Reallocating Figurines

Bye bye boxes
"After many long years of conquering and enslaving collectibles in the holy name of personal hobby, be it Gunpla kits, action figures or gashapon, I learned that there are a few evil treacherous forces out there that would constantly rise up and challenge the progress of my conquest. One of them is money, and another one is space.

In the past, money used to be my number one enemy. However, when one becomes a mercenary (employee) and start receiving monthly tribute (salary) for his service (work), money is no longer a threat to the great ambition of pillaging for more loot here and there. But space, how persistently annoying this foe is. The more victories in combat that one celebrates (more items bought), the louder space laughs at him as it prepares another mental plague on him about how to store the prizes. Oh how I hate thou, storage issue!"

From the lost book of "Kingdom of Hobby: War for Space" Chapter 1.

Mentioned back in late May about how I was having a massive reallocation of many of my collectibles to free up more space for, well, more hobby stuff to come in. ^^; Storage issue has really hit me, especially since last year. Many of the items I bought came in really huge boxes, some are very nice designs, but some are quite unnecessary I would say. ^^; Nonetheless, with stuff piling up, it's just a matter of time before my room explode. ^^;

Although I "cleared out" 3 Master Grade kits for other completed kits to share their boxes, it's definitely not a good solution to the entire storage problem. Even though I like working on several kits in one go, having so many on the list makes me uneasy. ^^; When so many parts are off their runners waiting to be worked on, there's always the concern that the smaller ones might go on permanent AWOL if their boxes are not handled carefully, and I certainly do not enjoy having that concern on my mind every now and then. ^^;

The easier way out is to empty the boxes of action figures instead, hence the title of this posting. The actual figures can be assigned to new homes, while the boxes can be flatten and stored so I won't lose any of those nicely done box design and images. The clear plastic trays that protect all the figurines in the boxes have to go, unfortunately. As the "chosen" casualties of this operation, they will go into the blue bin, never to return. ^^;


So what about the new storage program for action figures that have lost their original boxes? I'm trying out a couple of ways actually.


Method 1: Zipper bags that are usually meant for storing food in the refrigerator. Apart from the obvious benefit of using the zipper to secure all content, this particular type is made of rather tough plastic, so it should be pretty helpful in protecting its "residents".


It's not a good idea having all the small accessories lumped into the bag together with the figures they belong to, so I'll use these convenient storage boxes to keep them instead. You have seen this used to store MG Shin Musha Gundam's spray-painted parts.
The smaller compartments are very useful for items that are of different sizes.


First one to go: Revoltech Yamaguchi Sengoku Basara Sanada Yukimura.


Label on the box containing the figure's accessories.


Stored together with Revoltech Yamaguchi Sengoku Basara Date Masamune.
It's deliberate arrangement! ^^


Figma Drossel's box needs to go too.


Using Figma's own zipper bag to store the figure before putting it inside the larger one.
Since it's there, might as well use it right? ^^


Revoltech Yamaguchi Arbalest.


Figma Drossel and Revoltech Arbalest in the same bag.


Revoltech Queen's Blade Alleyne


Figma Meiya Mitsurugi


Meiya's giant white ribbons and ponytail are removed before going into the zipper bag to avoid the parts getting damaged while in storage.


Revoltech Alleyne and Figma Meiya Mitsurugi in the same bag.


Figma Miyuki Winter Fuku and Summer Fuku Ver.


Figma Miyuki sharing the new storage with the other version of herself.
Sounds kind of creepy there for a while. ^^;


Revoltech Fraulein Pocco, Asuka, Yoko Movie Ver. and Yuki.


Method 2: clear food containers.



Since the boxes have fixed shape (as compared to zipper bag) and hard cover that is pretty secure in protecting the content, I didn't bother using smaller boxes for the accessories. that would otherwise require more space for each container.


From four boxes down to three, not really that space-saving it seems. ^^; That's quite true as older type Revoltech Fraulein's packaging used to just stick all accessories into the small box without much regards to showcasing them on the plastic tray.


Still some room in Yoko's container for another resident it seems, ^^; for future consideration when this storage issue turns dire I suppose ^^;



A look at what happened to the original boxes.


All the boxes for Gundam-type action figures have to go as well.
HCM-Pro boxes are especially space consuming. ^^;


Using clear containers that are of different size this time.


One container for two HCM-Pro items here: 00 Gundam and O Raiser.
Quite a highlight to the spaces used up by the plastic tray holding these two figures all this while. ^^;


One container for HCM-Pro Gundam Exia, where half of the storage is being occupied by the special display stand included.


The manuals have to be stored elsewhere since they don't fit inside the containers.


All the flatten boxes are retained.
There are quite a few large figures that I didn't bother to include on the list at all, say Yamato's 1/60 Complete Transformation SV-51γ Nora's Unit and RAH Chunli. Their large volume doesn't make much difference with or without their boxes actually.

Also, this is not the end to the entire reallocation exercise, perhaps unfortunately so. As new things continue to come in, old packages have to continuously go out to accommodate those newcomers. That really generates quite a bit of pressure on me, because as you can see from the images so far, all the boxes cleared belonged to figures that have already been reviewed on this blog. There are many items on the shelves I have yet to open since they arrived, some which dated all the way back to last year. I'm unwilling to get them out of the boxes just to save space without having any mood to really play with them, so I imagine many of them will continue to occupy the spaces they are currently in. ^^;

So, to conclude, this space war is going to rage on till no end. ^^;