When I first read the forum thread at the My Little Pony Arena announcing the ‘discovery’ of this new Ponyville product , I had mixed feelings.  Like many other pony collectors, we welcome new products by Hasbro that offered something new, innovative and interesting.  In this case, the design of Scootaloo’s Ice Cream Shake Diner does look cool and it can fold up completely to form an Ice Cream Shake.  Plus, Scootaloo now sports a new and ‘changeable mane-style’.

The not-so-cool part is that this pony character has been so over-used and many collectors are getting tired of the Ponyville line too.  We rather have the regular sized ponies and not just restricted to the core 7 characters only, as if replicating Mattel’s strategy for its Barbie and My Scene Dolls toyline.  Besides, the Ponyville ponies have been too humanised.  They not only drive, they run their own businesses too!

Now that the F1 race is over here in Singapore, I would expect some of the leftover or excess F1-related toys and merchandise to be on sale soon.  We have a public holiday coming up on this Wednesday.  Many departmental stores love to hold sales to encourage more consumerism during the holidays.  Hence if you are keen to pick up some F1 bargains, keep your eyes on the ads in the papers over these few days.  Your wish is very likely to come through!

As the economy shows more signs of lumbering along, it is best to be more prudent with your toy funds.  However if for some reason you MUST buy some toys during this economic slowdown period to ’satisfy your toy addiction’ or ‘fulfil your uncontrollable craving for more toys’, then at least do your best to buy them during sales.  It can definitely help you to stretch your dollars in the long run.  Even if you regretted your impulsive toy purchases later on, at least you did not pay the full prices for them.

Till next time, stay safe and spend wisely!

It was a historical moment for Singapore this weekend, and especially today when the world’s first F1 night race was held right here in our shores, right in the heart of our city centre.  I managed to catch the live telecast of the race through the local and sports cable channels on my TV with my family.  Whenever the commercials came on, we just switched to the other channel and vice versa.

It was also a night of action along the race tracks as the cars found their placings ‘re-shuffled’ by race incidents and the deployment of the safety car.  Overall, it was a night to remember by F1 fans and connections, and also the local organisers and everyone here in Singapore.

A few of my most privileged toys got to watch this exciting motor sports live with me.  They were mostly my Transformers Legends mini figures as well as the Hot Rocks dream team plus their connections.  Only they among my toys could really appreciate the thrill of the F1 race as some of the Transformers characters are race cars. 

Windows update error

My lap top couldn’t start up this morning because of a Windows error.  Apparently I stopped a vital Windows update process while shutting down my lap too hastily yesterday evening to go to class.  Hence I had wake up early today to send my lap top to its Service Centre to get it fixed.  There was already a long queue of over 10 people in front of me when I arrived about 10min before the opening hours.

Re-formatted

As expected whenever you send your computer or mobile phone hardware to the service centres, the staff there will recommend the easiest and ‘only’ way out, and that is to re-format the whole thing.  I said ok since I had just backed up my data this week.  The only tedious and time-consuming part was to re-install all the programs and software that I use.

Hard disk ‘clutter’ clearing

In a way, the incident was a blessing in disguise as it helped to clear out a lot of ‘clutter’ programs that I had installed in the past to ‘test’ out but never really got round to using them.  Hence they slowed down the speed of my lap top whenever I powered it on or off, or whenever I opened other software to use.  I also used this chance to download the various latest free softwares that I frequently use.

Out with the old and in with the new

Now I have re-orientate myself to the newer and updated versions of the various program user interfaces all over again.  This sure brings some unexpected ‘excitement’ in my otherwise rather boring lifestyle.  In life we’ve got to get over obstables and embrace change as they come.  It’s no use resisting them since we can’t turn back time anyway.  Hence it’s best to adapt and then move on, and never losing sight of our eventual goals along the way.  

This will be a very special weekend for Singapore as it is the first time our nation is hosting the F1 race, and it will also be the world’s first night F1 race!  It is street circuit race on our very familiar city roads and the cars will race past some of our most famous Marina Bay landmarks.  The circuit had been already been fully lighted up and all safety barricades are already in place for the ground breaking big moments expected on this weekend.

For the past year and in particular in the recent weeks, the organizers had been busy hyping up the atmosphere of this demanding endurance car race with their various marketing strategies.  Businesses and hotels in and around the race circuit have also prepared themselves to welcome the cash of the F1 tourists and visitors.  These potential customers are expected to stream into town with their fat wallets and matching generosity in doling out their dollars to boost our slowing economy.

In line with F1 race fever, the toy departments were definitely determined to get a slice of the F1 pie by pushing out all kinds of existing or new F1 related toys and merchandise.  The Ferrari toys, which had spent much of the past years sitting quietly and relatively unnoticed on the shelves, were all well stocked up and pushed to the most prominent front sections of every toy department.  If you have been to the toy departments lately, there is no way you can miss those crimson red Ferrari toy cars etc. and every other toys that are closely or remotely related to F1. 

