And wait I did.

After about 6 months, I emailed them. I was told that they were waiting on a new shipment and it shouldn’t be too much longer.

That was in the fall. I’m still waiting. Except now, they don’t bother responding to emails. I’ve only sent them 2-3 since then, none of them angry, they simply don’t respond anymore. I made a discussion thread on their facebook book on March 3rd, not a single reply. It’s unfortunately too late for me to charge it back, because I’d be doing that immediately if I could.

I’ll make a new post if any updates result from this. It’s a shame that a promising company with some quality licences is screwing up like this. I’m not even sure what the issue is, since it was only a $20 or so purchase. While their statues are pretty cool, I’ve taken them off my buying list after this treatment, I’d recommend everyone else do the same.

Photographs on CD (50 pieces), print 10×15 (30 pieces)
Certificate of successful visit
Creating a profile on Facebook/ Mixi/ Twitter
Surprise
Aromatherapy (printed on photographs)
Daily communication by e-mail
XL photo album hard cover size 30×30 cm Stronger, brilliant colors on photo papaer: CEWE XL photo album on photo paper
Size: 30 x 30 cm
Number of pages: 26 to 82 pages
Binding: hard cover

Unique propositions:
Paper of better quality
Brilliant colors
Ideal qualities
Massage
Original shipment package

Seriously? I’ll give them props, it’s a unique business idea. But why would you pay 150 Euros to send your toy to another country, when you can save up 450 to go by yourself and take the toy with you? Daily email communication and facebook page? That strikes me as downright bizarre. Why would I want my toy to talk to me? Yeah, they could be as cool as they are in Toy Story, but I doubt my Big Daddy statue would have much interesting to say. Are they going to email me a series of in-character grunts? Zapp Brannigan would probably be a better bet.

Let’s face it, few people enjoy buying blind box toys. It pisses off completists to have these 1/96 toys, it pisses off people looking for a specific figure when they get multiple doubles, it’s not a good value compared to pretty much any other toy or statue, and it’s not terribly good for retailers. I can’t imagine they’re enjoying being pushed around either.

It smacks of a poor business practice and I can see why people are pissed off. I like their store, I like the look of some of their products, but I’ve never been much of a buyer because they’re so expensive. I think I’ll be sticking to browsing the store when I visit and that’s about it.

Tomopop article about the news

Tomopop later had an editorial in defence of Kidrobot, but it seems to be summed up as remember their accomplishments because they brought the industry to where it was today. That’s nice, and vinyl and toy enthusiasts in general should care about their contributions, but that’s always a lame argument to support people/companies/whatever doing something shitty. Yeah great, you increased the profile of certain types of toys, then you exploited your market advantage. Great usage of your fans!

Hopefully, they’re reconsider, and this won’t become a standard term for dealing with the vinyl industry.

I’m against recasting, after all, there’s a Recast Alert section on the site. With that out of the way, these things are utterly hilarious. I’m as much of a fan of naked lady statues as anyone else and I’m sure I’ll have a few in my collection at some point, but these take it up a notch.

Who even buys these? You can already take the Sideshow Premium Format Buffy and strip her naked if you want, it’s all cloth. It’s as if someone did that and thought, you know what Buffy needs? GIANT HOOTS. At least with the non-cloth ones it makes slightly more sense to cast them naked. Not so much the outrageously sized boobs but hey. I think you’ll also love how utterly scary some of them look in the face department. Eek.

I’m not going to help the site’s google rank by directly linking them, so enjoy the pictures beneath the cut. If you want to see all of them, look at the watermark.

I’ve seen two other movies in 3d, Superman at IMAX and Nightmare Before Christmas. Superman was a bit iffy, at times it seemed the framerate wasn’t quite right. Nightmare Before Christmas was a much better experience, but neither of them were nearly as good as Toy Story 1 and 2. Especially 2.

It’s an interesting technology, although one that has flaws. My pal that I was with, it initially gave him a small headache but it went away. For me, my eyes aren’t 20/20, so the 3d effect isn’t perfect in some shots. That said, it gives a fantastic effect and had incredible depth on certain scenes. The sequence near the end of 2, with the luggage and the plane wheel? Blew me away. There were scenes shot through Buzz’s helmet that looked utterly gorgeous. It’s just amazing to me that these two films, shot a fair while ago, not only look great on the screen, but look like they were made for 3d. I can only imagine how seeing Up, a modern Pixar film developed with 3d, must have been!

