03 Sep 2018 00:21:24
**WARNING**
**This post is both VERBOSE and Pic heavy!! You have been warned!!**
**This post is both VERBOSE and Pic heavy!! You have been warned!!**
Hello MAS!!!
It feels like it's been forever since I've REALLY been on, but not from loss of interest or anything like that. It's just been super busy!!! ...partly because, I WON A TRIP Mother-friggin Thailand for the Figurama Tokyo Ghoul event held in Bangkok on August 19th!! Yay!!!
So....yeah, I comment on FB stuff literally all the time (i.e. it tells you to like this post, share it, comment, etc...), we've all seen it a 1000 times and I've never so much as even known anyone that's won from one of those, yet I go to try to find a post where someone had shared shipping costs for one of Figurama's diorama's...and well, there's my name, congratulating me for winning a trip to their event in Thailand!!!
Ok, so after I had like 5 heart attacks, back to back, go out and scream incoherent blatherings to my poor better half (who probably thought I'd lost my damn mind), I finally realized that this trip I won, was like 3 weeks away. Would I even be able to take off work on such short notice??!! And I've never been to Thailand....would it even be ok to go by myself?
Well long story short, yes I was able to get off work and after some near marital disasters, my sweet, sweet husband sucked it up and decided to go with me (but to make it worthwhile buying his ticket to Thailand - it's a 25 HOUR flight for us and not cheap), we decided to stay a few extra days and make an official vacation out of it. SO...that's what we did!!! And you have to understand, I say he sucked it up...but I just mean he had less than ZERO interest in going because he does not watch (or get why others watch) anime nor does he collect (he thinks it's silly)...but he does support me in his own way (he did give me the nudge to get the for my birthday afterall (thanks Babe!!)! He did NOT however want me going by myself..."What will I tell your mother and father if something happens to you Stacy?". I dunno...."shit happens" maybe? Well, needless to say, that didn't go over well. :D So.....we ended on, he would go with versus me by myself!! :D What a nice guy huh (as the other option was I wouldn't get to go, and he could see that option was truly stressing me the @#%% out, I mean how many times do you win a trip to fudging BANGKOK, THAILAND?!!). :D
So...we ended up having to fly out separately, as the Figurama team needed me in Bangkok before Friday afternoon and the initial flights we'd picked out did not get us there until Friday at 10p. So instead of me leaving on a Thursday at 11a...I had to move my flight to Wednesday at 4p (HOLY hell what a long trip). This put me arriving Friday by 11am, but my husband and I had to fly out separately as it cost an extra $1k fat ones to move the flight up, and while Figurama so graciously paid for my ticket, we were not dishing out an extra $1k for my husband to get there like 8 hours earlier.
So, I'll start with the Figurama event!!
I'll just say I'm now IN LOVE with this company (their site and FB page - and - they also have a closed group that's linked on their main FB page as well, great folks there). Not surprising to think highly of the company that just paid a fans way to their event in Thailand right? But, they are truly amazing folks! I got to meet with the licensing guru (Grant), the CEO (Shanab), and the creative director (Daniel) who worked directly with the sculptor to fine tune their gorgeous Tokyo Ghoul statue! And, let me tell you, these are some awesome and talented guys!! It was such an amazing experience!! I met so many other wonderful people including some of their distribution team, the other fan who won a trip (there were 2 lucky winners), Luca from Italy, and Alex, a gentleman from RaddTitan (fellow fans and statue collector's who do reviews, interviews, etc.. they have a FB page and youtube channel, great group -
The "event" portion of the trip would consist of the first 3 days. The day I arrived I was able to meet Shanab in the hotel lobby, he's awesome! I got checked in and then we all met up at the rooftop restaurant a few hours later for dinner. The hotel was AMAZING and the views from the top were phenomenal!!!
Since I have dang near a MILLION pictures from my trip (or so it felt as I was downloading them), I am going to try to split them up a bit, share some here in the blog then just share the links to the others for those interested (because there are WAYYYYY too damn many to try to post them all in this blog)!!
Our meet and greet dinner!!!
