Hello there, bomberinas and bomberinos and bomberinis! It’s your Adobe Illustrator-learnin’ neighborhood Sora here, calling it quits halfway through the first chapter of her textbook to bring you – gasp – pictures.
Over the course of two posts I’ll be showcasing two sets of Bomberman merchandise that both me and Sakaki/BDR have acquired in the past two months. (That sure is a lot of twos… Only one of them is terrible, though.) This first set comes from the awesome folks at Fangamer, which I previously blogged about last November when it was teased in their Black Friday promo. We bought the Bombo Combo, which includes both available shirt designs, an enamel pin, and a poseable Bomberman plush. At $79.00, it’s $11.00 less than if you bought all of the items separately.
Serendipitously, as I was in the process of drafting this post, Fangamer released a new Bomberman hoodie for $49.00! I’ll update this post with it once I can manage to get my hands on one (because there’s no question of me owning one).
Bomb jump across the cut to see the goodies. I apologize in advance for my subpar photography skills; I did my best, and when my best wasn’t good enough, I did some color balancing and levels adjustment.
***
Here’s basically everything you get in Fangamer’s Bombo Combo.
The Classic Shirt (white) comes with a bonus sticker of the main design, while the Ka-Bomb Shirt comes with a bomb sticker not pictured here, which I think was due to it being kinda hidden in the T-shirt packaging before I opened it. The sticker and pin below the Bomberman pin are just random bonus goodies that FG sent along.
Let’s look at the shirts first! I didn’t take any pictures of the shirts being worn, alas, but I can talk a little about the fit. I got the blue shirt in a women’s SM and the white shirt in a unisex XS, which are my preferred sizes for these particular styles. (For reference, I’m 4′11″ and measure in at 32-27-34.)
(The graphic designer in me is super stoked about these custom labels – what good attention to detail! – while the organizational freak in me is stoked about how this potentially makes stacks of these shirts easier to parse and sort at a glance.)
While I fit fine in both of these, it almost feels like the sizes & styles are reversed. That is to say, the white shirt fits more like a women’s SM to me (being more form-fitting) while the blue shirt fits more like a unisex XS (being slightly baggy on me, although weirdly still a bit snug around my hips). I’m not sure if anyone else has had this problem, but in any case both shirts are 100% cotton, so be mindful of them shrinking in the wash to some degree, even when following the care instructions. (Related tip from someone who buys too many clothes and works at a clothing store – some design fading is inevitable, but drying on low/extra low/air-drying reduces how much that happens.)
The white shirt has a lot of neat design details that are already showcased on the website but which are worth showing off here anyway.
Not as many surprises on the blue shirt, but that’s fine because the design itself is pretty last boss.
***
Next up is the enamel pin!
I’m not a huge fan of the rubber backs, but depending on where you decide to put this pin you might prefer them to metal ones. I do appreciate that there are two fasteners on it so you can fix it in place without Bomberman attempting gymnastics.
The pin is a little over an inch tall.
***
Finally, we have the star of the show – the Bomberman plush! Depending on posing, he runs between 9-11 inches tall, which gives him enough heft without being unwieldy.
Check out the little tag on his hand!
As you can (probably…?) see, the white parts of his body, his face, and the bomb are made of this…I’m not sure what to call it, but it’s a pretty common plush velvet-like fabric commonly used on stuffed toys. His body and pink appendages appear to be fleece. I think I would have preferred him to be made entirely with the first fabric, but that’s a nitpick. I can still appreciate the contrast in textures, and it doesn’t feel cheap.
The posing in terms of the magnetic attachments is a little more limited than I was personally hoping. The magnets for the hands are only on the inside, so I couldn’t pose Bomberman with him holding the bomb up via balancing it at the top of his hand. The face magnets are small and limited to just above his eyes, which obviously makes sense but it might have been nice if it were a magnetic strip instead to allow for a little more freedom in positioning. A magnetic strip would have also solved the issue on the plush I got, where the magnet for his right eye (our left) seems to be slightly off-center, so that eyebrow is permanently quirked inward. (Can you smell what the Bomberman is cookin’?!)
Those are all pretty minor issues, though. The posable plush is a unique piece of merchandise I wasn’t expecting for this fandom at all, so if you’re Sirius serious about your bombering around, I’d recommend dropping the cash on this.
***
As mentioned earlier, stay tuned (hopefully) for talk on FG’s Bomberman hoodie!
