When a normal person sees a high-power-level collection, they will invariably remark on how you have ‘wasted a lot of money on this crap’, and a proper fan will usually reply that it ‘isn’t a waste.’ I wish I could say that, but the truth is that I own a few things that I truly regret buying. Organized, here, in order of how much I spent on this shit. Needless to say, they are all figures, and therefor I will depict each of them being raped by Funeral’s Krauser II Revoltech, a 25-dollar toy with more value than all the shit I’m carting out combined. Ugh. These are the mistakes of my youth.
$10 – Tsuruya of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya from One of Those Mystery Box Things
In 2008, through 7 years of anime fandom, I had consistently resisted the urge to purchase any mystery box toys because I have never had the money to buy a full set, nor wanted to spend 50 bucks on a bunch of tiny figures. I don’t take risks, and there is invariably one character that I don’t care about in every set. But, alas, it was my first con, Otakon 2008, and I wanted to try my luck – after all, I had a LOT of money on me. So I bought 2 Manabi Straight ones (got Manabi and Mei, the latter of which got lost in my last move D:) and one Haruhi box, and lo and behold, I got the one character in Haruhi that I do not give a damn about, Tsuruya. God damn it.
And she’s just sitting in a chair. I don’t know why she’s so energetic when she’s fucking sitting down. There is nothing that clips her to the chair, either, and her hair is in fact so long that she cannot sit in it properly. Fucking shit. At least, though, it is a somewhat attractive figure, but it’s also so tiny that it’s impossible to care about. I’ve made a point never to buy another mystery box or any tiny figures again.
This is too pathetic, even for Krauser.
$30 Iwakura Lain from Serial Experiments Lain
It hurts! How did I not know it was too good to be true?! You cannot find this figure online – it is sold out across the board, and when it did exist, it was expensive. I found it at, once again, Otakon 2008, for 30 BUCKS. At the time, I didn’t know that boxes with very little writing and info on them were like a huge flag reading FAAAAKE! But hey, a fake version of this figure wouldn’t be so bad. At least they copied the intricate detail of the original, and it would still be good for sentimental value, right? NO, BECAUSE THE FUCKING THING DOESN’T FUNCTION CORRECTLY. Lain has two pegs on her foreward leg and one on her back leg to stand her up. However, on this figure, the back leg’s peg is BOTH too short AND too fat for it’s hole, so it won’t fit in. For a year, I had Lain standing ever-so-slanted with her hand not quite touching the wall, WHICH LOOKED FUCKING STUPID.
And she would fall over every time something touched whatever she was placed on. I actually had tried turning her at an angle where I wouldn’t see her arm at all, but this didn’t help. Then, when I moved, I had to set her up again, and I noticed that she refused to even come near the wall. She may have started leaning from the pressure of not having full support (listen to Nayu, support is important!). In my attempts to make her get closer to the wall, one of the pegs in her foot broke off into the hole. At that point, it was over. I meekly attempted to make her stand, but it was no use. One time, she fell off my desk and her hand broke off (though I just figured out I could actually insert it back in, though it will never be the same). This thing just makes me weep. Ugh.
(continued on page 2)
My Sword Is Unbelievably Dull 
Can’t say that I have a figure that I regret buying. Not yet. Hopefully not ever.
hey, since you really hate them why don’t give it away to your readers. I call dips on Tama-chan ^^
Fuck you, I paid 80 bucks for that shit! If it goes, money is coming in!
*chuckles* don’t need to get hostile with me. You’re the one hating it XD
I only have one figure, and I love it to death. It’s the Onegai Teacher’s Mizuho Kazami Dessert Time figure (http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-8x-49-en-70-1q18.html) and I bought it 4 years ago. It’s still with me in great condition and I haven’t really been tempted to add to my collection since then. :P
Such a pity with that Eureka figure though, it does have a nice pose….
That is a DAMN sexy figure!
Yea, and the craftsmanship and detail is top notch.
