So I finally sat down and recorded my Star Wars shopping haul video from Armageddon Expo Auckland! This year, Armageddon celebrated its 100th event with a special winter edition in my hometown of Auckland. We attended all three days, and even with the occasional rain, we had an awesome time!

We were delighted at the range of booths and Star Wars items to buy this year, and we sure picked up a bit ourselves. I’m always on the look for Star Wars collectibles to pick up at our local conventions, and I found quite a few pieces that I just had to buy.

Check out my haul video below –

First up, Funko Pop! Vinyls – because what Armageddon would be complete without checking out the range of Funko collectibles? We made use of a multi-buy promotion at the Card Merchant booth to grab General Grievous and Boba Fett to fill some gaps in our collection – and I also found the chase Bo-Katan Kryze figure! I have wanted her for ages, I can’t believe I found her!

One of my first booths to visit at Armageddon Expo was Cobalt Heights – a local stockist of Loungefly. I’ve had my eye on this Loungefly x Star Wars wallet for a while, but I wanted to see the pattern placement in person, to make sure that Princess Leia was on the front. Sure enough, I finally found one I liked, so of course I had to get it! I already have the matching tote bag (a wonderful gift from my family), so now I have the set.

In my follow up visit to the Cobalt Heights booth (you know, to see if I missed any Loungefly Star Wars items on my first stop), I remembered I hadn’t looked through their pin section – and found this! A Loungefly x Star Wars 4-piece enamel pin set featuring Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Chewbacca, as seen in A New Hope. I had seen this pin set online a while ago, but it had sold out before I could grab it, so I made sure to get it this time. Aren’t they so cute?

Alongside the Loungefly pin set, I spotted this fan-made Rebel/Imperial logo pin, made by Frantasy Island. It has a wonderful dark grey glittery swirl, and I just love the angled split design.

Next up, Oasis Scents. I’ve been a fan of their geek inspired candles and soaps for ages (I already own several items from their awesome range) so I always make sure to check out their booth early. For this event they had an Ahsoka Tano inspired candle! It smells divine, with a beautiful combination of fig and melon – so of course I had to grab one.

I spotted these beautiful embroidered keyrings in the Artist Alley, from ZubKitty Creates. I saw the Princess Leia design straight away, and then noticed the Ahsoka Tano keychain beside it, so I grabbed both. I think I’ll use these as bag charms – they’re too pretty to use as keychains!

Browsing the wide array of fandom inspired jewelry at the Lola & Alice booth, I found this Princess Leia earring set. I’ve always loved this classic promotional image of Princess Leia onboard her ship the Tantive IV from A New Hope, so it really caught my eye. Princess Leia and jewelry is a combination I can never resist!

The Lola & Alice booth also had a section next to it with a huge array of pins – my family and I spent ages going through all the geek themed sections and picked out a few of our favourite designs. These are the three pins I choose – May The Force Be With You, Millennium Falcon, and Princess Leia Rebel. Perfect to add to a jacket for a little touch of Star Wars flair.

So this next was a completely random find – a licensed Star Wars sewing measuring tape! I spotted this cute little find at a booth that sold geek fabric cushion covers etc, and just loved it. I’ve never seen it before – and it even features Han Solo and Princess Leia! I’m going to keep it as a collectible to display in my little sewing area where I work on my Star Wars costumes.

Check out this cute little gift from my daughter – Star Wars ‘Clan Of Two’ inspired washi tape! She spotted this in the Artist Alley, and saw it featured Ahsoka Tano and Bo-Katan, so she knew I would love it. She also bought me two Star Wars stickers from a nearby artist booth – Princess Leia and BB-8, lovely little gifts. The perfect final addition to my Princess Leia themed haul this year.

So there you have it, my Star Wars shopping haul from Armageddon Expo Auckland June 2022. I was really delighted at the great range of booths this year, with some really fun finds – I picked up seven Princess Leia items, I think that’s my new record for Armageddon! From Loungefly, to pins, earrings, a candle and more, I had so much fun shopping at this convention, and I can’t wait for the next event.

May the Force be with you!

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Happy New Year from Matt & Kristy at Villa Varykino! We hope you have a great year that is filled with fantastic Star Wars content and hobbies.

As we mentioned over on the SWNZ, Star Wars New Zealand website, there is an unprecedented amount of content coming in 2022, spread over games, comics, books, and, of course, Disney+ streaming series. We’re fully looking forward to absorbing it all, and sharing it with other Star Wars fans on this blog, and on our YouTube channel. At a minimum, the following are the bits & pieces we are excited about and are counting down to – it’s looking like it’ll be nearly back-to-back weeks of galactic highlights.

