This is a pretty old photo of a Charmander doll I saw once and took a photo of. I’m pretty sure it’s fake as it is super ugly and I don’t recall ever seeing it in stores. Far too much attention has been paid to it’s nostrils.
I found this large claw machine Mario doll at an op shop today. I now understand why Mario wears a hat. I’m aware that the original pixel Mario had a hat because it was easier than animating his hair. And that he still had hair in Super Mario 64 in those sections where he loses his hat, though he was weaker without it, thus the need for it. But why does he continue to wear it in other games like Mario Tennis and Mario Golf? To cover his receding hairline. I guess he hasn’t aged well in the past 25 years. Surely he should be at least 50 by now.
Yano's face may be the last thing you see before you die
Sometime in early or mid 2010 I saw this unusual and creepy toy at the Camberwell Sunday Market. I found it interesting and the owner claimed it was worth hundreds of dollars on ebay and they were willing to sell it for $35 or something like that. I tried looking up whatever they said it’s name was but i couldn’t seem to find out any information on it. I didn’t buy it and forgot about it. Last week I was at an op shop and found a Furby, all their soft toys were $2 each. I looked around to see if there were any more Furby dolls and then saw Yano’s face looking out side of giant wire framed basket under a pile of other boring toys. I grabbed it and noticed the face was damaged but considering it’s age and the material it was made from it seemed ok. I took it home and realised it still had batteries in it and wow. My friend who was with me was super creeped out by it’s loud grinding gears as it’s head turned and his face moved as he talked. It told us an awful story called “The Magic Singing Stone”. To continue the story we had to press either the Yes or No button on its chest. I’ve since found out that it is meant to come with a special controller that is better for communicating with Yano, but I’ve since been back to the store and couldn’t seem to find it anywhere. Not a big deal.
Yano compared to a Furby.
Yano was made in 2001 by The Original San Francisco Toymakers Ltd. Some searches on Youtube have shown that this toy was just as terrorifying to kids in 2001 as it would be now. It reads stories out of a chip that is inserted into the bottom of the toy. It runs on several C cell batteries. One video mentioned that the kid’s parents used to threaten them with Yano if he did not eat his vegetables or something. Other people have made amusing videos using creative lighting to highlight how creepy this toy can be and other people have modded it and used it’s robotic face for their own uses.
Got the real Luigi doll on the right from a claw machine at a proper arcade ages ago. Well… I think one of my friends won it and then gave it to me. Can’t quite remember. Then a few months ago I was killing time before I had to pick my mum up from work and found a claw machine outside a super market and noticed a Princess Peach doll,which was the only doll in the set that I’m missing. But then on closer inspection I noticed that many of the dolls in that machine were fakes based on existing claw machine dolls I was used to seeing (from various childrens movies such as Monsters Inc. I can’t remember if the Peach doll was real or not but the Luigi and Donkey Kong were horrible. Especially the Donkey Kong which had giant black eyes with no colour in them. The regular claw machine Donkey Kong is pretty horrible looking to start with (giant bulging eyes that poke out of his head) but this other one looked like it was dead. It was too hard to pick up though so I could only get the Luigi.
If you compare the two dolls the one on the right is much cheaper looking with un-soft fabrics and very weird hands with giant thumbs. His clothes appear to be too small for him and his hair is held on with minimal stiching so it looks like he is wearing a wig which could be easilly pulled off. His eyes are printed rather than embroided as well. He also has no swing tag. The real one does but you can’t see it too well in the picture.
The real one are made by Hunter Leisure and are made for “Amusement only, not for retail”
The retail plush toys are slightly nicer again. This official doll is a bit fat and weird looking as well but but is still nicer than the fake one.
Hanimex console + 3 games + the FC Mobile (portable NES player) about $110 from trading forum as well as 2 n64 mem cards (thought i was getting official ones but they are not… hopefully they work ok)
Both of the console work well.
Tales of Symphonia for Gamecube $50 + free voodoo vince doll from PALGN, had to travel really far to get this. Played this game a LOT since I got it. Really cool RPG with interesting real time battle system.
ET for atari $8 (meant to be the worst game ever, many copies of this were destroyed because no one would buy it because it was so bad)
Mario Bros on atari $8 (i ordered it off ebay ages ago but it never arrived so i bought it again)
Pokemon Colluseum $15
Star Wars Rebel Strike $10
Mystical Ninja 2 $10 (bargain!)
Light up PS2 store display sign (bit wobbly but it works) $25 (pretty expensive but its not easy to find store display stuff)
also got these for $8
Super Star Wars on SNES with box, no manual
Zelda 2 with a case and manual
Duck Tales complete
and then also got a Madden football game for free from PALGN
Very expensive day.