I have watched the Justice League cartoon series for a few years already, whenever it was showing on TV.  At first glance, most typical ”non-DC fan” adults are likely to be able to only identify the super famous heroic DC trio of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.  The rest of the cast are relatively unknown to many “DC outsiders”.  Most of such adults would assume that Justice League is a cartoon for small kids only since it stars these 3 famous “cartoon superheroes”.  

I used to think that the X-Men and Spiderman animated series had complex plots for kids’ cartoons.  Of all the cartoons that I have watched and still follow, I find that “Justice League” takes the cake at having such a ‘complex’ plot that non-DC fans would be left scratching their heads when they watch most of the episodes.  If adults can get confused, I am sure that little children would not know what is really going on.  I suppose the kids only watch the cartoons for the fighting action scenes and I doubt they understand much of the underlying storyline.

I am contemplating whether to give up my Justice League toys collection.  I only collect the 4.5-inch Justice League action figures that are based on the Justice League animated series.  I started collecting them when I got hooked on the cartoon series a few years ago.  I told myself back then that I would only collect the core 7 members of the Justice League team.

Then came the Justice League Unlimited animated series, which introduced an army of new Justice League members to the team and to the toy line.  As such, I gave in to my weak emotions and started to collect a number of the other spupporting Justice League characters.  I now have around 40 figures, both loose and MOC ones!

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The angel and devil fought again yesterday to present their cases to me on why I should or should not buy more toys on impulse.  In the end, the angel won and I did not spend a single cent on more Lego Necromancer sets, despite seeing them selling at 20% discount in the store. 

There are also other non-toy items that I wish to buy and practising delayed gratification as part of the ‘millionaire’s mindset’, can indeed be quite ‘torturous’ at times.  I would end up denying myself little joys in life and living beneath my means.  Only time would tell if my current ’sacrifices’ would turn out fruitful and help me attain my eventual goal of financial abundance in the end.

I am proud to say that my work progress for Feb 08 has been on schedule so far.  I changed some of strategies along the way and the dates of completions for some projects might be held back a little but overall, everything will be on time.  It is better to get the work done right from the beginning, despite taking a little bit more time; than to rush through the work only to find that the strategies are not going to give the desired results in the long run.

With this peace of mind, I am off to take a short weekend break today to have some work-life balance, before resuming my work, probably tomorrow.  I do not have fixed rest days.  I only give myself rest days if I had been doing sufficient progressive and fruitful work to justify it.  This gives me a ‘reward’ to look forward to after all that hard work.  Of course the ultimate reward would be to achieve all my goals eventually, within the time-frame that I had set!

I just re-watched the Justice League episodes “Starcrossed” parts 1-3.  It is about Hawkgirl’s real purpose for coming to Earth.  Her hawk-winged people, the Thanagarians, appeared on Earth in these episodes by the thousands.  

I realised that during the flight sequences of Hawkgirl and Thanagarians, their wings hardly flap while these hawk-winged characters are supposed to be hovering… 

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Here’s wishing everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Friendship Day!

I always wondered why ‘cuddly’ little teddy bears tend to be packaged with Valentine’s Day bouquets and hampers?  I mean why has it to be bears and hardly any other animals being selected?  I love horses very much and I really love to see cute little plush horses or ponies packaged with the flowers instead.  Of course other plush animals are also welcomed to suit the preferences of other recipients.  Occasionally I have seen cute little plush puppies, kittens, lambs, piglets and even calves paired up with these romantic gifts.  However such variety is extremely hard to come by. 

I am surprised that florists and gift shops still stick to their ancient beliefs and assume that bears are the only animals that look great with the flowers.  Bears are carnivorous animals and they are not monogamous at all, hence they are not the best symbols of romance.  Their primary role is to look cute and appealing to their largely female recipients.  Hence rightfully, any cute little animal plush should fit the Valentine role as well.  Hopefully by the next Valentine’s Day in 2009, there will be a greater variety of animal plush toys packaged with the usual traditional Valentine Day’s gifts like the flowers, hampers, chocolates etc.  This century-old teddy bear recipe had already become outdated decades ago!

Over the past 6-12 months of toy hunting at the various departmental stores along Orchard Road, I noted that many of them are somehow reducing their shelf space of the toys that I collect, in particular My Little Pony and Justice League toys.  On each weekend trip to Orchard Road, I usually visit the toys sections of up to 7-8 departmental stores in one afternoon.  Some of the stores have completely stopped bringing in new Justice League toys and at least one of the stores stopped carrying My Little Pony toys for over a year already. 

Now it is only down to 4 stores that still stock up new toys regularly and I have been focusing on these 4 stores only for the past 6 months.  Occasionally, I will only cover the other stores if I have the time and if I have the mood. Well, in a way this reduces the time I spend on my toy trips, cuts down my toy expenditures (since there are lesser new toys to buy) and hence I can go home earlier! 

I was pleasantly surprised to find the first series of G3 My Little Pony Tiny Tins at a toy shop in one of the sub-urban malls last week.  This 2003 set consists of Minty, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Sparkleworks, Sunny Daze and Sweetberry. The local departmental stores did not sell these items then.  These MOC toys cost SGD 6.90 each at that toy shop.

The Tiny Tins ponies are coated with a pearly finishing and they have jointed necks that that allow their heads to move up and down only.  Their metal boxes are designed to open up like matchboxes and the metal box covers are printed with lovely drawings of the respective ponies that they come with. 

The set looks rather cute and I called up a fellow local My Little Pony collector to notify her.  She told me that she would go to that shop on the same day to view the Tiny Tins in person before deciding whether to add them to her collection.  For me, I did not buy them as I had decided to focus my G3 My Little Pony collection on the pegasus and unicorn ponies.  I have way too many G3 earth ponies already.

It was rather crowded when I visited the various shopping malls during the weekend.  I am proud that I refrained from impulse-buying of new toys, not that there were new toys that I was interested in.  Shoppers were buying up the sales items like clothes, shoes, bags, household stuff etc., as if they were all free or something.  I am glad that I did not need to join in the frenzy as I completed almost all of my shopping already.  The remaining stuff that I have yet to buy are not that urgently needed and I can still wait for the next sales.