• The Book of Boba Fett (7 episodes), streaming now
• Star Wars The Old Republic: Legacy of the Sith (update 7.0), Feb 15th
• Obi-Wan Kenobi (6 episodes), TBC (possibly starting second quarter)
• LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, second quarter
• The Bad Batch season 2 (16 episodes), release date TBC
• Andor season 1 (12 episodes), streaming Jul-Sep
• The Mandalorian season 3 (8 episodes), streaming late 2022 (possibly starting Oct-Nov)

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Boba Fett has arrived in Disney Magic Kingdoms! The latest game update to the Disney Park app game is themed on season 2 of the popular Disney + series The Mandalorian. As a longtime Disney Magic Kingdoms player and Star Wars fan, I was so excited to see more of my favourite characters added to the game!

The game already has characters and content from The Mandalorian. A prior event featured characters from season 1 – The Mandalorian, The Child, Kuiil, Cara Dune, and Greef Karga. This new expansion includes three prominent characters from season 2 – Ahsoka Tano, Fennec Shand, and of course Boba Fett.

• Check out the update details from the official game website

Rather than a standard style event with a storyline, these characters are available through a ‘Cascading Critters’ event, where you battle three tiers of creatures to earn milestone prizes including Fennec Shand and Boba Fett, while Ahsoka Tano is the ‘premium’ character, available via in-game currency or direct app store purchase. The event runs for 9 days, and requires a fair amount of game time to complete – as it takes time to manage the three tiers of activities, each earning tokens for the tier above, which ultimately lets you unlock Boba Fett as the final grand prize. There are also leaderboards for each tier, where your progress is ranked against other players for the chance to earn additional prizes.

I purchased Ahsoka Tano – as a favourite character of mine, I had to have her in my park. She helps a lot with completing the event on time, and I really didn’t want to miss out on the final prize. I have all of the Star Wars characters and attractions in the game (including the rare Marauder Shuttle attraction), so I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out on her or Boba Fett for my collection.

The first tier requires a simple tapper – 5 blurrgs appear in the park every two hours, and tapping/collecting 50 of these grants the milestone reward of Fennec Shand. She is an awesome new Star Wars character – she first appeared in season 1 of The Mandalorian, then the animated series The Bad Batch, and will be a central character in the upcoming series The Book Of Boba Fett.

Collecting tokens from the first tier blurrg tapper event, players can work on the second tier – ice spiders. This is where Fennec Shand is really useful, working alongside Kuiil and C-3PO in this phase. Milestone rewards for ‘thawing’ 90 ice spiders for this tier include x2 Star Wars legendary chests, which may contain Star Wars characters, attractions, and concession stands (if you have all the existing sequel trilogy and Mandalorian characters/attractions, then these chests only contain concession stands).

Tokens earnt from tier 2 are then used to fight the 3rd and final tier creature – Reptavians. The milestone reward for wrangling 50 reptavians is Boba Fett himself. This is where Ahsoka Tano is very helpful, used alongside C-3PO and the Mandalorian. These flying creatures are quite large within the game, certainly one of the biggest ‘temporary character and/or tapper’ additions I’ve seen (along with the Heffalump Balloons).

As this event is themed on season 2 of The Mandalorian, Boba Fett wears his outfit from that series – but as this game has a system for different outfits/costumes, I would love to see a classic original trilogy version (ESB/ROTJ etc) or his new outfit for The Book Of Boba Fett.

I was really happy to be able to complete this event with time to spare. Obviously it takes a bit of time and dedication to achieve the final character in Disney Magic Kingdoms events, so now I can take it easier now with my 3 new Star Wars characters unlocked. The token quests to level up these new characters conflict with the event tasks, so for now I am still collecting the three tiers of creatures in the hopes of earning some leaderboard rewards. When the event ends, I’ll get stuck into leveling these characters up!

May the Force be with you!

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Out of all of the Star Wars collectibles I still have from my childhood, my The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi pillow cases and sheets hold particularly strong sentimental value. They were ever-present in my bedroom, and I had enough to cycle through that there was almost always a Star Wars-themed pillow case visible on my bed. The one at the top of this page was my favourite… the artwork was simplistic, but the dramatic action poses of Darth Vader and Boba Fett fully captured my attention.

The topic of Vintage Star Wars Bedding recently came up in a discussion thread on the SWNZ Facebook Group, so I dug through my wardrobe to remind myself what I still had in my collection…

In addition to the Vader/Fett combo shown at the top of the page, I also had a matching one made from the rest of that art pattern, focusing on the Rebel heroes. Sadly, that particular one didn’t survive to the current day. I do have a few other ESB ones though (above).

Above are the Return of the Jedi pillow case designs that were available locally (the first and second images are the front and back of the same pillow case). Below are a few sheets that match a couple of the pillow case designs.

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Both these Star Wars ties were gifts from family. I wore them during a phase in the mid ’90s, along with an assortment of superhero neckties… maybe one day in the future I’ll find an appropriate venue or excuse to don them again. They were made by Davenport, who sold them in both Australia and New Zealand.

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