Toy Story Green Alien Speaker

Saw this at hmv when I bought the One Direction - Up All Night album on Saturday and I went crazy - almost like a little kid in the toy store and without even thinking, I picked the nicest looking one and went to the counter to make my payment (before I change my fickle mind)...

It's a Toy Story Green Alien Mini Speaker!! One of those that you can bring around in your bag because it's so small but still packed with loud sound. It also comes with a Stitch version for all the Lilo and Stitch lovers out there. And like I've said previously, I got it from the hmv at Somerset@313.

This mini speaker comes with a USB 2.0 cable for you to charge it, a 3.5mm plug which fits into most portable music players like your iPod or the likes as well as your iPhone and other phones which supports that jack. It runs on a rechargeable lithium battery so you only have to worry about it running out of battery as opposed to carrying a few extras around. And of course, it comes with the cute little green thing that you wish you were small enough so you can give it a hug.

Freed the green alien from it's cardboard prison! Even though this speaker is Made in China (Come on now~ What isn't Made in China these days?), the speaker looks adorable and not like those pirated and deformed ones that you might get a cheap places - like the pasar malam. I've seen some green alien products that look totally hideous but this is not one of them. In fact, the anatomy is pretty accurate in my opinion.

The sound is emitted from the top of the alien's head through these vents around the antenna. The antenna feels hard and sturdy but it gives me that fear of putting it inside my bag for fear that even though it feels strong, it might still break from all the action inside my bag. Therefore, I think I would put the speaker either in some sort of a case or at least on the top of everything else if I pack it into my bag.

I think the designer loves the "Pin the tail on the dockey" game too much and did it for the poor green alien by putting the 3.5mm input at somewhere near the butt. Tried it just now with my iPod Touch and the sound was pretty loud but that's because my room wasn't very noisy. Compared it to a X-Mini speaker and the loudness is pretty close. Bass is not as strong though but for a $29.90 speaker, you can't expect a Dolby sound system, yes? That USB port is where you plug in to charge your speaker using any Mini-USB to USB 2.0 cable.

The On/Off switch is located on the other side of the alien as seen above. Notice that little hole? That hole will indicate whether your alien is still charging or is already fully charged via color indication. Green being full charged and red meaning otherwise. The base of the alien is layered with a non-slip material so that your alien does not go running from you on slippery surfaces.

And that brings us to the end of this pretty useless review of this cute little thing~ Just had to take this photo of the original green alien figurines with the speaker because the quality is so good it's almost like the real deal! Gosh I love the green aliens so much!!

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One Direction - Up All Night (Limited Yearbook Edition)

I normally do not buy male albums or singles because I don't know... Female singers are more appealing to me? But this time round, while walking around hmv with my 20 dollar rewards card, I was searching high and low for something to buy and it didn't take me long to stop at the shelf with this...

One Direction's debut album released last year - Up All Night. Well, I honestly have no idea whether this new boy band is good or not but I kinda like their song "What Makes You Beautiful". That energy reminds me of the reason why I bought my first AAA album and this is one of those albums that made me go "I want to get that song!" Well, I saw the single on sale for $7.90 but the packaging wasn't as interesting as this one.

The album is packaged in this hard cover book - almost like how P!NK did her latest compilation but this one is the size of one of those poetry books my literature teacher gave me when I was in secondary school for scoring an A. The unique packaging is also another drawing factor for me to get this album - just to try their music out.

The reason why I went for the Yearbook edition is also because, like the sucker for freebies and bonuses that I am, this version their album comes with 2 bonus tracks and one of it is "Moments", one of my favorite ayu songs. Wonder how a same titled track would fare in a different language. Call me crazy (everybody does~) for spending that little bit more on cheap (or rather pricey) thrills like that.

The CD is stored in the first page inside a sleeve. On the opposite, you're greeted with a pretty cool handwritten message from the boys themselves. You don't see boys with this good handwriting nowadays, do you? I have not heard the album yet other than the first track so I can't really judge whether this album is good in terms of its music but the packaging is pretty attractive.

