It's all about the packaging, baby!

Yes, yes, I know, late entry.... Wassamatter, bonus piccies not good enough for ya? ;P Heh.... Well, to make up for the lateness, I'll spare you the sorta-serious post I had in mind (yeah, I know..."me?? serious?? O_O" heheh ^_^) to do a fanboy write-up about the bane of Transfans (fans of Transformers, such as yours truly) and toy collectors everywhere: Twist Ties!

Yes, twist ties, those little horrors of translucent plastic threads that tie the toy pieces to their plastic confines in their little cardboard boxes. In theory, they're a pretty neat idea: you can shake up and drop a mid-to-large size cardboard box, and the contents will stay in more or less the same position so you don't have to worry about having to rip open the boxes to fix your lovely hand-made display that those pesky little kids and snobbish collectors just messed up. In practice, these things are horrendous little buggers that take forever to untwist and leave you with lots of "spare parts" lying around after you've opened the box. For the collector (or at least, one who doesn't give a damn about keeping his stuff in Mint In Sealed Box condition), it usually means you end up spending more time unpacking your latest acquisition than actually playing with the damn thing -_-" It's not really an issue for somewhat smaller toys like the Binaltech line of Transformers (thank the gods), but the larger Galaxy Force figures like (the very cool) Galaxy Convoy are packed with so many of the little buggers that one wonders if the guys who design the boxes aren't playing out some twisted bondage fantasy (which might not be too far off the mark, knowing these mad japs -_-")

And it's not just the Japs that are doing it: Packaging in general seems to be getting harder to get through. It's like manufacturers everywhere simultaneously thought "Hey, I know! Let's make our packaging really flashy and eye-catching to disguise the fact that they're really anti-consumer coverings! With any luck those morons will break the product while trying to open it up and then they'll have to buy another one! Cha-ching! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!" I mean, come ON! I've already paid for the damn thing; why do I have to go through 6 layers of scotch tape just to open the cover of my new CD?! And I haven't even started talking about the inclusion of those little business mail/advertisements that are standard issue with magazines and original games (as oppsed to the "ahem" versions) nowadays. I'm pretty sure most of you out there have had this experience: "Ooh, new issue of , let's buy it. Hmm, I think I'll read my new issue on the bus *open magazine* Oops! It's raining paper!"

Now, to take the bad taste out of my mouth, I'll leave you with some linkies so non-mecha fans out there will know what I'm referring to. Yep, it's shameless pimping time! ^_^

www.bwtf.com
www.tformers.com