Long-time listeners of the SpeakerPODcast may have noticed the soft spot that several of us have for retro games and retro game characters. Well, The Akihabara Container must have been listening, because their most recent popup  shop ticks all the right boxes. While they’ve previously held SNK and Samurai Shodown events, their latest popup shop is dedicated entirely to SNK’s originl nippon ichi gal herself, Mai Shiranui.
And by that, we mean the entire store is dedicated to Mai, in all her various versions and iterations over the years. How many videogame characters are popular enough to get their own store?

The popup shop features a giant Mai standee, prints of various fighting game win screens, original art, classic posters, apparel, various nick-nacks and, most importantly, NEO GEO LAND branded merch! Check out the photo gallery after the jump!

The 8th annual Tengu Modelers exhibit was held today at Yoronotaki Research Center in West Ikebukuro.

A 1-day only event, the theme of this year’s exhibit’s was music-related models and was headlined by a custom-made 1:20 scale kit bashed VF-1S (Hikaru type) from Do You Remember Love by none other than Max Factory founder Max Watanabe himself.

Max Watanabe himself was present and we had a chat with him about Max Factory’s 1:20 scale Valkyrie line… but that’s a story for a future podcast!

In the meantime here’s a small gallery of pics, including an amazing custom diorama of the cover of Hiroko Moriguchi’s recent best selling Gundam cover album, Eureka 7, Fooly Cooly and even Death Stranding.

As we discussed during the last episode of the SpeakerPODcast, the 59th All Japan Model & Hobby Show was held at Tokyo Big Sight on September 28-29, 2019.

While there were no major Macross-related new toy announcements at this year’s show, there were plenty of model kits past and present on display. The following is a gallery of some pics we took, in order of franchise.

DH Builders Circle – a group of hobby modelers – held a their Halloween meet up on October 19 this year. Surprisingly, one of the stand out entries at the event, and one which had a fairly constant crowd of admirers, was a collection of custom Koenig Monster destroids.

Here’s a gallery of a few of them. Enjoy!