Look~ They even have a content page for their yearbook!! Coolness~ I hope the Japanese artistes would one day adopt this style of presenting their album because their packaging is getting a bit predictable these days.

For people like myself who have no idea who the heck One Direction is, this yearbook is pretty useful in introducing the band members to you. I think it's more useful for those fan girls because I'm honestly not very interested in what the guys like or anything. But~ That aside, the book is well laid out and is inspiring to look at visually with the tonnes of images inside.

Or, if you're lazy to read like myself, you could do the Wiki search. According to the search, these boys were the second runner up to the show "The X-Factor" and even though they lost, they managed to sign to a music label in which they released their debut album which did so well on the charts it became the 16th biggest album in the UK in year 2011. Amazing for starters no? But would they be just a band of Biebers like what my brother said? Only time can tell... The book also include trivia and backstage photos like what you see here.

What's good if you have a beautiful book without lyrics inside? The band featured lyrics in the book like what you see above and to make the lyrics even more special, they did it handwritten. Well, at least some of them are... The little drawings on the side may seem a bit cheesy but hey~ They are barely legal yet so I guess that's excusable. Besides, you doodle on your textbooks too, no? Don't be lyin'~

And if the whole book isn't "school" enough for you, they included 6 stickers for you to stick all over the place with. More freebies!! Who would complain?

Overall, I say this album (at least this Yearbook Edition) is packed with more than just music (which until now, I have no clue whether it's good or bad but it should be reasonable considering that they did do well on the charts). It's packed with a lot of fun in terms of the content as well as interesting and fun photos to look at. The packaging is definitely inspiring and not something you get every other day and is worthy of collecting.

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A CLIP BOX 1998 - 2011 ayumi hamasaki (Regular edition)

After over a month of hiatus from blogging about CDs / DVDs, I'm finally back with my new arrival which arrived last week (not that new anymore, is it?) - A CLIP BOX 1998 - 2011 ayumi hamasaki, which was originally released in Japan on January 1, 2012. What a way to start a new year in Japan, no?

Unfortunately though, due to my shallow pocket and constantly depleting fund, I could only afford the Hong Kong press of this DVD box set containing EVERY SINGLE PV that ayumi hamasaki had ever shot since her debut from 1998. That's means this box set contains 12 years worth of her work! And on top of that, it also includes her commercials for her albums, singles as well as other random items.

Sigh~ The deluxe version is so much better, you know? Here's how the deluxe version looks like...

Source: ayumi hamasaki Official Japanese Website

First of all, it comes with this black furry bag with this really adorable pom-pom key chain which, as a guy, I would obviously not use. The consoling thing for not ordering the deluxe version is probably so that I can save my money away. I mean, why would I need a furry bag as a guy?

Other than that, instead of 3 DVD cases that the Hong Kong press came with, it comes with 6 DVD boxes that when you piece them together, you get ayu's "A". Cool, no?

Sigh~ Maybe I should start begging for sponsorship to run this blog. :P Idea!!


Anyway, back to the regular edition one... SIGH!!

At least I took all the pictures on this blog myself as far as possible, yes? Like I've previously mentioned, this box basically contains everything that ayu had every released before in her albums. So if you had been purchasing her CD-only albums, this box set is a must have to have a complete collection of all her promotional videos since "poker face" all to way to her latest mini-album "FIVE". Love the hot pink curtain but I don't really love the font. The "P" in "Clip" is a little hard to read.

The Chinese promotional sticker on the plastic cover of the box set. It basically translate to whatever I've said earlier.

The Hong Kong press normally comes with an obi over the actual boxes of albums that I've bought. But that obi is written in Chinese so that people in Hong Kong (or where ever else) who can't read English or Japanese can understand what the heck the box is trying to tell them. Here, I've removed the obi and threw it away because it's pure ugly anyway to reveal the English text behind - which is basically the LOOOOONNNNGGG track list of this box set.

