Collection Oddities: Sailor Moon Shabonda Magic Bubble Blower

Today I'm going to take an in depth look at a fun little item we acquired last year. I actually gave this to Jen as a  present for surviving another year of college. She graduated this year with an  accounting degree and what says "fiscal responsibility" like a ridiculous Japanese toy?

So here we have the Shabonda Magic Bubble Blower featuring Eternal Sailor Moon. Note the official Bandai logo so you can differentiate the licensed crack items from the bootleg crack items. The very existence of this brings up some important questions right off the bat.

First, why can't you just blow your own bubbles? Isn't the fun of bubbles blowing them?

Second, why on earth isn't it a Sailor Mercury branded bubble blower? She's the one who's got the bubble attacks.

Third, they really did slap sailor moon on to just every item imaginable didn't they?

Perhaps these questions can be answered by the box. Actually, I can just answer that third question, without the box. Yes, yes they did.  I still think we should check out the box though so  let's get to it.

The side of the box seems to show that this is indeed a bubble blower, just in case I was confused. Not much else there other than some stuff in Japanese I don't understand.  My Japanese is basically limited to what appeared in the Utena game on the Saturn and what I need to know for cel buying. And this box doesn't say, Anthy, Kendo, Garden, Cel, Sketch, or Doujin. So I have no clue what any of this says.

The back of the box features even more Japanese text that I'm not smart enough to read.  Luckily,though warning labels are pretty universal so perhaps I can decipher something out of that.

It seems to say:

Do not become Pac Man while using this item
Do not Face Palm while using this item.
Do not become Fry Guy while using this item.
This item will make children and adults happy.

So seems simple enough avoid video games and the Internet and you should be happy. This is our house so avoiding video games isn't really possible and I'm posting on the Internet so this is a dangerous proposition, but I'm going to tempt fate and open up the box anyway.

So here it is out of the box, isn't it cute with that little SD eternal moon on top? It came with an instruction sheet, which was naturally in Japanese so I don't have the faintest idea what any of it was saying. There were illustrations though, so I discovered the following:

1. You need to put two double AA batteries in the bottom of it or you'll be stuck blowing your own bubbles like a sucker.

2. In spite of it being in larger canister shaped object, you don't actually fill the can with bubbles at all. You fill a tiny cup bellow the wand with bubbles which will inevitably cause you to spill bubbles on yourself and your toy, every time you use it...

3. Above the bubble wand is a little lever you can adjust which will allow you to change the size of the bubble. In theory you could make fairly sizable bubbles with this, but we could never make them work no matter how hard we tried. Maybe it's just our inferior American bubble solution, but trying to set it to anything beyond the medium setting netted us zero bubbles.


Here it is in action:




It makes an absolutely ridiculous sum of bubbles and can be a lot of fun to play with. Especially fun if you sneak up behind someone sitting in a room and minding their own business. (Though it's a little bit noisy so they either have to be rather engrossed in what they're doing or listening to something). Additionally it could be great at raves or weddings any place where you want bubbles but can't be bothered to use your own breath. The small cup though means you've only got a solid 2 minutes or so before you have to refill. So, if taking it out in public it's best to bring a back up stash of bubble solution.

~Stephanie