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 Update: Sailor Moon World Coloring Book and Printable Coloring Pages

We love to color, it's a fun and relaxing way to spend some free time (which is probably why it's a trend lately).  Of course it's always extra fun to combine hobbies, so we were really happy to recently add this Sailor Moon coloring book to our collection:

Sailor Moon World Coloring Book

We're referring to this as a coloring book but it's more of a coloring pad, it flips open at the top and has single images on each page. This has some really cute unique images in it too for example:

Adorable Ami and Rei Coloring page

It's really unclear what the heck those two are doing, Rei's getting Ami ready for her wedding maybe? They're in a fashion show? Whatever is happening, it's a lovely image and has a lot of options for creative coloring. There's also some less fanciful images like this one:

Haruka and Michiru coloring page

This cute little image of Haruka and Michiru, is a little more standard in terms of how they're portrayed but is still really, really adorable.

One problem with coloring books though, is that they're usually a single use item, you get to color each beautiful page once and never again. So with most of our collectible coloring books, we just never color in them and enjoy the line art. With this one we decided the images were too cute not to color, so we decided to scan them all so we can print them at our leisure and color them as many items as we want. Here's one of the finished results:

Makoto and Mina

Not the greatest photo of my finished page, but it's a really cute image and I enjoyed coloring it.

As we already scanned the whole book we decided to put the scans up on our site to share as printable coloring pages, so feel free to print and color the senshi along with us. :)

~Stephanie

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Collection Oddities: Bootleg Sailor Moon Car Pencil Box

Our collection of weird Sailor Moon items isn't just limited to officially licensed crack, we have a wide variety of unofficial items as well. Now finding a crack bootleg item is like shooting fish in a barrel, but we try to get some of crackest of the crack items. That being said we present you with one of the worst offenders, A Car Shaped Pencil Box:

Who knew that Sailor Moon and Sailor Chibimoon rode around in such a flashy car? Though admittedly Usagi won't be driving it for much longer if she doesn't put more than one posing finger on the wheel. Stranger still who knew they hung out with other magical girls like Momoko from wedding peach? Though even though she looks like she's smiling in the back window, something much more sinister may be going on..

Instead of having a normal hood, this car is so fancy the whole top comes up for extra easy access, snazzy!

You've got to wonder how exactly they're getting around. I'm really not a car person, but I've seen a variety of engines none of which seem to resemble an unplayable race themed board game. On the plus side it seems like a pretty unique green environmentally friendly solution, a moon princess has to be socially conscious after all.

In all reality, this a tin pencil box with a hinged lid and single inner tray, it probably would hold your pencil, but wouldn't hold up to much wear and tear. We bought it online (for around $5 including shipping) but it almost certainly came out of some back alley Chinatown dollar store. However, in spite of it's many flaws and inaccuracies, this is a fun and unique piece for our collection and will serve us well holding wands, time keys and doll stands.

~Stephanie

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Collection Oddities: Sailor Moon Omelet/Pancake Maker

So this is probably the first true oddity we ever purchased and is Jen's favorite. We got it roughly 6 years ago and It was billed on ebay as a Sailor Moon pancake maker . We've also seen one listed as an omelet maker. However, we don't read any Japanese so we don't really know what sort of food maker it is for sure.

Normally when I do an oddity post I make sure to note the fun stuff it says on the box. In this case I have no idea what the box says so we'll have to forgo that bit and just look at the pretty pictures. First up the front of the box:

Presumably the text tells you what it is. It's got the Toei official seal so you know you're getting an official weird item not just some random bootleg item that shouldn't have sailor moon branding. A review board at Toei decided this was something the sailor moon loving public would want and need and I guess they were right because we did in fact jump at the chance to own it. I Box art is pretty nondescript, with standard anime style images of the scouts and absolutely no indication (other than the text I can't read) of what's inside. While it's not very informative artwork it is way nicer to look at than the Irwin stuff I'm normally prattling on about.

Next the back of the box:

And just look at all that lovely text I can't read. I'm going to go ahead and assume that those are instructions and possibly warnings about making whatever food it is that you're supposed to be making with this thing. The little illustration is terribly unclear so we really could be dealing with anything, pancake batter, eggs, glue, mashed potatoes, pudding or perhaps some unholy combination of all of those ingredients. We just don't know. We've only got one more chance to find out (short of doing the logical thing and asking someone who can read Japanese) we must open the box.

So here are the sweet box innards, the maker itself:

I personally really love the little bow as a lid handle, though the fact that it sits over Moon's face is rather annoying. I guess the manufacturers just figured the warped minds of moon fans could fill in the obscured parts if they picked a common enough pose. the crookedly placed S season sticker on the handle is also a nice touch. Though honestly, this is one of the most series branded sailor moon items we have. It has the logo pretty much everywhere they could put it, front of the box, back of the box, side of the box, on the handle, on the cover... They seriously wanted there to be no doubts as to which season of sailor moon this was made to promote. Moving away from sketchy design decisions looking at this still doesn't help my questions about it's intended food content. Rectangular pancakes seem weird to me and you generally don't put a lid over them. It also seems awfully small for omelets.

Though regardless of what exactly it's meant to make, the fact that you cook anything in it is weird. I've seen plenty of sailor moon kitchen utensils and even a few molds for cakes and things, but this is the only item I'm aware of that you actually put on your stove top and make some sort of food with. It's a bit sad, but we've got no intentions of actually using it as it would probably ruin it, but it's still a fun novelty.

~Stephanie

[Edit]

I've been told this has the characters for Tamago (Egg) in the title, so it's most likely some sort of egg maker.'

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