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Initial D: Useless merchandising

Was browsing on Amazon and Ebay and it amazed me there was a huge amount of useless merchandising for Initial D fans. And I don’t mean useless merchandising like some tofu sticker to stick on your wannabe tofuboy Silvia S12 with panda paint scheme. Here is my top 3 useless merchandising:

On number three:
useless initial d merchandising on ebay: poker card deck
Initial D Playing poker card deck

Of course you can play poker with this, but not without being laughed at! And what is the deal with the Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86 being the Joker?? Is this a joke??

On number two:
useless initial d merchandising on Amazon: plush 12 inch trueno
Initial D: AE86 Trueno Car 12-inch plush

A plush Trueno?? What am I supposed to do with it? Sit on it? Or sleep with it?

On number one:
useless initial d merchandising on Amazon: screw driver set
Initial D 86 Trueno Carbon Bonnet Mini Screw Driver Set

Amazing! A screwdriver set inside the Panda Trueno AE86!! Why? What has this to do with Initial D? Am I missing the link here?? And if this is the normal type, what other types do we have?? And the screwdrivers look like they will break upon loosening any screw! What is that good for?

Otaku car festival

No, this is not about auto-otakus who love JDM machinery like me, but cars of real Japanese otakus in Tokyo.

The otaku car festival featured many many cars all dressed up with anime/manga figures and stickers. Highlights are a Ferrari F430 spider, Lancia Stratos and a BMW M5.

I was looking through the photo gallery and did not really find any interesting JDM cars for the auto-otakus, except for some skylines in the background.

However I did notice these two Toyota Corolla Levins AE101:
Levin AE101 on otaku car festival front
Toyota Corolla Levin AE101 #1 front view

Levin AE101 on otaku car festival side
Toyota Corolla Levin AE101 #1 side view

Levin AE101 on otaku car festival front
Toyota Corolla Levin AE101 #2 front view

Levin AE101 on otaku car festival side
Toyota Corolla Levin AE101 #2 side view

I do not particularly like the way these two AE101s are painted/stickered/etc. but actually I was thinking something like: damn shame of the nice silvertops in those cars… I would certainly know a much better use for those! Does that mean I’m no longer an anime-otaku but rather more an auto-otaku?? ;)

Hilarious: Initial D cosplay

Initial D Cosplay: hilarious!
Initial D Cosplay: simply hilarious!!

Do I need to say more?? I hope not… :D :D

They are all there: Takumi in the Sprinter Trueno AE86 (looks more like Itsuki to me), Bunta (behind the AE86), Ryosuke in the white FC3S RX7, Kyosuke in the yellow FD3S RX7, Sayuki (next to the Sil80?) and some other dude who doesn’t look like anyone at all. ;)

The only thing that crossed my mind: what if they were not cosplaying, but actually showing their Halloween costumes? What would happen if someone comes to your door in these cardboard cars and say “Trick or treat!!”?? Would you have to show your heel-to-toe as a trick? Or of course treat them upon some high-octane?? Hopefully we’ll never know!! I’d keep my door shut when these nutters come around! :P

Initial D: the ultimate Arcade Stage

I came across this some time ago on AkihabaraNews and later on forgot about it. By accident I spotted it during a images search on Google-images. I think the video should do the talking:

It is simply amazing! Just take the normal arcade stage, remove the seat and just mount a car on top of it! Brilliant!! ;)

Too bad they forgot that the actual AE86 from Initial D is a zenki (early) model and not the kouki (later) model you see here:

Initial D Ultimate Arcade Stage in Sega Joypolis in Tokyo
Initial D Ultimate Arcade Stage in Sega Joypolis in Tokyo

You can drive either in the panda white Sprinter Trueno AE86, yellow FD3S or the blue Impreza GT.

Too bad it’s a one off only, only in the Sega Joypolis in Tokyo and costs 600 yen (excluding entrace fees) per ride . So I won’t be hanging around there too often… :(

SEO: Google images indexing after double quotes

About a month ago I blogged about Google not indexing my images. I suspected it was the single quotes I used for all HTML tags. I switched over to double quotes but did not see any changes.

Now a month has passed and Google currently has indexed twice the amount of images as before and I do see much more text around the images.

This means a couple of things:

  1. Google does not update it’s images frequently
  2. Google prefers double quotes above single quotes
  3. I still need to change a lot of tags to get more images indexed…

I’m not too happy about that last part. :(

Toyota advertising touge drifting in 1982

This kind of amazed me: Toyota actually advertised touge drifting!!
This 1982 Starlet advertisement shows Ove Andersson drifting a Starlet down a mountain:

Only a year after this commercial they released the AE86 which became the icon for touge drifting. However nowadays Toyota keeps a lot of distance from most racing sports. Especially anything getting near road-racing, like drifting for example.

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