You should look to get one, should be quite cheap now XP
lol, I’ve actually never seen Please Teacher, and also I’m not a fan of big-breasted designs (although even I see the sexiness here)
Lol to be honest, I’ve never seen it too :P The anime wasn’t really my cup of tea.
I just really like the mesh of pink and green, it was really eye-catching :P
I don’t own any figurines anymore. They had to go when I moved, and now where I live is a bit too small… But there’s a shop just down the street, so sometimes I am sorely tempted.
Out of the ones I remember, I think in the long run I only regretted buying < 1/8 scale figurines, like the ones out of mystery boxes or gachapon machines. Beyond a certain size, it's just too small for me to appreciate the artistry. Face modeling is also difficult to get right.
There's one I regretted NOT buying, though: At a shop in Los Angeles, a 1/6 PVC of Mina from Getsumen to Heiki Mina. She was almost perfect, except for a tiny flaw in her leg paint, a speck. She was on discount, probably to be thrown away because everyone else noticed the flaw. I was in a rush and didn't get it, but when I went back that display was gone.
Eventually I would have had to give her away, it's true. But I hope she wasn't tossed. I hope somebody took pity on the misfit figurine and gave it a home.
What sad tales! I can’t speak for you, but there’s no way I could get rid of my collectables. I’ll just give up my living space, lol. Of course, I’ve said this before, but I actually can’t even relate to having that little space. Even when my family has lived in smaller or cheaper houses, I’ve always managed to nab a sizeable room. The room I am living in now is literally bigger than most Japanese apartments. JUST my room. So I guess I can’t grasp it.
I wish I’d known you then ’cause I would have totally taken some figures off your hands! Did you not have room for them when you moved? (even in my small student apartment I cleared room on my desk =P) You didn’t want to store them somewhere? Guess a packrat like me has trouble understanding the concept of giving away relatively expensive things you get attached to, like figures XD
I got my Tidus from a mystery box. There were a ton of figures I would’ve rather had, but I don’t regret it. He ended up earning his keep as my sidekick.
Maybe my memory sucks, or maybe it’s the way you filmed him, but isn’t your Tidus figure pretty tall?! That thing came in a mystery box?!
It’s about 7.5 inches tall. Came in a $35 dollar mystery box with two other items. I split the box with some other guy. He kept an Axel plush doll. We gave away a small girls t-shirt.
My Starscream collection… I’m tsundere for it. I mean I look at it and find myself satisfied with the 15 various figures of variable quality and detail (including the Kawamori-designed masterpiece edition), but then I start thinking that I’d rather have Macross and Gundam toys in my special display case where the Starscreams now reside.
ROFLMAO A STARSCREAM COLLECTION OMG!!! Starsscream is the fucking shit, even if he totally got vaporized by Megatron and shit. And then made mentally handicapped for his next incarnation in Beast Wars lololol. Still, badass, I don’t know why Starscream was always my favorite transformer, but I suspect it was that voice. Oh, and every time I see any scenes from GaoGaiGar it’s like EVERYONE LOOKS LIKE STARSCREAM!!!
Niceness.
Hmm, I have never bought any figures, so I can’t lament their purchase. I really wanted the BRS when it came out, but I have no money. ;-;
I think I probably would have been sucked into that Tama-chan too…she’s just so awesome! But…I’m sorry, but you got tricked really bad by the makers of that figure. XD;
Hahaha. BRS, I preordred it the moment pre-orders were available, and when I got 500 bucks for my bday in august, I gave $100 to my friend whose account I ordered in, and told him not to give it back to me no matter how many times the figure got delayed, because I knew I’d give up on it if it happened too many times because money burns my pockets. I blocked out the existence of the money from my mind.
The set release date was at the end of September, and the figure did not actually release until the end of December. When it shipped, for some reason $40 additional charge was added on, and I had to pay my friend back by getting one friend to give me 20 bucks for holiday money, and giving a $20 Amazon gift card to my friend that I had received.