After that the next day would consist of spending the whole day with the Figurama team (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Aside from eating of course, we did interviews with Alex (he even interviewed my non-collector husband...god help us), got to ask the team a MILLION questions, and got a sneak peek of the venue (the Massive Toy Gallery, which is AMAZING...I have more below on that place alone) for the event and some of the Figurama statues!!! The next day was the actual event day, so it started a bit earlier...it was the actual reveal of the figure in person and the day PO's started for the figure ().
Here's a link to go to an album I have of ALL the pictures of the event, but it's WAYYY too many to post them all here so I'll just share a few and if you want to see the rest feel free to browse through the entire album -
The reveal of the statue!!!
Meet Daniel (Figurama), myself and Luca (the trip winners) and Alex (Radd Titan):
Some shots of ....I am in LOVE with that blood bucket (does that make me a bad person? :D):
SOOO much detail....I LOVE this figure!! (and here are a few more):
**Click to see more pics of the amazing Kaneki!!**
I also had the joy of seeing some of the other figures from the Figurama line....including the Alucard figure I've PO'd (OMG it's HUGE and AMAZING)!!! Below are some shots of the others...this company truly makes some bad-ass figures, they were all AMAZING!!!
:
**Click to see more Vash Pics!!**
- this thing was epic!!:
**Click to see more Devilman pics!!**
:
**Click to see more Thor pics!!**
And last, but certainly not least, (an unpainted version, as they are working to have the two interchangeable faces resculpted - these are the new ones but have not been painted yet). He is HUGE and is AMAZINGLY detailed...I cannot wait to get this!!!
Luca was oh so nice as to stand behind it to express his awe, so I could try to more accurately show how MASSIVE it is!!
**Click to see more Alucard Pics!!**
Again, I cannot stress how amazing the Figurama team was!! I am so glad I had the opportunity to meet them all, and needless to say I will now have not one but two Figurama figures in my collection (god help me, if they make even one more nice figure I will have to start selling kidneys or children on the blackmarket)!!!
Ok, so now...the venue....the MASSIVE TOY GALLERY!!! This place is amazing. It is a coffee shop downstairs/in front then the rest of the main floor as well as upstairs is a gallery of this one guy's collection, Ken. And Ken has an AMAZING collection. His wife wanted to open a coffee shop and he wanted a figure gallery/shop...so they did both!! Most of the figures are probably 1/4 in scale or larger....some may be a bit smaller / larger, but he point being most are pretty dang big...maybe most are even 1/3 (hell, I don't know...the key takeaway here is that they are BIG!). He even has a ton of life-size busts. This place blew my mind....
**Click to see more Massive Toy Gallery pics!!**
I was also able to get some shots of our hotel view, Wat Arun, and other areas in Bangkok that I could convert to HDR shots. I was super lazy though, and these are all hand-held and manually adjusted (how sad is it not to even take the time to turn on the bracketing feature or get a dang tripod). ANYWAY...while there is definitely room for improvement, I am pleased with how they turned out considering... I LOVE this type of photography afterall, it's so vivid, dreamy and highly dramatic!!
**Click to see more Bangkok HDR photos!!**
While there we also got to go to the MegaPlaza (I think it's called...) it's a 5 or more story tall shopping center with all sorts of gadgets...but TONS of figures. MANY of the figures are bootleg unfortunately, but there are several shops that were not, and a couple that had really nice, high-end figures. We also went to the zoo and took a spin on the Tuk Tuks!!!
**Click to see more random Bangkok vacation pics, including more of the MegaPlaza!**
This trip ended up being AMAZING!!! The Figurama event was fantastic...I cannot express how exciting it was for me as a fan to get to attend and see some of their work for the first time ever, in person...and to talk to them and hang out. It was loads of fun. The rest of the week was also a blast...my husband and I had a wonderful time!!
Thanks for hanging in there everyone, I know it was a long post!!! And again, for anyone interested, there are LOTS more pics. You can find them all here:
[B]Figurama Event (with pics of all the Figurama figures) -
Massive Toy Gallery -
Bangkok, Thailand HDR and Flora -
Random Bangkok Thailand Vaca pics (including more of the MegaPlaza) -
Thanks again MAS...and Figurama now has a new ULTIMATE fan ...for LIFE!!!
Stacy
