pieced together over the last few months. This little project all started with a quest to get a G1 Transformers ‘Wheeljack’ toy. An iconic character from the original 1980s Transformers lineup (who transforms into the equally iconic Lancia Stratos Turbo), but this is one toy that I’d never owned when I was younger.

Although complete Wheeljack toys do pop up fairly regularly, they are often quite pricey, so I’d been on the lookout for an incomplete one in decent condition that I could clean up & refurbish. To my surprise this particular toy popped up as an auction but unusually it lacked the usual hasbro copyright marks and instead had a line of text saying ‘©Takara Co. Ltd. 1980, 1982, Japan.’ Interesting I thought, probably an early pre-rub Japanese version, so I placed my bid and luckily won the auction!

A few days later, ‘Wheeljack’ arrived, and so I started doing a little research on this particular version, and to my surprise a number of features including the copyright, stickers and a few other design elements all pointed to that fact that is was actually a Diaclone Lancia Stratos, specifically the version sold by Italian toy maker GIG.
(For those who are unaware – Wheeljack, like many other Transformer toys, was actually based on a mold from an older Takara Toyline – Diaclone).

This was pretty surprising, but also very cool! My quest for a Wheeljack toy had somehow turned into something even more interesting and much rarer.

So ‘Diaclone’ Wheeljack made his way onto my Transformers shelf and over the coming weeks I kept my eyes open for any of his missing accessories. Around a month later what should pop up on one of my searches? An empty, GIG Diaclone Lancia Stratos Turbo box, far from mint, but at a very reasonable price. This was too good an opportunity to miss, so I hit the ‘Buy’ button without any hesitation.

Just those two elements – the toy and its box, made for a great display piece, but in typical fashion I kept hunting for those missing parts and over the coming weeks and months I managed to gather the bits I needed, from the Wings & launchers, to the GIG exclusive oversize ‘bopper’ missiles and even a Diaclone ‘Dianaut’ pilot (who actually came with another Diaclone toy, but that’s another story).

Without rambling on too much about sourcing tiny accessories, suffice to say I’ve somehow put together an essentially complete and pretty uncommon toy for a fraction of their normal cost. Sure it’s far from perfect, but it was a pretty unusual little toy quest that’s ended with me collecting something I never expected to own, and that’s exactly the sort of thing that makes this hobby very worthwhile…