I am perpetually broke myself, but NOTHING WAS GOING TO STOP ME FROM OWNING BRS!!!
I only got interested in figures within the past three years. Much to my dismay, when I decided to buy a $50 Haruhi figure for my first at AX ’07, it ended up being a (pretty bad) fake. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that until I took it out of the box at home. Since then I’ve been much more careful and only buy figures from reputable places.
I only have about 15 figures now. The only fake ones I hung onto are four mini Lucky Star ones because they’re not that bad looking. I mostly have figmas and nendoroids because the others are too expensive =P
haha… yeah, I’m not buying figures at cons anymore. Everything is realer and cheaper online, it seems, so that’s where I’ll be buying. Figmas are awesome because they are cheap as well as entertaining. the problem with large figures is that the coolest ones aren’t always characters you actually care about, and often the ones of favorite characters are cheap cash-ins (the Eureka one). Thankfully I’m a huge fan of the Black Rock Shooter design, so that was an instant buy for me~
I’m not really one of those guys that gets a lot of anime-related merchandise. All that I’ve bought for myself are two keychains so far. The first one was a Haruhi, which was apparently constructed out of weapons grade bullshitium. I then got a Maka Albarn which has made up for the former by being damn near indestructible.
My cousin and his wife, on the other hand, have many figures. He bought a Saber Lily as soon as it went up for sale. He also has far too much expendable income.
$225 FFFUUUUCKK!!!!!
I would love to be able to spend that kind of money in one place on anime shit but…. I has no money lol.
I need a job.
If that Lain figure was real I’d have cried shitloads, trust me. ;__;
I was all tsundere about the Mecha Musume figs my ex gave me 4 years ago. It wasn’t about the quality or something, I simply couldn’t stand that loli + weapnz-concept, along with Shimada Fumikane’s art :C now they’re not that much of a bother anymore.
But come to think of it, there’s no real figure I’d like to have never bought. Besides of a 1/7 Nonoriri where I’m still puzzling whether it’s a fake or not. The painting has too many flaws :X
Though that’s not a purchase I regret.
I actually own a mecha musume figure that I didn’t mention here because I am neither sad nor proud of it. I like it, but I don’t feel that I give it the attention it deserves, insofar as changing it’s poses, weapons, etc.
i have a metric fuckton of old gundam figures from back when gundam was being marketed and was available at wal-mart (and a few from a trip to texas a few years after when they still had seed stuff at KB Toys)
don’t regret. I do regret not taking better care of some, though.
LMAO! We used to have a lot of the Wal-Mart Gundams, too. My bro was young though and we actually played with Gundams (made movies with them and stuff) so all of them fell apart hard, haha.
My non-DVD, non-game anime related swag is limited to 2 Gundam Wing models and some Pokemon plushies. No posters, no shirts, and no figures. I tend to guard myself against impulse purchases, and when I think about it, I’ll always put my money to more games and DVDs than comparably static paraphernalia. Not that I don’t have any regrets. Jesus Christ was Yoshi’s Story bad.
Mystery box things? You mean those trading figures that are similar to gashapon/gachapons? Could be shokugans (食玩) aka candy toys. Those things are supposed to be cheap and cheerful, but are rarely popular outside Asia because the shipping fees will probably outweigh their original cost making them not worth the money for overseas collectors, especially since they are used to the higher quality and more expensive figures in the first place. They are quite popular for the locals and people who live in Asia since we can afford them at much lower prices from local shops (i.e. no shipping fees), and not that many people have the spaces or money to afford the bigger ones.
Things that I did regret buying? Perhaps a few lower quality shokugans that soon broke and fell apart or were not up to my expectations, but the cost was affordable since it was only equivalent to, say, a few fastfood meals. I did however regret on wrecking my own Gundam models when I was little though. Now I do take a bit more care on them especially since I build more of them now.
Yes, those are the ones I am talking about, and yeah, the fact that they cost 10 bucks here as opposed to say 5 there is a definite reason that I don’t particularly like them.