Chaos and Kanji is the blog where I write about my adventures through Japan!

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Showing posts with label stickers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stickers. Show all posts

Thursday, May 3, 2018

Last Card: 2006 Lotte Pro Yakyu Seals

Lotte has its hands in a lot of things. At its heart a chocolate company, Lotte also has a chain of fast food restaurants in Korea and Japan and the most popular amusement park in Korea, called Lotte World. They own two baseball teams as well: the Giants in KBO and Marines in NPB. And I'm sure there's even more I've forgotten or just don't know about.

For collectors, Lotte is responsible for Bikkuriman, a very popular run of square-shaped stickers packaged with wafer candies. 

From 2006 to 2008, they played around with baseball stickers. In 2006, those came in two forms. One was a Bikkuriman set, featuring baseball players in Bikkuriman-style art. The other was a traditional card-sized sheet of stickers.

The Bikkuriman stickers would continue for three years, while the card-sized sticker sheets only lasted two years. Bikkuriman promotions occur occasionally still, but no full set has been issued since 2008.
I finally finished my 2006 sticker set, completing my run of all five sets. The last card I needed was this Kanemoto sheet, and I ended up buying a lot including this card out of desparation.

I'm certainly happy to cross this off my want list!

Monday, February 26, 2018

Japanese Disney Tsum Tsum Seal Collection Stickers: Collection "0"

About five years ago, a smartphone game was released in Japan called Tsum Tsum. Little, ball-shaped Disney characters fall from the top screen, and by connecting chains of them together, you can clear them off, earning points and coins. 

The game's backstory is that the Tsum Tsum toys fell off the shelf and you have to clear them off to open the store. Around the same time as the game's release, small plush toys that the game represents started hitting actual Disney shelves. The toys and the game are both very popular here and in other countries; a global version of Tsum Tsum was released a few years ago and a short-lived Marvel Tsum Tsum spin-off game ended a few months ago.

To be honest, the Marvel game took the same basic premise but changed a lot of the gameplay, adding missions of some kind. I never really understood exactly what that was supposed to be, and the game was much more difficult to play overall as the tsums were smaller and the play area was smaller as well. I'm not surprised it's gone.

Anyway, Disney Tsum Tsum remains highly popular, and in Japan there is a huge range of merchandise using the characters. You can even buy cookware with Tsum Tsums on it!

I play the original Japanese game - I've been playing since almost the beginning. And the card collector in me can't help but be interested in these collectible stickers. I've discovered three series so far, and I believe this is the first.

This particular set has no card numbers, where the other two series I'm aware of do have numbers. In fact, the stickers have no copyright information or other details at all, other than the Tsum Tsum logo. They were sold in taba packs, with two stickers per pack, and I am pretty sure they were made by Ensky. Ensky is the manufacturer of several non-sport products including stickers like these and regular trading cards, for everything from Disney to AKB48.

The fronts have color artwork of Tsum Tsum characters, with most of them being from early characters in the Tsum Tsum game. There are some characters that didn't make it into the game until much later. Given the timing of the other two series, I'm guessing this was released in 2014 or 2015. If this is actually a later series, it would have been released in 2016. Backs have gray scale versions of the front images.

Because there are no card numbers and I didn't have any information from the taba pack, I can't be certain about the set specifics. I have 45 different stickers, below, which might be a full set. Or there could be 60. Or 46. Who knows?

I didn't see any stickers from Collection 2 in this lot, and I'm pretty sure Collection 1 is also entirely unique. It's hard to tell for sure without spending a few hours checking, as many images are similar. But I believe this to be "Collection 0".

So, yes, here are the scans for my "full" set of Disney Tsum Tsum Seal Collection stickers.
 Card 1, with the back.