For me, I mostly resisted buying new toys during the past week.  I didn’t buy any of the Ferrari or F1 related toys despite the hype.  I only adore the Lamborghini, which does not contest in the F1 race.  That is good, cos I cannot imagine a Lamborghini in the shape of an F1 car.  That will be so un-Lamborghini!  However I did receive a cute little Disney Cars Ferrari F430 toy figure 2-3 weeks ago.  I got it from a friend as she needed to spend a few more dollars to qualify for the store card membership and she got nothing else to buy so she picked this up for me.  That was cool, for I got a cute little Ferrari F430 for free while my friend got her store card! 

This Ferrari F430 character only made a very short cameo appearance at the end of the Cars movie.  It stopped over at the town called Radiator Springs upon the recommendation of the lead character Lightning McQueen, to get a few sets of tyres from the shop of little forklift character.  That little forklift and his small town friend fainted at the sight of seeing a real live Ferrari.  I was perturbed though, cos I thought that Lightning McQueen was also a Ferrari and those 2 characters didn’t faint at seeing him.  Hmmm, strange scene that was…

I received this piece of ribbon as part of a gift pack from my cousin many months ago, and I was reluctant to discard it as it looked so nice.  However, I could not really recycle it as it would only be suited on another gift pack for the same brand of items.  Hence for months, the ribbon settled around G3 My Little Pony Tea Leaf’s neck.  I think she looks cute in it, although the ‘bow tie’ is way over-sized for her!

Hmmm, I should have placed some samples of the brands products next to Tea Leaf spotting her ‘branded’ bow tie.  That would look cute!  Too bad the items I have now are half empty.  Wait till I replenish some of them and then take another shot with ‘branded’ Tea Leaf!  Haha,…..just a bored mind throwing out some toy photo ideas……

Whenever I ‘comb’ through the departmental stores for the latest collectible toys in town, I also get attracted to the artwork of the toy characters.  Some of the artwork are very attention grabbing and they make great wallpapers for my mobile phone.  Here are some of the G3 My Little Pony artwork that I have taken photos of from the toy aisles in the past year.  Enjoy!

G3 My Little Pony Starcatcher.

G3 My Little Pony Rarity.

G3 My Little Pony Rainbow Dash.

G3 My Little Pony Royal Bouquet.

You would have noticed that the 4 ponies artwork above were originally part of the bigger piece of artwork where all the 4 characters are actually pictured in a row.  This piece of artwork was spotted in the top of the My Little Pony toy rack/shelves at a large toy store here.

Please note that the above photos are in no way intended to infringe the copyrights held by Hasbro.  These photos are taken and displayed at this blog for personal use only, and not for commercial or other purposes.

Here’s another cute early video from the creative folks at MyLittleTransformer.com.  I admire their passion and appreciate their time and efforts to shoot such fun videos to share with others.  Enjoy viewing this video!  More of these videos can be found at Vid Central or MyLittleTransformer.com.  There are currently 78 episodes of My Little Transformer made!

Avoiding temptations

I’ve not been visiting the Sunday flea market at China Square Central for the past few weeks.  One reason is that I rarely find the toys I collect there anymore.  Besides when you get to the point of nearly completing or having completed collecting a certain toyline, there aren’t any more additions left to look for.  Another reason I haven’t been going there is to avoid unnecessary ‘temptations’ to buy more toys on impulse.  Anyway, the trends there now are mostly the Transformers Animated toylines, Star Wars Clone Wars toyline, Marvel action figures, plus many other toylines that I’m not keen on.

Things can deteriorate from lack of use too!

Yesterday, I went to out to Orchard Road to meet up with a friend.  Halfway during the outing, I realised that the outer ’skin’ layer on my bag that I brought with me, started to peel very badly.  This was one of my favourite bags as it was comfortable to carry and it could contain many things. I had not used it for nearly a year I think.  Recently I re-discovered it in my wardrobe while doing clutter clearing and had decided to use it again. 

However, the long period of storage made the outer ’skin’ material ‘brittle’ and tear easily.  It wasn’t an expensive bag, just under SGD 40.00 but it was very good to use.  This bag will be missed as I had to discard it, if not the tearing will worsen.  I also don’t like to wear or carry ‘torn’ or damaged things.  A good friend once told me that the things we buy and own are meant to be used.  If they have been unused for too long, they tend to deteriorate on their own from lack of use. 

Come to think of it, some of my rarely worn shoes are probably damaged by now.  I’ve not checked my shoe cabinet yet.  That is another clutter spot that I’ve overlooked for the longest time.  I’ve a bad feeling that things are not looking good in there, argh!! 

While doing a very quick round of combing all the departmental stores in Orchard Road today, I came across 2 of them selling the latest ’core 7′ characters My Little Pony figures.  The first store was selling only 3 of the ‘core 7′ characters at just SGD 6.90 each!  However there were just Starsong, Sweetie Belle and Pinkie Pie.  The 2nd store had the other 4 characters of Cheerilee, Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo and Toola Roola, but there was no discount there.  What a let down!

Nevertheless, I took a good look at all the ‘core 7′ characters variant ponies and decided not to pick up any for my toy collection.  I have no more storage space to allocate to newer toys, except for the couple of exclusive My Little Pony figures that I recently ordered online and expecting in the mail soon.  It’s about time I cut down on collecting variant ponies to slow down my toy ‘imports’, so as to better manage my toy collections and limited storage space.  It wasn’t easy putting those ponies back on the racks but I did it!