The spine of the box set and a clearly "P" in "Clip". I believe the Japanese limited edition version is slightly thicker as it houses each individual DVD in their own casings as opposed to how the Hong Kong press is all compacted into 3 casings. Oh well~ That's for not being them rich people...

The DVDs housed instead the rather sturdy cardboard box. Did I mention that along with the DVDs, a pretty thick lyric booklet is included inside as well? The lyric booklet features the lyrics of all the songs that are presented in this gorgeously pink box set as well as 3 spreads of the screen grabs of all her promotional videos which I will show off later on.

The DVDs placed side by side. I don't understand why the Hong Kong version doesn't want to adopt the 6 DVD casing like what the Japanese press did because honestly, I don't think it's that expensive to include a few more plastic boxes right? Having just these three rather warm colors make the whole palette of the box set slightly unbalanced, in my opinion, and therefore, I'm honestly not really loving the design of what's inside the gorgeous cardboard sleeve.

On top of that, that font is really hurting my eye, especially the P!! It's so difficult to read~! Other than that, I think they could have did a better job with the design as opposed to just printing the names after names of the videos featured in this box set all over the box and just conveniently making different colors for different casings. Sorry, I'm just being damn critical here. :S How about using the screen grabs instead? Good idea right? At least there's more to feast your eyes on.

Nothing really special about the DVD. 2 DVDs in a single casing with a pretty basic design. Considering that there are 6 DVDs in total, I don't think it would be fair to fault them for making the design so simple so I'll pass.

And here's the lyric booklet - probably the thickest one I've ever seen in my life. It contains over 100 lyrics of each of the songs featured in this box set. The cover is the same as what you see on the cardboard sleeve. Nothing much to complain about. Must add that the print quality of the booklet is top notch though~ Good job!!

First page of the booklet displays the long track list of the entire box set as well as the commercials. They did not name each and every commercial out for the simple reason that it would spill over to the next page if they did as you know, ayu probably did as many commercials as she did music videos. But having the commercials also featured in this box set is a fantastic selling point of this album as the only other place you can probably catch the commercials is on Youtube.

The lyrics in the booklet are laid out cleanly and differentiate via color codes to tell the reader which song belongs to which DVD. Nothing really special. Love that blue though~ Would really love to have one of the DVD casings in this blue as opposed to just pink, yellow and orange.

The only pictures that you can find in the extremely "Wall-Of-Text" lyric booklet are these screen grabs of ayumi in her music videos. Honestly, if it wasn't for these spreads, I would have forgotten how some of the music videos looked like because I've probably only watched some of them once or twice only. One thing to note though - the DVD is not listed in chronologically order for some weird reason but I think we can all live with that, no?

Another spread - this time with yellow lines. Pardon my hands in these photos because it's really hard to get the booklet spread out without causing too much damage to the spine. It's also a challenge to put it flat on the surface for me to photograph.

Blue lines - very Tron, no?

And finally on the last page, ayu thanks her staff and fans in English for supporting her. I wonder if she did this in the Japanese version or not but who cares~ At least she's thankful for the support that everyone had given her.

I think overall, the box set is definitely worth the money because it collects every single videos ever made by ayumi into a single product that everyone can enjoy and on top of that, what really attracted me to get this set are all the commercials that she did. We all know that ayu had did many witty and funny ones and I can't wait to have the time to watch them all. Design wise though, I think the box set could have done more to make itself look so much better but oh well~ Maybe it's just the Hong Kong press one...



And to close this entry, I would like to thank y'all readers who managed to stumble onto this blog to read and share the unboxing of the many albums together and for reading my rants on what I dislike and for agreeing with what I like in terms of the packaging of these albums. I hope you enjoy the photos as well as the words and as much as possible, I will bring you more of such reviews to keep this blog alive!!

Thanks y'all!! :D

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