Man I'm having flashbacks to when this topic was brought up in the "How Are You Today?" thread.

Something I wanna add to it now that I didn't think to add back then, since it came up recently with a friend of mine that I was talking about the hobby with: It's okay to cancel pre-orders.

Yes, basically having to pre-order in order to get certain figures certainly sucks, but the upside is that, as time passes, if you end up feeling less passion for a particular release, or you end up not having the money, or you look at your spare space and go "You know another figure would be better off here." Then yeah, cancel it. And then if your passion for the figure/character/whatever is reignited, track it down again at a later date. I've done it before and it's saved me alot of headaches.

Yeah, I feel like, with Build, I felt like I could go all in, and I really liked the forms, but some of them I felt like I grabbed just because "Well, I have the rest, so I need Hedgehog and Firehose mans". Sure, it's resulted in me getting new favourites - SmarphoWolf is very very cool! - but sometimes I do regret it a little, in terms of space. Buyers remorse is a strange thing. I've avoided it since then, like - the only Zi-O stuff I have is the main Riders, a few legend armours of favourite Riders, and the Quartzers, because those designs are cool.

Meanwhile, tonight's blog doesn't have any big reveals, other than a teaser for Saber and his books. Just have this image of Ark-One in exchange!

https://cdn-ak.f.st-hatena.com/image...0812200704.jpg

I'll definitely agree with all this. It's the reason I skipped collecting So-Do during Zi-O, even though I was impressed with the increases in quality of the figures, I didn't want to collect something out of obligation rather than desire. It's also why I decided to stop collecting Lightning Collection other than MMPR, it stopped being fun and ended up feeling like a chore.

Ending on a more positive note, candy toy blog says Saber reveal is next week, and leaves us with a teaser!
https://cdn-ak.f.st-hatena.com/image...0812184642.png

https://challengerscomics.com/images...o/IMG_2815.jpg

Be the Slightly Less-Stressful Amount Of SO-DO you want to see in the world. One box down, a closet left to go.

Special thanks to Bandai for making sure that my first box in a while, chosen at random, was an almost completely joyless chore. Four tiny stickers on both ends of the staff, and six thin strips of stickers for the body of the staff. Unbelievable.

Hmm, there's a slight rounded cut off over Saber's belt which might mean they're adapting the waist swivel from chronicle gaim.

To almost completely counter my last post, I'm suddenly wondering how far Gaim So-Do will go because there is a LOT of stuff in that series that just never got any figure representation. Jam, Idunn, Tyrant, Saver, Black Baron, Yami Gaim, Fifteen, Decade Arms, 1 Arms, Sengoku Duke, the Proto Riders, Fresh Orange Arms...

A lot of that is extremely minor, of course, but So-Do is that sort of toyline, y'know? I could see a lot of people being happy about Fifteen and Sengoku Duke.

Maybe they'll finally be the ones to give us Zangetsu Jimber Melon arms, the most rare of Gaim Arms.

Actually, a couple of those had figures released in the candy toy Arms Action Gaim line back in the day (I even quickly dug up some old photoblog reviews of the sets that included Gaim Yami and 1 Arms to prove it!) , though I don't think anything from a V-Cinema ever got one, since that was before candy toy figures were so successful Bandai would keep releasing Zi-O figures at retail like a full year after Zi-O ended. Things have changed, is the point! Gaim is a popular show! It wouldn't be surprising to see them go crazy given the chance. Especially for Fifteen. That is a design in desperate need of some love.

Using tweezers to apply stickers and then clear coat nail polish to seal them makes these figures feel absolutely incredible. I don't feel like I'm handling cheap toys at all. After coating them, the stickers literally feel and look like details that were painted on.

It takes a little bit of time and steady hands, but it is absolutely worth it. I love this line. If anyone here hasn't done this yet, I absolutely could not recommend it enough.