Collection Oddities: Sailor Moon Bubble Blower Version 3.0

So as it turns out we own not one, not two but three Sailor Moon Bubble Makers. Our first bubble Maker (which we detailed here) is basically a can of air that blows bubbles for you (though it's super effective it makes an absolute profusion of bubbles). Our Second was a Sailor Moon World Bubble Pipe situation (which we detailed here) that we haven't taken out of the package. Today's seem to be a bubble foam gun. Just take a look:

Sailor Moon Stars Bubble Foam Gun

So stylistically this bubble maker isn't really like either of our other ones. First off it's shaped like a very femme retro alien ray gun (which is a pretty good ~*~A E S T H E T I C ~*~  IMO). It also apparently doesn't shoot a bunch of big beautiful iridescent soap bubbles, like the other two, it shoots out a bath foam type of thing, that you're supposed to draw foam pictures with. One thing that seems to be important when making a Sailor Moon Bubble blower is a figure of some sort, as all three of the bubble makers we have include one. This one is a cute SD Eternal Moon and I'm not entirely certain that it's not the same figure that's on the Shabondamagic Blower, but hey it's still cute.

Moving on here's the back of the box which should contain a wealth of information:

I know very little Japanese, basically if it's not something you need to know while buying animation cels or it's something comes up often in the Utena Sega Saturn game I have no ideas. So a lot of what the box is telling me is a mystery to me. But I can look at illustration and make wild guesses! So it seems to me you unscrew the tank at the bottom, you shake something around inside it (presumably bubble solution or bubble bath and water) and then you pull the trigger for foam. It also has my favorite thing about every Japanese toy from this era I own, the warning label animation which in my estimation seems to be telling us:

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

I mean that all sounds pretty reasonable to me, I have yet to spontaneously become either Pac-Man or Fry Guy and I am an adult child so I think this is perfect for me.

We haven't taken this out of the box so we sadly don't know how well it works. That being said even without knowing how well you can draw foam flowers on the bathroom wall this is a  great item. It looks great,  in addition to the general fun ray gun shape,  the eternal moon logo on the side is super cute and should have really been used on all sorts of merch. Conceptually it's fun and probably would have be very exciting for Sailor Moon loving kids, (I absolutely would have wanted like a Rainbow Brite or My Little Pony  bubble foam writer for bath time). Overall this is definitely a weird and wonderful item we're happy to have in our collection and now that we have THREE bubble makers it makes us wonder just how many there are. You can all rest assured though, that if we find another one we'll certainly buy it and detail it (eventually).

~Stephanie

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Collection Oddities: Sailor Moon Bubble Blower Version 2.0

If you've check out our oddities posts before you'll know that we've done a Sailor Moon Bubble blower before. This is a Sailormoon World bubble blower, making it a bit newer than our StarS bubble blower.  Is it new and improved? Let's find out:

 We haven't taken it out of the package so we can't say if it's functionally better, but we can see right off the bat that it comes with it's own bubbles which is an improvement from the old model. This one isn't electronic, you have to blow it like an old school bubble pipe. So it's less technologically advanced, but no batteries to worry about, I'm not sure whether or not that counts as improvement, so we'll just say it's different for now. There is some assembly required, the figure comes separately from the bubble maker and you have to put it on yourself like a sucker. Our other bubble maker has a preattached figure, no fuss no muss. Though according to the back of the package, this figure can be used as a pencil topper when you're done. So we'll still count that as an improvement. Speaking of the back lets check it out:

I have to wonder about that stamp? Is it the date for maximum bubble freshness?

So from looking at the illustrations and ignoring all the Japanese characters I can't read( 99.9% of them) it seems that item uses both water and bubble solution to function and a fun wheel mechanism. Also, contains the ever popular, do not become Pacman while using this item warning. The Japanese seem to be preoccupied with people becoming Pacman, was there some sort of epidemic of this I'm not aware of?

Overall this bubble maker is a lot different than our other one, not just in looks, but in functionality as well. So perhaps it was aimed at people who wanted more of a role in their bubble production? Maybe parents who didn't want their children taking the lazy path of push button bubbles? It's hard to say. though it does beg the questions just how many Sailor Moon bubble makers are out there? and just how many bubble makers does one series need?

~Stephanie

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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