The technology has such potential, although I imagine it’ll be a bit distracting until people are used to it. I’d be pretty shocked if that wasn’t used on most action/adventure movies within the next few years.

I was also happy to see that two of my favourite films hold up so well. There’s a great sense of enjoyment in toys, a sense of wonder in this small world, and great adventures with plenty of comedy. When a film comes together as well as these, you can tell the people involved really cared about the project they were working on.

All in all, if you didn’t get to see Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3d, you missed out. If you haven’t seen any films yet in 3d, I’d suggest making some time to see one in the next few months. As far as gimmicks go, it gets a thumbs up from me.

Fairly large op-ed piece under the cut.

And while you were snoozing, the creators of American Girl, which is sold by Mattel, got bold. They engaged in all-out political indoctrination.

Snuck into the collection is a doll that comes with a biography that is weird and potentially offensive enough to keep Mom running to the Maalox. Gwen, you see, is harboring a terrible secret.

She is homeless. A homeless doll.

In the history books that come with every American Girl doll — bringing to life these little monsters until impressionable little ones believe they are actual people — you learn that Gwen’s father walked out on the family. Her mother lost her job.

As the little kiddies learn to read about this doll as if she’s a human being, one learns that, as fall turned into winter, Gwen’s mom lost her grip.

Mother and daughter started bedding down in a car.

For $95 — more than your average homeless person would dream of spending on a rather mediocre baby substitute — Gwen Thompson can be yours. A mixed message if ever there was one.

For starters, men are bad. Fathers abandon women without cause. She’s also telling me that women are helpless. And that children in this great country, where dolls sell for nearly 100 bucks a pop, are allowed to sleep in motor vehicles. But mothers don’t lose custody over this injustice. Because, you see, they are victims, too.

Just wanted to paste so people could see what I was responding to. There’s more, it’s just as poorly thought out.

The writer seems to believe it’s indoctrination to inform children that children actually sleep in motor vehicles or are homeless. She seems to believe that children shouldn’t know that some members of society actually DO live in cars, even when it isn’t their fault. Or that relationships can fall apart and your life can be destroyed.

While anyone with a functioning brain can see the reason they give the dolls stories (hint : a homeless doll elicits more sympathy and compassion than a generic rich girl template), it appears some people are so backwards that they believe every homeless person deserves being homeless. Yes, instead of raising children to feel compassion for someone who’s down on their luck, they should avoid such “weird” and “potentially offensive” ideas. Or if you’re one of the ones without a functioning brain, you can go on to have a career as an opinion writer at the NY Post.

The broader issue brought up by the writer is spending $95 on a “homeless doll” seems somewhat stupid. I wasn’t willing to make a judgement until I look up some further info on the dolls.

American Girl Dolls

….these are a problem? They’re designer dolls. They wear age appropriate clothing. They all have very sympathetic stories. They range from the Great Depression (Dad losing his business), staying true to your heritage, staying strong while escaping slavery, bullying, educating yourself, etc… they appear to have fairly complex stories for children, while giving them some glimpses at history. It would seem to me that these teach very good lessons. Compared to the trashy Bratz, these seem great for little girls.

Let’s face it, people are going to get their children overpriced dolls/toys/bullshit because that’s how things are. If it helps their kids learn, if it teaches them to be a decent person, even better. You can get snarky and say, well they should’ve donated that $95 to a homeless shelter. Yeah sure, they could’ve, if they wanted their kid to bitch about how Christmas sucked. Introducing them to good concepts, getting THEM interested, that can lead to results that last a lifetime.

If you’re reading this and thinking, but Dr_Teng, you buy overpriced statues and toys! You could be giving all of that to the homeless, why don’t you?

It’s a hobby. This particular hobby has led to me learning how WordPress (what powers this site) functions, learning more CSS, doing far more photography than I had been doing, and motivated me to learn how to paint well. As far as I’m concerned, this hobby has been a tremendous success for me, regardless of cost.

And I do my best to help the less fortunate, just not on this site, so booyeah. Double score on that one.

Of course, the real question is why I bothered to write up an op-ed to a hack writer in a borderline tabloid like the NY Post. It’s just pathetic to see someone so deluded that the mere concept of a poor person sends them into a fit of rage.