Now this is just one of the coolest statues that I have seen from Mixed Media Statues, and if you are a fan of Street Fighter then you will know who this is. Gouken the master and mentor of Ryu & Ken and the older brother of Akuma. To me he is just a bad ass in Street Fighter and I always enjoy when they made an animated show, but always wanted more of him in it. It seems I’m not the only fan of Gouken, it seems the team from PopCultureShock love him too that they made this 16.5 inch Polystone model of him, and I love the way he looks, of course I preordered it as I want him part of the collection. I like the quality of work done by PopCultureShock, I have a few of their pieces but no where to display it.

Ken and Ryu’s martial art Master is finally here ! We are proud to present Street Fighter’s sensei supreme as a 1:4 scale polystone mixed media masterpiece. Like his Street Fighter brethren, this statue features amazing hi-fi sculpting, capturing every muscle, vein and fold of clothing as if he stepped right from the game itself. This collectible features a certificate of authenticity.

“Concentrate not on destroying your foe, but on attaining your own victory.” Gouken is the marital arts Master who trained Ryu and Ken, as well as his elder brother and former training partner, Akuma.

Sideshow have really outdone themselves, they are creators of amazing pop culture items, and this one is at the top of the list. Sideshow’s upcoming Jim Raynor piece stands 15 inches tall, and is made from 525 individual pieces. With that many pieces its going to be movable and expensive, but totally worth it.

He’s posable, his visor slides down, the armour lights up in both the chest and vents, and he comes with a bunch of weapons, including his revolver, a sniper rifle and a Gauss gun. For $500 this is going to have limited run, worth it for those who love StarCraft and who doesn’t love StarCraft.

Sideshow Collectibles are one of the Best creators of Models and Memorabilia out there. They create the best collectibles of our favorite characters and icons from the worlds of film, television, comic books and popular culture. There are other cool manufacturers out there, but not as good as Sideshow Collectibles. As for Comic-Con that is the biggest convention of Pop Culture in the world which takes place in San Diego, and in these pictures are the models for Pacific Rim which I loved. I usually try to get my hands on any Robot Memorabilia out there like Transformers, Reel Steel, and now Pacific Rim.

Above is Gypsy Danger, one of the heroes of Pacific Rim, a Third Generation Jaeger meant to kick the Kaiju back to where they came from. The movie revolves around it’s main operator and it is one hell of a robot, and Sideshow made one very cool model of it, and its already available for PreOrder which I placed with AlterEgoComics. It’s rare to get such a high quality robot piece and this one looks to be one hell of a Jaeger just from the pictures at Comic-Con

This was a surprise for me, another Jaeger, Striker Eureka, “the strongest and the fastest” Jaeger with 11 Kaiju kills, and make up the Resistance’s “go-to team”. It was one very cool looking Jaeger, and now that Sideshow has developed it into one very cool looking model I love it. It’s not up for PreOrder yet, but when it is, I am ordering it. The pair of Jaegers will look good together, and it will give me something to enjoy while I wait for Del Toro to come up with the sequel for Pacific Rim which revolves around Drifting. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should go see it.

Link: DailyDead

Soundwave is by far my favorite Decepticon, so sure of his calculated actions, and extremely loyal to Megatron, he is the most robotic of the Transformers, no feelings just pure logic and unchanging, and also the most resourceful of the Decepticons. When Megatron wants bruteforce he calls on Shockwave, and when he was ultimate loyalty and missions success then he calls on Soundwave.

After so long Takara has finally come up with the most realistic and cleanest build of Soundwave that I have seen. He even Transforms into a big 80s Take deck Stereo. The build is honestly very high quality and really reminds me of the 80s Transformers, and the cool part is that Lazerbeak is really a tape, you can transform him into the buzzard, but I would rather keep him as the tape inside of Soundwave.

In his lefthand is a sensor which he uses check around him and certain systems, but his left hand is the interesting weapon. For those who know, the left hand is Megatron in miniaturized form, not just the arm weapon, megatron turns into a hand held weapon and in this case Soundwave is the one wielding it. Well worth getting this piece for any Transformers fan.

I had to place him with the rest of the Decepticons, the Seekers, in this case they are Star Scream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp. They are three nasty Decepticons, but Soundwave tops them all, and I still think that this is one of the best models from Takara after Optimus Prime.

Price: $229

20 Years back nobody had a clue what Anime was in the Middle East, nobody even knew the amount of old school gold KTV 2 was getting their hands on. Finding anime was like a game of hide and seek, you really had to look around a video store to find it, and my first exposure to it was in the early 90s at the video club in Salmiya Mariam Center. Now its mainstream and I still love it, there are a lot of great Animes out there to find. With these shows I get hooked on I look for these collectibles, and I use different suppliers from the US, UK, Italy, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Always finding unique items or items with crazy details that I love, I have about 60% of what I buy on the shelves with the other 40% in the largest storage room because I have no where to put them. Previously you have really search through Rihab to find any good items in Kuwait, and sometimes they are cheaper then the US & Ebay, but thanks to Instagram that has changed.

There are a few excellent suppliers who bring a consistent number of models and collectibles and what I love is that these guys really do love what they do. One of them is Q8 Figures, I try to buy from local suppliers as much as I can, if the difference isn’t that much I go for them, and sometimes they are honestly cheaper. You have to appreciate someone who loves his craft and Mohammed from Q8 Figures is one of those guys, he gets unique items I can’t even find on Ebay easily, they pop up every once in a while but I do always find them.

