Another year quickly draws to an end!  It took me quite a while to gather and reflect all my toy thoughts for 2011.  What can I say?  That 2011 is basically just another period of yet more mindless pursuit of more toys to add to my already overpopulated collection, spread over 12 months!  So am I happy with how the year went for me?

Well I have long wanted to quit this toy collecting hobby, but I obviously didn’t succeed.  This is mainly because I haven’t really found something else to take its place.

Ever since I started blogging about toys in Dec 2009, I had been gradually downsizing the toy collections that I had lost interest in and I did managed to sell off a sizeable part of my collection.  However along the way, I also bought new toys that caught my interest.  Fortunately the new toys were fewer in numbers and the new toy purchases were spaced much further apart than before.  Hence overall, my toy collecting pace has slowed down by a lot, which is good!

G4 My Little Pony

This has been a very exciting year for collecting G4 My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic (FiM) toys, ever since they started appearing in local departmental stores in Q1 of 2011.  My fellow local pony collectors and I had been following the news and were envious of the early retail release of G4 pony toys in the US in 2010.  We were then naturally very ecstatic to find them here as well and wasted no time buying the “mane 6″ pony characters, way before the local kids and other fans were introduced to these ponies when the FiM cartoon was screened on Okto Channel in Oct 2011.

LEGO

The local retail release of the 2nd series of LEGO Kingdoms sets in July this year revived my waned interest in LEGO and got me excited for a while, until I finished building them all and stored them aside in boxes.  I also became briefly interested in the new LEGO Aliens Conquest sets and added them to my collection too.  Now I’m still wondering if that was a good idea.  I still like them, but I feel guilty that I strayed from my LEGO collecting goals of focusing on medieval LEGO sets only…

Masters of the Universe Classics (MOTUC)

2011 marked the year that I finally completed my modest collection of MOTUC figures that I intend to collect.  I have the MOTUC He-Man, Battle Cat, Adora, She-Ra V1, She-Ra V2 and the massive Swift Wind (added in Nov) at last!  Maybe if Mattel makes Adora’s horse Spirit, I will get him too in 2012 or whenever he gets released.  These are very expensive toys which I bought as MOCs and MIBs, so they are all I can afford to have, for now.

Unanticipated Gundam Invasion!

Just as I have been painstakingly reducing my massive toy collection over the year, this is also the untimely period when my husband plunged into the “rapid growth” stage of collecting Gundam model kits!

I blame myself for letting him accompany me to the toy sections of departmental stores whenever I popped in to check out the latest ponies and other toy releases to blog about.  He somehow revived his childhood interest in Gundam and in the last 2 months, it had been a downward spiral for his $$ and my emotions!

He keeps reassuring me that he only buys them at massive discounts from both retail stores and online sellers, but he doesn’t seem to detect my built up stress at seeing the more than 30 boxes of unassembled MIB Gundams cluttering up our room!

I had strived so hard for the year to clutter clear my home and room, only to see other people’s clutter build up all over again!  And if you collect Gundam, you will know that each HG & MG model kit can take up to a week or more to build, assuming that you can only build on weekday nights after work and on weekends if you don’t go out.

My thoughts for 2012

All I can say for now is that I better find a new non-physical item collecting hobby in 2012 and further cut down on impulse toy purchases.  Recession is coming again and I can’t guarantee if my income will remain the same in the coming months, much less for the whole year.  I have to cut down on monthly expenses and set aside more funds and savings for rainy days, and perhaps a new addition to the family.

Oh gosh, just typing this paragraph alone is starting to stress me up!  But don’t let me dissuade you from your own toy collecting goals, for everyone has different targets for the new year.  So you go on and pursue yours while I carry out mine.  Adieu 2011 and Happy New Year 2012!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone!  Another year is coming to an end and as we welcome the new year, let’s reflect on the great things that we have been blessed with this year, like our toy hauls, LOL!

CIRCLE OF FRIENDS SONG LYRICS:

The Fire of Friendship lives in our hearts,
As long as it burns we cannot drift apart.
Though quarrels arise their numbers are few,
Laughter and singing will see us through (will see us through).
We are a circle of pony friends,
A circle of friends we’ll be ’til the very end!

The G4 My Little Ponies from the popular “Friendship is Magic” cartoon series had celebrated their version of the winter holidays a week earlier in Season 2 Episode 11 - “Hearth’s Warming Eve” - where the “mane 6″ pony characters staged a play to retell the ancient story of how the 3 pony tribes of pegasi, unicorns and earth ponies put aside their long standing feuds and united as friends so as to defeat the evil winter ghosts that brought frost and hunger to the land.  At the end of the play, the ponies sang this song as a choir, giving a festive cheer to the pony winter holidays!  Enjoy the song!

Happy 46th Birthday Singapore!

It’s a public holiday here in Singapore to celebrate Vesak Day.  I’m taking a blogging break and I wish those who celebrate this event a Happy Vesak Day!

And many of the local departmental stores are having a 20% store wide sale since last weekend till today.  Happy toys shopping too!

It’s Labour Day today in Singapore and I’m taking a bloggin break as usual due to public holiday. 

Happy holiday to those who need not work today and can go toys shopping!

It’s the eve of Chinese New Year once again and it will be the year of the Rabbit from tomorrow!  I told myself during the beginning of 2011 (1st Jan) that I shall strive to collect less toys this year, but I caved in 2 days ago and bought another new toy - a 3.75-inch Marvel Universe Spiderwoman action figure from a local departmental store.  I sort of gave myself the excuse that I watched her cartoon series as a child and that I “had to have” her toy when I see it, yadda yadda.  And so she joined my toy collection…

Perhaps it’s really too extreme for me to completely stop collecting toys of a sudden.  I can start off by cutting down on collecting with having a smaller toy budget each month.  That would at least be a monetary guideline to streamline my purchases.  I can also eventually trim my collection by selling off the unwanted or unloved items away gradually in the coming weeks and months.  Yeah, that would be the plan for me, right now.  After all, the past few weeks of spring cleaning weren’t made easier by my massive toy collection, LOL!

