If you find that you cannot visit this site and you receive a nice, “Thanks for all the SPAM!” message, then you can be pretty assured that 1) I received all of your spam and 2) I don’t need any more.

Because seriously.

Between all the awesome porno ads and offers of free Cialis, Levitra, and Viagra, I will need another one hundred years before I need any more!

Ham, on the other hand, I will always be able to use more of.

Thanks for all the SPAM!
~ Aith

Guess who fought through the overseas holiday shipping rush and caught the first plane ride home to me and arrived via regular airmail in ONE WEEK flat?

THIS pointy-eared, pointy-toothed, teal-colored, food-loving Munchlax, that’s who!

Soft, smooth-furred, squashy but firm, and sitting over 60cm tall, what’s NOT to love about this plush Munchlax?

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PRODUCT – 5+/5
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AT FIRST GLANCE:

When I said that the plush Munchlax is soft, smooth-furred, squashy but firm, and sits over 60cm tall, I was not joking in any way, shape, or form.

Examining the plushie from all sides shows that the Munchlax is not only well-stuffed but stuffed mostly evenly as well.

If you look especially at the ears, you will notice the complementary symmetry between them and this sense of symmetry is repeated throughout the rest of the plushie’s structure which makes the plushie very nice to look at and gives the plushie a sense of quality.

Added to that sense of quality is the simple fact that the plushie Munchlax actually LOOKS like a Munchlax. From its carefully embroidered-on eyes and paw pads to its two little teeth and two pointy ears and the extra layer of fur covering his lower body, this plush Munchlax has few competitors when it comes to both quality and adherence to canon in terms of its appearance.

Have a look!

What a match, yeah?

MATERIAL WORLD:

Though the pictures don’t do any justice, the outer material – a very short-haired fur-like + flannel-like blend – used for the plushie is of very high quality which results in the plushie having a bit of a lustrous shine and being super smooth and super soft to the touch.

Unlike plushies crafted with longer-haired fur material, this Munchlax plushie is less likely to shed, is less prone to collecting dust, and is – hopefully you will never have to do this – easier to clean.

Smoother and silkier to touch and easier to care for – what’s not to love?

Moving on to the details, the Munchlax plushie has no hard parts as most stuffed toys typically do for eyes, nose, and/or a mouth. Instead, the felt-like eyes have the pupils embroidered on and the eyes are sewn on like patches are and so are the brown pads of his feet. The claws of his paws are crafted of a rougher felt-like material and the end result is a stuffed plush Munchlax who is squashable everywhere without a single hard piece of crafting hardware anywhere.

TAG TIME:

To be honest, I had been shopping around for a plush Munchlax for a long while before I ended up selecting the one I did. I wasn’t a fan of how some of them looked and I definitely wasn’t a fan of some of the prices, either. As the plushie would be for my own personal enjoyment and my own personal enjoyment only, having a branding tag wasn’t too terribly important to me.

That being said, when I purchased this plush Munchlax, I purchased it with the notion that it came with no hang tags (hanging tags) or tush tags (little branding and care slip that is usually attached to the rear end of the plush) as the product pictures didn’t show any tags whatsoever despite the plushie being labeled as being manufactured by Banpresto.

Imagine my surprise, then, to see this:

Tags!

A folded, glossy, cardstock-printed hang tag from Banpresto and a Banpresto tush tag indicating the year it was manufactured and from what series!

Opening up the hang tag reveals that the hang tag is tri-folded and that on the inside of the hang tag is space to register yourself as the Munchlax’s ‘Trainer’ (I’m sure it’s ‘owner’, but people don’t ‘own’ Pokemon, yeah?).

In addition, there is an inscription on the inside of the tag that reads: For Use as Prize in Japan Only.

For those of you who are familiar with that phrase, you probably know what those words mean. To those of you who aren’t, it means that this plushie was originally manufactured as a prize for use in an official UFO Catcher Doll machine which is a claw machine game where you slot in money and maneuver a claw around to try and grab a hold of an item (in this case, UFO Catcher dolls!) in the machine.

More a skill-based game combined with a bit of gambling, the prize inside the machine ‘costs’ as much as the money you spent in attempting to get the prize and that is if you managed to snag the prize in the first place.

As a fan of claw games whose skills need (a lot of) polishing, I can tell you you right off the bat that grabbing this Munchlax plushie would be nothing short of a royal headache. Rotund, smooth, and with precious few protruding parts, grabbing this Munchlax would be like trying to grab ahold of… well… a very round Munchlax!

Man oh man.

Maaan oh man.

OVERALL:

To close this review, I’m going back to my original sentiments.

Soft, smooth-furred, squashy but firm, sitting over 60cm tall, and looking like the real Munchlax from the Pokemon series, what’s NOT to love about this plush Munchlax?

