Toy Universe Purchase

The annual toy universe was held at Takashimaya square till 29th June 2014 this year. Compared to the annual Craziest Toy Fair that is usually held in the last quarter of the year, Toy Universe has relatively less good bargain and less discount. For instance, the Bandai section was considerably small in the toy universe this, with emphasis placed on discounted gunpla, LBX and Power ranger (Bandai America). There was no sight of kamen rider, super sentai goods selling at insane low prices like what many people would be looking forward to during the annual Craziest toy sales. Neverthless, there was still good deals for other toys such as plushes, old transformer toys, tomica etc.

 

In recent months, I have been trying to exercise control for toy pruchases to save up more money. Altogether I visited Toy Universe four times and bought 2 items during the last two visits. Recently, I have gone into Tomica cars and was thus tempted by the discounted Tomica plarail, accessories and transformation sets. This Tomica sets which are usually packaged in huge boxes usually fetch high prices in local department stores. Of course, specialty shops such as Lets Play at Sunshine plaza is likely to sell at lower prices, somewhere near the cost of good master grades gunpla for simpler and smaller sets? Therefore, I have never bought any Tomica accessory/plarail/track sets except for the diecast cars.

 

 

During the last visit to Toy Universe, I decided to buy a Tomica 'Patrol car shoot base' set. I had decided not to buy anything and was leaving the venue when notice the tomica sets on display. Many of the Tomica sets were going on huge discount. For instance some Plarail was going at 50% discount off original retail price. And this is actually a huge discount given that many of them were originally in the hundred dollar plus range. Other newer Tomica series were going at much lower discount. In the end, I decided to buy this 'Patrol car shoot base' set which was going at roughly 20% discount. It is quite rare to see Tomica sets on discount and I thought that this would be a good opportunity to try out a Tomica set to see if it has good play and fun value for future purchase consideration.

 

 

The 'Patrol car shoot base' set is relatively small compared to other more elaborated plarail or tomica car tracks/station sets going on discount at Toy Universe. The mail reason why I decided to buy the 'Patrol car shoot base' is because of the fact that it works like a police station model which can be put to good use in my display of patlabor toys. Also, this set does not require any batteries.

 

The front view of the 'Patrol car shoot base'. It is basically designed as a police station. There is actually a huge sheet stickers that we have to put on manually. I forgot to take any photo of the police base before I stick on the stickers but basically the base is originally in white, black and grey colours only, with some smaller parts in red and yellow. I was quite shocked to see gunpla-like toy with no colour when I first open the package. I had thought the 'Patrol car shoot base' would be designed and colour as shown on the package/box. Nevertheless, the police base looks quite nice when all the stickers have been applied.  

Side view of the base. You can see that the inside of the base is hollow and houses the tracks when the base is untransformed in the police station form.

The back of the base with a door that can be open.

The front cover of the base which can be opened to review 3 doors or tunnels.

We can further pull on the front cover to reveal the hidden tracks hidden inside the base!

 

 

Altogether, we can deploy 3 tomica police cars simultaneously from the 3 tracks available. The tracks has 2 sub levels. The lower lever is able to deploy 2 cars whereas the upper level is basically the roof top.

 

There are a couple of levers that can be pulled to change the angle of the tracks so that the cars slide down, in a sense being deployed or 'shoot out' form the base.

 

The roof top showing 3 tracks.

When the levers on the roof top are pulled, the tracks will angle down, connecting to the lower level tracks. Of couse cars that are deployed form the roof top will be able to go at a faster speed as they slide down from a taller height.

 

As my first tomica set. I find that  the 'Patrol car shoot base' has a relatively high fun and play value, especially for younger kids. However, I feel that the price is still on the high side even after discount. This set cost about 3500 yen originally and I paid slightly lower than original yen price when converted to SGD according to current exchange rate. Considering that the police base is not well coloured and depends on many stickers, I feel that the price could be set a little lower, although I do find that this toys requires certain level of engineering and design in the making process, which probably explain the high price.

 

I also bough a pokemon model kit during my third visit to toy inverse. It was sold at $8 but actually the original yen price is just around 571yen. There was a lot of this model kit during my first and 2nd visit to toy universe but it was so popular that there was only 1 piece left when I went on my third visit.

I had always wanted to try out pokemon model kit and this victinni model kit turns out to be nice as it actually uses very little stickers.

The only stickers are on the eyes and mouth. Even with painting, this victinni looks very nice. However, this is likely to be my last pokemon model kit. I have seen online reviews and other pokemon in this pokemon model kit series actually relies on quite a lot of stickers. Moreover, I have also stop buying and building gunplas for slightly more than a year. Gunpla has little play value once assembled and the main fun of gunpla is the building and painting process. Once they are completed however, there is serious space storage issue that we have to consider...