Wal-mart brings, courtesy of the Legends company, Japanese movie 11 promo cards to the TCG aisle!  As you can see from the picture, my heart belongs to Pikachu—several Bandai candy-toys pertinent to the new movie show off the card package, and I’ll have you know I passed up a foil Shaymin Sky Form promo because at $7.97 a pop (one movie 11 promo plus 5 hidden additional cards—I’m probably not going to open mine until Xmas, LOL!), I was not about to Catch ‘em All!  According to the packaging, Legends has dished up all 9 promos; I recall seeing Shaymin Sky Form, Pikachu, Giratina, Magnezone, Piplup, Regigas—you’ll have to surf e-Bay or whatnot to see what else is out ther unless… yo omahanime!  Have you posted scans of these prior?  We can count on trusty oma’ to want ‘em all.  Good luck omahanime!  ;)

HEY YOU POJO!  That’s right… I have a response to your idea that I should get thee back to college and take some free Japanese classes so I can actually read what I’m buying!  ;)  Banpresto Santa Pika presents:  My Japanese Coach for the Nintendo DS!  What a great holiday present suggestion for the avid anime/manga fan!  There is a funny story behind this, Pojo.  Saturday I stopped by my local Best Buy to poke ;D around.  After staring at a cheap Sudoko game, I happened to notice the My… Coach bin.  I had been familiar with some of their other offerings prior, but had not seen anything remotely resembling an Asian character on any of the packages before.  Imagine my surprise finding a Chinese Coach!  Now wait a minute, isn’t Nintendo Japanese?  Surely if they have thought to put out a Chinese Coach, they wouldn’t have forgotten all of us rabid anime/manga fans outside of Japan?!  I decided to query a sales clerk, but he wasn’t too hopeful as he said he had not heard of such a thing.  Fortunately, I pressed him to search his database; lo, after scrolling through several screens VOILA!  And the funniest part—the software had JUST come out 2 days prior!  What are the odds?!  After the clerk brought back the cartridge, which had not been out on the sales floor yet, a Taiwanese graduate student at the local university, Jason, overheard us discussing the game and struck up a conversation.  He told me that in his country, there was a TV game show where a parent and child were able to participate and the theme of the show was to test your Pokemon knowledge!  LOL!

Speaking of students, one of my former employees, Kelly, was just recently hired as lead person in the children’s department of the Barnes and Noble that will open at the Polaris mall here in Central Ohio at the end of the month.  Barnes and Noble currently have a Pokemon display again in their “on screen” section at several of my local stores.  If you are in the Central Ohio area, stop in and Kelly, a huge Harry Potter fan ;) will be happy to direct you to the Pokemon display that they, too, will hopefully have in their new store.  I can tell you I have seen a ton of new Pokemon books out on the rack (check Amazon.com for a heads up) recently with more slated to come really soon!  And don’t forget, the Polaris Toys ‘R’ Us opens Monday October 20 with a Grand Opening celebration the weekend right after.  I am hoping to have something worth writing about after my visit; I did see a 10 figure TRU exclusive with a Pokemon Center/Nurse Joy theme on Friday.  Too bad the Nurse Joy was just cardboard—and hey, Jakks, what about some Team Rocket figures?  Anyhow, I believe the set was in the $20 price range (new item, shelf tag not obvious, sorry), a nice big gift idea for the holidays!

Finally, Shinx and Bidoof electronic plush showed up at my local Meijer this past week.  These were really cute, too; but I liked the mini plush Shinx a little better.  I’ll be interested to see if that new TRU will have these in stock yet.  It’s nearly 2AM so, I better get some rest now.  Pi…

Loretta