Mid valley is Carrefour, this is what I hate about Hasbro's distribution here as you get dribs and drabs of the new waves all over the place which makes it a pain to find figures.

Think so, I've seen ROC in limited quantities in Tesco at the curve here

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Added on September 11, 2009, 1:44 am
One of my first dios I did in the late 90s





This post has been edited by dzirhan: Sep 11 2009, 01:44 AM

Guys, my bad, false alarm, the shop in the curve that carries the new wave of joes is a speciality shop and only had the Pit Commando left which I bought, no new joes in Tesco at all or metro, looks like we still have to wait.

Only one there, I don't think the shop took anymore than a case. Anyway, more old dios:


















This post has been edited by dzirhan: Sep 11 2009, 03:59 PM

There is stock, the problem is Habsro seems to have bought in a lot of figures and are restocking with the earlier waves which creates the problem as everyone already has those and would not be picking it up

No, problem on tips, for online tips, best place is joedios (www.joedios.com), where there is a how to section in the forum where you can see tips and ask for advice, not only that, they also have printable stuff in the files section to help with backdrop and accessories. And this site, as the guy is a real master at it; http://capolan.tripod.com/
On doing dios, these are my basic thoughts:



First, have an idea of what you want to do, and then figure out what you have to do for the dio, don't be afraid to change things mid-way if you need to

there are three types of dios really, which you can also combo:

1) Natural backdrop - These just involve taking your figures or vehicles and posing them outdoors as you can see in some of my dios, these are the easiest to do, just scout out a location, get your stuff and pose them and then take pictures, the main problems are:

a) you have to be careful of things that make your stuff look out of scale, eg grass stalks (when I take pics in the garden, I end up weeding first ) or background things like walls, houses, people etc, that soldiers in the field dio won't look too impressive when you can see part of a house in the background

b) You have to be careful not to lose stuff, especially accesssories when you are doing the shot outdoors, worse if you try for the beach.

c) If you're in a public place, the chances of dealing with people siboking or people looking at you like you're a wierdo goes up

d) Weather, as your figures are made of plastic, too much sun causes them to shine from the reflection of the sun, making them look less realistic, similar in rain etc, the water drops on the figures just look out of scale,

2) Photoshop - Easiest way, take pictures of your stuff and then photoshop the background, only drawback is just personal to me, as I consider it a little bit cheating to do so, though it is very good when you want to add effects, dialouge etc.

3) Set building - The most time intensive effort as you basically build your background set, you can build it from scratch which a number of people do but this does require you to have time to build and paint the set or glue printed walls and after that figure out where to store the set. People normally use foamcore as building materials but wood etc all can be used. Sometimes you can go for a half build in that you convert an existing shelf, box, etc to your set and slap the printable wall patterns available online on the walls and floors and that's that. Sometimes it helps to walk around a hardware or even shelf store and you might be stuck by the fact that you can use what you see to build a set or dio set. The other way is to use existing toy playsets, the beauty of these is that you don't have to work too much building these and once done you can easily dismantle or store it easily away, I nowadays use the Gundam Mechanical Chain base sets by kotobukiya and build it according to what I need, the problem is these bases are as far as I know, are no longer available since people have been picking them up, I found that out myself these last week or so as I wanted to get additonal sets and found none were available. As always it's always good to walk around and look, but rule no. 1 is always make sure you get them cheap or on clearence
The other thing about set building is that you also have to think about the accessories or backdrop that would be in such a location, if it's a repair bay, then you should have tools etc, if a hospital, then medical equipment. All this requires you to look at other toylines (particularly gashaphon which can be a great source for minature items or some time look at souvenier shops where they sometimes have stuff that works with 3 3/4 scale. Again it really depends on how much you want to get into it, I have about two boxes of stuff that can be use in dios which makes it easy for me whenever I want to build a dio set etc. My only problem is that I don't do as much dios as I should considering the stuff I have

So that's my basic take on it, feel free to ask questions etc.

No problem, glad to help out.

