Sailor Moon Collectibles Roundup: Atsumete Figure for Girls and Shittenou Rubber Straps

It's time for everybody's favorite feature on this blog: the Sailor Moon Collectibles Roundup! I'm your host, Miss Scarlett, and I welcome you to my nerdy little corner of the internet called the Hobby Haven! Today, I've got two pieces of merch to oooh and ahhh over, so mosey on over while we take a gander! (Everything's after the jump!)

All hail to the wonderful Miss Momo, who gifted this to me for my birthday! This is part of Banpresto's "Girls' Memories" figure series. Specifically, this is the "Atsumete Figure for Girls" line; these are the cutesy super-deformed style, unlike the normal Girls' Memories figures, which are more straight-up regular figurines. The Atsumete line has been released in two waves so far: the first has Sailors Moon, Mercury, and Mars; the second wave has Sailors Jupiter and Venus, and Princess Serenity.

These are based on Sailor Moon Crystal, by the way, so there will be little costume differences here and there. You can get these at Barnes and Noble stores or their website for about $15. Here's a shot of Sailor Venus in front of her box. You can see the Toei sticker of approval on the top flap there.

You can see the other figures in the same wave listed here on the back. It's...er...a little hard to see, which I must apologize for. Curse you, poor lighting!

Venus here is adorable! She's about two and a half inches tall, not counting the bow. Since she's based on the design from Crystal, her bow is pinkish red, and she is wearing her trademark Love Me Chain around her waist. The paint job on this is very well done, and I like how the orange parts of her uniform are soft and pearly. It's a very pastel take on Venus' color scheme, tying into Crystal's more pastel color palette. She's made of a softer plastic, a little like the Petit Chara. Like them, she doesn't move or have any articulation. Alas.

Here, you can see her from the back. She comes with a stand that sort of clips her in around the head. It's not a perfect fit, and you have to wedge her a little bit. The base has the same type of scrollwork and designs that the Petit Chara's stands do; it's probably easier to see in the last photo.

I really like this line, and it's comparable price-wise with the Petit Chara, but has the benefit of being domestically available. I honestly think I prefer these, in fact!

And here is probably the greatest impulse buy I have ever made at a bookstore. To clarify: Momo and I made a shopping pilgrimage to Kinokuniya earlier. While we were browsing through their gashapon selection, to what do my wandering eyes appear but the first piece of Shittenou merchandise I have ever seen in the wild! I'd actually seen pictures of this on Sailor Moon collectible sites, but couldn't find anyplace to get them. I'd shrugged and moved on, but it's a different story when they're two inches away from your hands and only $8. So while I normally tell you guys where you can get them online, I'll have to bow out because I have no clue.

The keychain set features the Shittenou, or the Four Heavenly Kings, the henchmen of Queen Beryl in the show's first season. As the logo shows, this is from Sailor Moon Crystal, hence the redesign with flowier hair. The little colored orbs have each character's name on them, by the way.

The back features artwork from the show, oodles of warning labels ("Don't eat these. Don't set them on fire. These are not toys, they are art pieces."), plus official licensing stickers.

We'll use Jedite Jadeite Jedaito ジェダイト JED-CHAN as our example here. (I give up on what the correct Romanization for any of their names are.) As you can see, these are keychains; the keychain strap itself is a thin cord. It's fairly strong, but annoyingly bent into an L-shape from being wedged into the packaging. I couldn't get it to straighten out. Jed himself is about 2.5 inches tall, give or take. The rubber material feels soft and is pliable, but doesn't feel like it would tear easily. The coloring is nice, although I do worry about these picking up dirt. The design is surrounded by a black and a purple outline.

The purple is undoubtedly a carryover from the back, which is a really pretty shade of warm purple. You can see the PNP logo (Naoko Takeuchi's company) on the back, letting you that the merch is legit. Not much, other than that. 

For $8, this set is a terrific deal; you get 4 well-made keychains of obscure characters, and it comes out to $2 per keychain. Can't beat that! Kinokuniya does switch out their merchandise, so if you live near one of their locations, you might or might not be able to find this. The value of the set would obviously depend on how big a fan you are of the Shittenou; if it was more than $20, I wouldn't have picked it up. So while you might be able to get this imported, I'd urge you to keep an eye on price.

Miss Scarlett suggests: If you want budget-priced, easily obtainable mini figure, check out the Girls' Memories Figures!