Bottlecaps!
One of the weirder kind of anime collectibles out there are bottlecap figures, which are often marked as a type of gashapon (vending machine) figurines. According to Wiki, "another variety of gashapon is bottle cap figures. These small figures are mounted atop a plastic bottle cap, as might be found on a twenty ounce soda bottle. They are sold both in machine capsules and blind boxes. The caps are not fully functional as they do not have screw threads to secure them to the mouth of the bottle".
Recently, I managed to strike a wonderful deal with a fellow collector on Reddit, who owned a pair of Wonda/Reset Wonder Festival bottlecaps and felt that it would be a good decision to sell them to a niche collector (aka me!). So, after a short discussion and a couple weeks of waiting, I got those two adorable figurines in the mail:
(photos belong to the original owner whom I'd rather keep anonymous for internet safety reasons)
Both of those bottlecaps were produced for the Summer 2002 Wonder Festival and are pretty damn hard to find, so of course I snatched them right away. Upon further examination, one can see that both are slightly discolored (hey, it's been 11 years since their release, so I wasn't surprised) and had a bit of dirt on them which I couldn't remove with dishwasher soap - which is why I decided to restore them and paint them up!
The Wonda bottlecap also had some kind of peculiar manufacturing defect, which made the fuchsia paint from her hair seep over the whole figurine and created some shading. I actually found it pretty sweet, since it added some detail to the design, but in some places, it definitely had to be fixed and toned down.
This is how it turned out:
I used paint thinner to remove the dust, restored the body paint, whitened and pearlified the foam, refreshed the color on the hair, and sealed the new paintjob with semi-matte lacquer. Looks pretty good!
Here's the Reset figurine:
The paint on this figure was really dirty and had a weird texture, so I ended up repainting the whole thing, including eyes and the tiny details (with the exception of the writing on the bottlecap). Here's the final result!
Recently, I managed to strike a wonderful deal with a fellow collector on Reddit, who owned a pair of Wonda/Reset Wonder Festival bottlecaps and felt that it would be a good decision to sell them to a niche collector (aka me!). So, after a short discussion and a couple weeks of waiting, I got those two adorable figurines in the mail:
(photos belong to the original owner whom I'd rather keep anonymous for internet safety reasons)
Both of those bottlecaps were produced for the Summer 2002 Wonder Festival and are pretty damn hard to find, so of course I snatched them right away. Upon further examination, one can see that both are slightly discolored (hey, it's been 11 years since their release, so I wasn't surprised) and had a bit of dirt on them which I couldn't remove with dishwasher soap - which is why I decided to restore them and paint them up!
The Wonda bottlecap also had some kind of peculiar manufacturing defect, which made the fuchsia paint from her hair seep over the whole figurine and created some shading. I actually found it pretty sweet, since it added some detail to the design, but in some places, it definitely had to be fixed and toned down.
This is how it turned out:
I used paint thinner to remove the dust, restored the body paint, whitened and pearlified the foam, refreshed the color on the hair, and sealed the new paintjob with semi-matte lacquer. Looks pretty good!
Here's the Reset figurine:
The paint on this figure was really dirty and had a weird texture, so I ended up repainting the whole thing, including eyes and the tiny details (with the exception of the writing on the bottlecap). Here's the final result!