Nothing says Christmas like a Kaiju

Pacific Rim is a great popcorn movie. If you have even a twinge of like for King Kong go see it. Basically its a King Kong/Godzilla movie with cutting edge special effects and a real (real being a relative term) plot.  The 8 year old boy in me almost died of overexposure to awesomeness when watching it.  

The stars of the movie aren't the actors, but the robots and the monsters (jaegers, or hunters in German and kaiju, or monsters in Japanese).  Of particular interest to I-man is one particular kaiju--Leatherback.  Now Isaac has never seen the movie, even a second of it, as it is pretty darn intense, but he has seen the toys.  Every time we'd walk through Toys R Us he'd stop and look.  They are pretty amazing toys, with lots of detail, a great look, and tons of articulation (joints).  And only enough, even when passing through in June, he'd say he wanted one particular kaiju--the gorilla one called Leatherback. It was consistent, but it never seemed pressing, so we'd browse and walk on.  They were like $25, so I could pick one up anytime.

During the lead up to Christmas Isaac was pretty consistent.  He wanted a Wonder Woman, some stuffed animals, and Leatherback.  Despite being four, his list never really changed.  We thought it would, but through October, November, and December it was those three things over and over again. When it came time to consult with Santa, we started looking around.  The one kaiju he wanted seemed to have disappeared from Toys R Us.  Then it disappeared from toy websites (Toy Wiz is pretty good).  Then it disappeared from eBay.  That's the oh shit moment, right?  No eBay.  Apparently Leatherback was the toy from the movie collectors wanted most and they have bought up all of them.  

Then I found one on Amazon.  It wasn't $25 anymore.  It was $60.  That's a lot of dough.  But Isaac had been consistent in his desire and he is an awesome kid, so I decided to bite the bullet.  I dropped it in the cart and was ready to go when I realized that it would be delivered just about now, in January.  WTF!  Well, as it turns out, it was the last one anywhere in the world apparently and it was in Japan.  I then decided to go for broke and order it with expedited shipping. The total was a jaw dropping $104. Shipping was $43!  Oh well, we learned our lesson.  And as you can see from the video in the previous post, it was worth it.