Absolute nothing, that’s what!

Geebuz, but I can’t help but love this plush Munchlax!

Over and out,
Aith

It has to do with the online world and since I haven’t been doing much online traversing nowadays, I figured I might as well talk about an online scam I ran into recently.

So the latest in online via email IRS tax scamming and information phishing is this little gem here that goes something like this:

This was copied and pasted directly from my email.

Poor grammar, a random spammy message that didn’t show up until the copy and paste (the bit about James and Joseph – WTF, man? the hell does THAT have anything to do with my taxes?), and the fact that I never signed up for the website in the FIRST place (much less made a tax payment) red flagged this message as a “phishing” attempt or some sort of scam attempt.

To test my theory and suspicions, I opened up the link in a virtual environment where the worst that could happen would be limited to that one virtual environment and… guess what? My antivirus software went nuts over it – complaining that the link linked to malicious malware or a site that contained malicious malware.

Awesome.

When I checked online, sure enough, I found a message posted by the IRS that warned people of similar scams.

The link to the official IRS article is HERE and an excerpt of the website page is here:

So yeah.

Scam, fraud, and phishing attempt confirmed which means: DON’T click on those links if you get similar sorts of emails!

But that’s not all!

After about a few weeks of receiving such emails and reporting each one as phishing, I started receiving emails with subject titles like this:

Notification: Federal Tax Payment Batch Has Been Rejected

ORLY?

Company Federal Tax Payment Batch Has Been Failed

‘Has Been Failed’?

EFTPS notification: your account is blocked

Ahhh yes. My nonexistent account would be blocked because of… why?

And they just keep coming.

And coming.

And coming.

And I keep reporting…

And reporting…

And reporting.

And so should you.

Over and out,
Aith

Have you ever bought an item or won an item in an auction on eBay thinking that you had won an item of a specific sort only to receive the package… and then realize that there were surprises in store for you?

It’s been a while since I’ve received any surprises through eBay auctions, but I guess my Tonberry card was feeling neglected because it suddenly activated on me and what was already a good bargain became a VERY unexpected (but much appreciated!) steal of a deal.

The item in question that became a steal of a deal is this:

Originally, I was bidding – or I thought I was bidding – on just that – the Pokemon HeartGold version boxed game with the manuals and Pokewalker accessory for the Nintendo DS and DS Lite.

After some communication with the seller to (ironically) confirm the contents of the auction, I made my bid and then won the auction for less than $30.00 with Priority shipping included.

Because I wanted to catch the Nintendo Wi-Fi Mew event before October 30, I asked the seller if they would mind shipping it with Priority if I volunteered to pay the additional shipping. They agreed to it and promised to try and ship ASAP as long as I could make my payment in time.

The payment was made faster than you could yell “Pokemon!” and after that, it became a waiting game… that lasted a grand total of two days. The package shipped on Monday and it reached me on Wednesday (today).

I was definitely anticipating the arrival of the package so I was really happy (and relieved!) to see the package in my mailbox and after taking care of the other pieces of not-so-interesting mail, I set up my table to get ready for a photography session.

In the middle of cutting open the bubble envelope, I realized that the package inside… was bigger than my SoulSilver box.

Wait… what? What was going on? Didn’t I buy the HeartGold version of the game?

I hurriedly cut away the rest of the top of the envelope, reached inside, and pulled out THIS:

WHOA! Talk about surprises!

Here I thought I had won an auction for the game set ONLY… only to receive the Wal-Mart limited edition bundle set that includes the boxed game with the Pokewalker accessory, a Ho-oh and HeartGold-themed Pokewalker jacket with a wrist strap, and a Ho-oh figurine!

Since I had only purchased the game set with no extras I thought that maybe some of the items in the bundle were probably missing and so I opened up the box and pulled everything out to see what the deal was.

Maaan oh man. Just take a LOOK at this!

I was kind of expecting for something or other to be missing since I had made the assumption that I was buying the game set only (the game box with its contents that you saw in a earlier picture), but inspection of my package shows that NOTHING is missing.

The limited edition Ho-oh figurine is there and so is the limited edition Pokewalker jacket cover with its matching wrist strap. Despite the box being a bit squashed in some places, everything packaged inside the box is in near-mint condition.

I guess when the seller told me that everything was nearly new and barely used, they really meant it because… wow. Just… wow.

Yeah.

I’m definitely surprised and for once, it’s in a good way!

Not only did I receive my package in record time for it having traveled across the country, but I received way more than I had bargained for besides.

Way, way cool.

To the seller who sold me this item, “THANK YOU; you really made my day and I hope you like the glowing feedback I left for you!”

Over and out,
Aith