Showing posts with label luck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label luck. Show all posts

Wednesday, 5 February 2014

nanoblock Fukusuke Review

Reviewed by StealthEagle

Name: Fukusuke
Japanese name: 福助
Category: Mini Collections
Level: 2
Item Code: NBC_102


Fukusuke is a traditional china doll in Japan commonly associated with bringing good luck and prosperity to people and businesses. He is also one of the auspicious icons of the Japanese New Year. You can read more about Fukusuke by clicking here

Contents of the Package

I was attracted by the vibrant colours of the packaging and the blocks inside, and so I decided to get it as a future reference for creating human figures.

For someone who is out of the collecting scene, I was happy to see that the instructions are big enough so anyone doesn’t have to use a magnifying glass to read. There is a block count for each step so you can pick out the required blocks before building; I guess Kawada learnt some stuff from Lego.

There was one thing that puzzled me the most; no base plate was included.

360° of the completed model

My only complaint about this build was how difficult the first 2 steps were; it was very annoying to see blocks of the 1st layer shifted when I tried building the second layer. After getting the first few hurdles, everything went smoothly.

I love how the distinctive appearance like the shape and colours of Fukusuke’s kamishimo is captured beautifully in blocky style. If I don’t know the name of this little charm, I would have thought he is a caricature of a old Japanese cartoon .

As usual, Kawada is very generous on giving lots of extra blocks although there is very use of them unless I dissembled the Fukusuke model.

Extra flesh coloured and special blocks after building

I would like to see more of these Japanese lucky charms by Kawada in the future. Not only these are fun to collect, they are also educational to people who are interested in the culture of Japan.


Thanks to StealthEagle for this review.


Saturday, 22 October 2011

nanoblock Maneki Neko Review


Difficulty: Level 2
Time to Complete: 20 mins
No of Blocks: 150+
Item Code: NBC-031
Price: RM33.90



The Maneki Neko (招き猫, literally "Beckoning Cat"; also known as Welcoming Cat, Lucky Cat, Money cat, or Fortune Cat) is a common Japanese sculpture, often made of ceramic, which is believed to bring good luck to the owner.

The nanoblock Maneki Neko set comes in a zip-lock bag packaging, with over 150+ pieces of building blocks, and a sheet of instruction paper to show you how to build your own Maneki Neko lucky cat.

The packets of blocks and instruction paper

This is a "Level 2" nanoblock set, so it is fairly simple and you should be able to build it quite quickly. I was able to build this in about 20 minutes. The build process is straight forward and nothing really tricky. Stickers are also provided with different "wishes", so you can pick and choose which one you want to stick on your Maneki Neko. Here are some pics of the build process.




Finished Maneki Neko with the leftover blocks and stickers

And here is the final result. This cute Maneki Neko stands at just 5.5cm tall and fits right in the palm of your hands.









This nanoblock Maneki Neko set retails at RM33.90, and you can get them from many Toys R Us, Action City, Kinokuniya, Popular Bookshop and XL Shop in Malaysia now.  You can also find it in my Amazon.com store. 

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