Anyway, my spring cleaning’s done and I’m ready for the new year.  Here’s wishing all my Chinese readers a Happy and Prosperous New Rabbit Year!!  Gong Xi Fa Cai, Wan Shi Ru Yi!! 

Well firstly, I didn’t get myself any new toys for Christmas this year.  I just wished to have a long and extended break, and not collect toys or think about toys all the time.  That is why my blog posts have thinned out for a long time recently.  Since I wasn’t really in the mood to think much about toys, I naturally had very little toy collecting topics to blog or post about, other than the release of some new Hasbro toys into the market.  

I hope my readers didn’t get too disappointed when you visited my blog during this period and did not find new blog postings to read.  I really had nothing much to say during this lull period.  After a while, you do realise that the cycle of our toy collecting hobby gets very repetitive and predictable. 

A new toy comes out and we all get excited about seeing the online sneak preview photos and want to buy it so badly.  Then when it is out for sale, we get excited again because we finally have the physical toy in our possessions.  For the Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) Legends Devastator toy above, I got him around this time last year and I was definitely very excited about having him then.  But in the whole of 2010, I barely looked at him as he stayed in storage in a cupboard… 

The interest in our latest purchased toy tends to only last from as little as a day to perhaps 1 week, before we all get bored with it.  Then we will go online to find the next ‘hot new’ toy to excite us, and repeat the vicious and never ending cycle all over again.  I have had many great and exciting toy finds this year, but without looking into my toy storage boxes, I think I can’t recall most of them by now.  So sometimes I wonder why am I still collecting all these toys in the first place?

What about you?  Do you have such displacement thoughts about your toy collecting hobby at times?  Please feel free to share your comments here!  And happy holidays to one and all!

It’s another day of blogging break for me today.  I like this image when I saw in on the Google search page today.  Yes, it’s Singapore’s 45th birthday today and I wish all Singaporeans and residents on this island nation, a Happy National Day!

On my last day in Hong Kong, I walked around at New Town Plaza III (above Sha Tin MTR Station) where they have a Snoopy’s World on their rooftop garden area.

Yup that’s Charlie Brown and he seems to be performing a welcoming a tap dance for visitors!

A nice outer ’shell’ of a yellow school bus is on display there.  Visitors can climb aboard to explore its spacious inside.

Charlie and his companions posing beside the yellow school bus.  Can anyone remember the names of his 2 companions?

There is a boat ride for visitors, or rather shoppers who had spent a certain amount at the plaza.

Haha, this structure and clock tower represents their school! 

Some more attractions are still “work-in-progress”.  Nevertheless, the artwork on the boards are very nice!  I think the black haired girl is Lucy.  I can’t recall the names of the blond girl (is she Sally?) and the boy with his beloved blue blanket.  Can you remember them?

I think the little yellow bird is Woodstock.

And the whole gang chases or follows Woodstock and Snoopy to who knows where, LOL! 

The ‘bony’ benches there look so cute!

Here are some more friends of Charlie Brown.  I really cannot recall who they all are, other than Snoopy.  It has been more than 15 years since I last saw the cartoon series, and I rarely even look at the comic strips in the newspapers.

And here we have the ’Peanuts’ gang, who are still going strong since their debut in 1950!  I think their creator is no longer around, but his legacy lives on in his unforgettable pop culture creations!

This is the latest attraction at Ocean Park, Hong Kong - Dreamworks’ “How to Train your Dragon” where visitors are each given an electronic Viking shield to activate the onscreen quiz and games about the movie.  Your score is recorded in your shield which you then use to print out a certificate of participation or graduation into a “Dragon Knight”, “Hero” etc.

This is the Monstrous Nightmare dragon from the movie.

The Hideous Zippleback dragon.

The little Terrible Tenor dragon.

Visitors can ride on the back of the Gronkle dragon which is posed against a large green background for a photo shoot.

Your photograph of riding on the Gronkle dragon will be photoshopped against a blue sky with clouds to look as if you’re riding it in the skies.  Too bad they only had the Gronkle for visitors to ride.  I only wanted to ride Night Fury, so I didn’t opt to have a Gronkle ride that day. 

And finally the main stars of the movie saved themselves as best for last.  Here we have Night Fury, together with Astrid, and of course his trainer and rider Hiccup!

———-

These are the other wonderful and traditional sights of Ocean Park.  As it mostly poured throughout that fateful day, I wasn’t too much in the mood to take many photos while holding an umbrella.  Nevertheless, I did take some scenery shots before all the colors became drenched with “greyness”. 

A pair of Giant Pandas reside in an air conditioned habitat at Ocean Park.  As the animals were sleeping then, I didn’t take their photos.

This is a view of the lowland section of Ocean Park taken from the cable car cabin as it climbed the mountain slope to the upper section of the theme park.

Then as the cable car ascended higher, the view of the nearby bay could be seen!

The cable cars travel along the mountain range just beside the sea, all the way to the “highland” station.  The sea and mountain views were fabulous, even on a cloudy day! 

Then it poured from mid-afternoon onwards and nothing much could be done for the rest of the time I was there, except to seek shelter, watch the Dolphin and Sealion show and visit the Atoll and Chinese Sturgeon fish aquariums.  All the outdoor rides were closed due to bad weather…