The Beginning of the Aftermath

Several redundancies were announced last week. The remaining Commerical Manager, one of the Property sales reps and the two Senior Designers. Of these latter two, one was gutted, the other quite stoic.

Oddly, despite the apparent popularity of one of them, virtually nothing has been said about what a sad loss he'll be. Absolutely nothing from Editorial (where one of his 'special' friends now works), and very little from Sales. Either he's really not as popular as he seems (to think he is) or everyone's too panicked by the current economic situation.

In more positive news, last weekend was the London Expo... which was an improvement on the last in some ways (queueing was far better handled) but not in others ('early entry' still started after 9am, and the queue didn't finish till about 10am, which is standard entry time and, by that time, the hall was already quite full of people). I managed to get a birthday present for a friend - an Indiana Jones Mr Potato Head - and a few cool bits for myself, including a trio of Gundam kits - Gundam Thrones Eine, Zwei and Drei - because their serial number starts with my initials. My reason for buying Eine got a laugh out of one of the guys manning the Gundam Nation stand, and he insisted that I'd want all three "because they combine into an enormous gun" - not strictly true: the gun is mounted on Eine, then Zwei and Drei plug into it via ports on Eine's back.

I've been quite fortunate on eBay, too... I recently nabbed BotCon 2008 attendee souvenir figures Megatron, Rodimus and Divebomb, then got the Micron Legend (aka Armada) X-Dimension Air Defence Team (Star Sabre molded with transparent and bright orange plastic, going nicely with the blue version I picked up at Memorabilia!), then BotCon 2008 Evil Jazz (the only part of the box set that interested me in the slightest. All came at fairly reasonable prices, considering their rarity. Pictures may follow later, if I can get my act together...

When it comes to reasonable prices, though, this year's Japanese Wonderfest Exclusive TransFormer - the G1 deco Movie Arcee - generally goes for about $200 on eBay... Just today, I've snagged one for a mere $100 and change - working out at just over £60, including the shipping from Japan.