Over the past year and a half I have bought a few unique items from Q8 Figures, and just this week I picked up the Gurren Lagann, Mazinkizer SKL, and Berserk Guts (This was hard to find). I literally made space for them on the shelves, they are amazing pieces and worth waiting for them, and he keeps me checking his Instagram for more unique items. He also has a website with his current stock but to really know what he has you have to check out his Instagram account.

Link: Q8Figures
Link: Instagram

Owning the Iron Man suit is something on every man’s mind, well its always on my mind. In this case you can have it, but it isn’t the indestructible armor that Tony Stark built for Billions. Sideshow Collectibles have built a 7 foot tall lift size stunning high-gloss automotive painted replica of the armor worn by Tony Stark in Iron Man 3. The Iron Man Mark 42, you definitely get to enjoy LED light-up eyes, arc reactor, palm repulser, and display base. The real thing must cost Billions to build but you can have this one for only $8’500.

Link: SideShowCollectibles

Anything Star Wars is cool, but this is just over the top, Lego has come up with the Red Five X-Wing Starfighter. It is the most accurate piece from them yet, and it’s even better then the original Lego X-Wing Ultimate Collector Series which was released years ago.

The X-Wing UCS was 1,304 pieces. The Red Five X-Wing Starfighter is 1,558 pieces measuring a whooping 20 inches (52cm) long, 18 inches (46cm) wide and 10 inches (26cm) high (the previous one was 13 x 8 inches).The price is not bad at all: only $200 USD. Considering that the original X-Wing UCS is getting a $1,300 price tag on eBay now, it’s peanuts!

I know I want to get my hands on this piece and its probably going to sell out like all other cool Lego Star Wars pieces. It’s going to be available in May directly from Lego, I know I will keep my eye out for it on Amazon.

Link: Gizmodo

The pic below is a shot between the old and the new, the new one being on the right side.

For being R/C cars these guys did a really good job with the sound effects and other machines like the helicopters, very cool, wish I could do something like that.

After so long a wait I finally got my hands on the custom Ironhide and Sentinel Prime by Frenzy Rumble. It was well worth the wait, but I hope next time its 3-6 months not over a year, but these are some very cool models. They look battle damaged, Ironhide looks big with those guns strapped to his arms, but I have to say that the detail on Sentinel Prime is impressive, gun in one hand and shield on the other.

They are the same scale models from Hasbro and the details were taken to another level by Frenzy_Rumble, he is known in his field and luckily enough I got these two from him. Now Sentinel Prime & Ironhide stand tall right next to my Takara Optimus Prime line up, I love the way they look and the detail that have been put into them. They have LED lights in their eyes and some of their weapons, you can tell that from looking at a few of the pictures.

The issue with FrenzyRumble from my previous post in November has finally come to an end, things have finally worked out with Mike. I got my models, and he explained his situation and at the time even offered to refund me the amounts I paid, but I really wanted the models and I was willing to go down that road and so we got to this juncture. And thankfully I have my Ironhide & Sentinel Prime, and they do look good on my shelf.

Link: FrenzyRumble

I was in London for about 6 days, first day meetings, then Saturday and Sunday off, then nonstop meetings until the hour I leave. As I woke up I got a tweet from my fellow nerd @Qatami that the London Film & Comic Con is going on right now, it was 9:30 am when I got the Tweet. By 9:36 am I showered, changed, and already was in a cab to Olympia halls for an event that I didn’t know was going and was extatic to attend.

As I drove in there was a ridiculously long line, at least 1.5 kilos going around the building at around 10am, I knew it was the right line because half of the people in line were in costume, so I walked all the way back and waited, I thought it was just a ridiculously long line, but turns out it wasn’t open yet to the general public, just the gold ticket holders who bought their tickets earlier. So when they opened the line started flowing and about 20 mins later I was inside, and the first thing in front of me was the beautiful Batmobile from the 1989 Batman with Michael Keaton.

As I started walking I had no plan was so ever and didn’t know anything that was going on, I opened up the map and read Artist’s corner so that’s where I love going, not including the toys. I went with a certain amount of cash which disappeared within three hours and I was planning to spend the whole day there. There was just too much for my nerdery to resist, art work, models, one of pieces, and so much more to see. I was literally overwhelmed, I was smiling so much it gave me headache, I tried walking around in a systematic fashion but sometimes I would lose myself when I see some cool stuff and can’t help but head in that direction.

I picked up as much Transformers, DC Comics, and Marvel Art Work that I could put together from some amazing Artists and some of them are one pieces that I love. I don’t even know where I want to put them, in vault or a vacuum sealed room to just look at them and enjoy them. I really don’t know what to do, and honestly it wasn’t enough time to go and talk to these people. Some of them are really nice guys and very easy to talk to, laid back, and I know half of them by heart and other I recognized from the Marvel, IDW, and DC comics that I read. I think they thought I was nuts but they were really nice about it. I even met some amazing actors who were really really nice and cool to talk to like: Kevin Sorbo (Hercules, Andromeda), Holly Marie Combs (Charmed, Pretty Little Liars), Alec Baldwin (Chuck, Serenity, Stargate SG-1, Firefly, & Independence Day), Robert Maschio (Dr Todd from Scrubs (The High Fiving Guy)), and Al Leong (Big Trouble Little China, Die Hard, & Lethal Weapon). Seriously they were all very nice and I chatted with them for a bit, felt a surreal because some of them were in character which was cool.

It was a hell of an event and I could keep on going about how fantastic it is, but every Film & Comic nut has to go once in their life time. This experience has taught me that I have to to go San Diego Comic Con which is taking place right now. There are just some things in life that every man must do, and the San Diego Comic Con is the biggest thing for every nerd, the largest Pop Culture event in the world, so many gathered in one place.