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Added on September 12, 2009, 4:36 pm
New dio:







This post has been edited by dzirhan: Sep 12 2009, 04:36 PM

Figures in the US are $8 on the average so they should retail here based on the exchange rate at (8 x 3.5) which would be RM28 apiece actually, I don't think it's got to do with rights, purely Hasbro Malaysia being greedy. At the moment in country, we know from the store displays and speciality shop releases that Collection 2 wave 3 is here (the wave with the Pit Commando) so that will come out eventually here, Collection 1 wave 3 and wave 4 is staring to come out in the states now so we're not that far behind and there may be a chance we'll see it, keep in mind Hasbro does have to take a certain amount of stuff from the US Hasbro so there's still a slim possibility we'll still get joes.

I'll wait for it to show at TRU as I can get Star card points for the purchase

Ashnic, welcome and the guys here have pretty much listed where you can get the 25th Anniversary and ROC stuff and as mention there aren't many stores here, I have some extras from 25th and the earlier lines, will PM you after Raya as have to sort my stuff out and get the list put together.

Yup, RM64.90 is the standard price, no way a three pack would be cheaper than a single figure alone

No prob, we all make mistakes. On another note I'm highly annoyed that the Singapore TRUS have been getting some great True Heroes military toys and the latest power team elite stuff and we have yet to get anything save for a small amount of True Heroes set which consists of repackaged Chap Mei stuff that has already been sold here.

Haha , no that's combat heroes, True Heroes (the name probably a play on TRU) is TRUs brandname where they repackaged Chap Mei, Power Team elite and other brand military toys under a common package, they are located in most TRU heres at the toy vehicles aisle (the KLCC one) or somewhere near the action figures aisle (1 U). So far we have a repackaged Chap Mei jeep and sandbagged position, and Chap Mei Little Bird helicopter, there's a third one with a mini-vehicle and sandbagged position shown on the box but haven't seen this around. The 1U one also has two packs of Chap Mei figures there.

yup, that's the one i was talking about, sorry made a mistake with the sandbagged position coming with the jeep, I have the jeep already but might pick up another one if nothing new shows up

Yes, go to the TRU counter first and get the TRU staff there to swipe your Starcard on the stuff you want to buy then they or you can take it to the Parkson payment counter where you pay for it and use your parkson gift voucher and get your bonuslink recorded. Did that the last time I bought stuff there.

Crap, there was nothing there yesterday morning

Welcome, momo, I see you have the defense mech from the old line which is a nice piece, have two of them myself

Unfortunately not. They bought them into Malaysia years ago and because they were like mechs, even non-joe fans snapped them up, Byanryan cleared the last lot of them that time, I wish I'ed bought more but at that time cash was short. Funny enough, despite the spytroops and early valor vs venom line being bought in here, I see very little on the local secondary market, guess people really bought them as toys or they were bought by collectors who aren't letting go of them

TRU didn't have them because from what I gathered this is what occurred; after taking an initial large stock of joes, none of the dept stores or TRU were keen to take more as they had not yet sold what they had and Hasbro had the later Valor vs Venom stuff sitting in the warehouse and they then decided to pull the plug on bringing in joes, the stuff in the warehouse, which included the defence mech, some other small vehicles, the Thunderwing Jet and Patriot Grizzly tank were cleared off through warehouse sales, selected speciality stores and Carrefour which resulted in those collecting joes missing out on some of these stuff.
The same thing is currently happening, I see most of the Pit dio displays all have the Singer Jeep, Flak cannon and red colour Claw vehicle being used in them when they never even showed up on the mainstream shelves here.

I should clarify a bit over same thing happening, what I meant is that currently the stock is currently sitting in Hasbro's warehouse because nobody is taking it since they still have the first wave to clear, the Pit Commando wave has been coming out very sparingly and I suspect there's a fair bit sitting in the warehouse. The danger is that Hasbro may choose to put on hold bringing in later waves because of this and that the stuff in the warehouse might be down the line clearenced without us knowing.

This post has been edited by dzirhan: Sep 28 2009, 12:21 AM