We always have a great time at each Armageddon Expo event, and come home with a fun array of Star Wars finds to add to our collection. We flew down to Armageddon Wellington this past weekend, and while we couldn’t fit too much shopping into our carry-on luggage, we still managed to find some fun and unique items to bring home.

Check our our shopping haul video –

First up, this adorable Star Wars print from the Artist Alley. This IG-11 artwork is by Eeden Artworks – we always love finding new Star Wars art, especially when it features one of our favourite characters!

Of course we had to follow our Armageddon tradition and pick up a few more Funko Pop! Vinyl figures for our collection. We found these two at the PopStop booth – Darth Vader from Return Of The Jedi, and Chewacca with Porg from The Last Jedi.

We love checking out all the fantastic Star Wars items at Cameron Percy Antiques – at this convention, we spotted The Black Series Gaming Greats Zaalbar figure from Knights Of The Old Republic, so that was a must-have.

During our travels home from Celebration Europe earlier this month, my Star Wars luggage tag got ripped off my suitcase somewhere along the journey, so I wanted to replace it. I spotted this Clone Wars Anakin and Obi-Wan luggage tag also at Cameron Percy Antiques, and it was a fun little find to replace my lost tag.

Keeping up with another of our Armageddon Expo traditions, we stopped by the Sweet Rock Candy Artists booth to pick up some sweet treats for our days at the convention. This was the only bag that made it home – the rest of it was enjoyed at the event!

Kyber Forge always has a cool array of lightsabers available at their booth, but they also have smaller items like pins. These two Star Wars logo pins caught my eye – the Rebel Alliance symbol and the Jedi Order symbol, perfect for my Star Wars pin collection.

Lastly, I finally adopted an adorable little dragon from Turtle Creations. Their booth has a huge range of cute 3D printed dragons in varying styles, colours, and sizes. I knew it was inevitable that I would get one, it was just a matter of which one to choose? Well, it turns out this was the Armageddon where one little silvery blue dragon caught my eye, and after holding it for a few minutes, I knew I had found the one. Now I just need to name it!

So there you have it, our fun little shopping haul from Armageddon Expo Wellington April 2023. I was really delighted at the great range of booths this year, with some fun finds – as well as classic favourites like Pop! Vinyl figures and candy! I had so much fun at this convention, and I can’t wait for the next event.

May the Force be with you!

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We’ve really liked the Star Wars Geeki Tikis since the early releases based on Original Trilogy beasts and aliens. They feel very much like a collectible line that we could really get stuck in to… it’s very likely that, over time, our collection will indeed grow, but for now our family just has one ceramic mug each, representing our respective favourite characters. I’m a big IG-11 (and IG-88) fan, while Anaria loves Amidala (and her The Phantom Menace costumes in particular). Our daughter tends to like Dark Side characters, including Kylo Ren.

It’s fun having Star Wars collectibles on display in different rooms of the house. We have quite a few cooking and dining-related pieces in our kitchen, and the glazed finish on these character mugs means we can feel comfortable that they can be displayed in a kitchen environment (safe around the occasional steam etc). These Geeki Tikis are going to look great lined up on a shelf, with hopefully more to come in the future.

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Historically we’ve been big collectors of 3.75″ scale figures, but the characters from The Mandalorian have been an impetus to shift up to 6″ scale, at least for the subset of action figures from this series. It was inevitable then that we’d grab the Black Series 6″ scale figure of The Child aka “Baby Yoda”.

The packaging for this figure is obviously smaller than standard TBS6 boxing. In fact, it was notably smaller to see this in person when I finally had it in hand (we preordered via The Warehouse, and got it at the great price of NZ$19). Some collectors have commented that the figure itself is a little under scaled … this is perhaps correct, although it is worth considering that we very infrequently see The Child standing on the ground next to other adult human characters in any episodes of The Mandalorian. In the few reference photos that exist out there, he only just comes up to Din Djarin’s knee when both are standing together.

The figure itself is nicely done for its scale. It has 7 points of articulation in total (head, wrists, shoulders, and both feet, despite being hidden under his sculpted cloak). Most of the joints are ball-articulation, giving multiple axes of movement (but his limbs do have a tendency to pop off if pushed to the limits of their range of movement).

The Child comes with a froggy snack, soup bowl, and Razor Crest lever knob. They are very small. Fortunately, these tiny accessories come in a little acrylic storage box, and they will more likely live there than try and display them in The Child’s hands, as he will probably just drop them. It would have been nice if he had come with an anti-grav pram/bed. Still, given the short-falls of figure scale and likely-to-get-lost accessories, it’s cool to have Baby Yoda along with the other characters in this range so far, and we’re looking forward to getting more 6″ scale The Mandalorian figures in the future.

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I’ve got a bit of a growing collection of IG-88 figures and collectibles, including a life-size statues, so I guess it was inevitable that I’d start collecting IG-11 toys. Even more so considering the character is voiced by kiwi Taika Waititi.

Now, this figure isn’t a perfect representation of IG-11, to be honest – it is in fact just a repaint of an existing IG-88 sculpt with new paint apps and a double-bandolier, which means he has inaccurate hands, knees, etc., and struggles to stand for prolonged periods of time. But, I do love the overall design of the IG-series assassin droids, and cannot resist to have this variant in my collection. This figure was ordered from Amazon, who lived up to their reputation of poor packaging, such that the box had some minor dings along the top, but I always intended to open this droid for display.

Ultimately, it would be nice to replace him with the 6″ SH Figuarts version, but this guy will more than do for now. And although I haven’t particularly gone out of my way to collect 6″ scale figures, I am finding a growing compulsion to try and keep up with the character releases from The Mandalorian specifically in this format.

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Although we went around lots of stores to check out the new Triple Force Friday product available overnight, we were pretty selective about what we bought at this stage. I’m personally really looking forward to The Mandalorian, and to seeing IG-11 on screen, so had to get a couple of collectibles to represent those characters.

Most of the Star Wars Pop figures released for Triple Force Friday seem to come in pretty interesting and dynamic poses, holding their respective weapons at the ready. Although they’re designed for “cuteness” rather than accuracy, I found these two hard to resist, and IG-11 will fit right in with my IG-88 focus collection.

You can buy these figures now from Mighty Ape.

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