Long Post full of Affiliate Links
So I bought 3x of the new MGA Miniverse UV resin Diner food kits and reviewed them.
https://amzn.to/3Goo2PC
These are the larger kits.
After that I ordered 3x of the smaller Cafe sets.
https://amzn.to/3Goo2PC
And will review them, too, though as a toy collector, not as an adult worried about marketing UV resin to kids.
When the cafe sets are in stock, they cost $6.97 vs the Diner sets at $9.97. They’re also smaller.
There is no table. Some of them come with a little cake stand, though.
I got these three sets and I have to admit, I’m kind of disappointed...
The quality of the pieces is the same, but there’s just not much to do with these. The Diner sets have you arranging items in a dish or on a plate, but the Cafe ones are more like, put the thing, put the resin, done.
At least the three that I got are. The ones with donuts might be more entertaining.
The enormous mason jar coffee made me laugh because it’s not in scale for Barbies like the other food items, but then I looked over at my water jug and.....
Yeah, ok.
I was actually rather put out opening these because there are three layers of plastic outside the shell, the plastic shell, lots of plastic bags inside, and in the cafe latte one there is a tiny plastic straw in a tiny plastic straw wrapper.
There are tweezers/tongs but you don’t need them for these sets. These three are all dump and go.
I chose not to do the cafe latte nor the tropical fruit salad because the cafe latte kit was too boring and I’d rather keep the fruits in the cute little boxes.
That kit could easily be made and remade as long as you don’t add the resin.
Inside the cereal box is a little plastic bag of plastic beads. I did decide to put the cereal together to test whether the resin set properly.
It did. It’s not opaque like milk. I kind of wish I hadn’t bothered, because it looks...
Unpleasant.
But this did get me thinking.
Are these kits worth it to me?
It cost me $53.80 for this:
The cafe sets certainly I feel like weren’t worth the $7. Part of the pull of these is supposed to be an experience in addition to getting a cute toy in the end, but the cafe sets are so simple that there was no experience.
Being someone that’s made a bunch of little resin trinkets over the years, I could spend the same $54 and get enough comparable materials to make these kits many times over with less waste because every item wouldn’t come in it’s own little plastic bag.
And personally, I don’t collect mini food. I collect mini toys.
Compare the price of one of these kits (we’ll round up so $10 and $7) to the price of 5 Surprise Toy Mini Brands, and... Well.
Miniverse for $10 will get you one cute food item that you have to assemble and a bunch of small packaging associated with it plus 5 or so big pieces of paper all folded up, a table, a display case, a bunch of plastic bags, and three layers of outer plastic.
If you’re not keeping all of the empty containers, the bread bag, the pie crust box, the bottles of resin, all the duplicate tongs, etc, you’re throwing away the majority of the kit in the end.
Mini Brands for $7 will give you 5 preassembled minis (sometimes four and one piece of useless crap like a too-small shopping cart, also too small shelving unit, or paper bags) with 2 layers of outer plastic, one collector’s guide, 5 small sheets of plastic, two weird rubbery end caps, and a useless set of plastic wedges.
https://amzn.to/3WU8mdR
https://amzn.to/3IxF3JH
All together this was $27.54 for 15 items and a collector’s case.
BOTH brands are blind packed.
tl:dr is that I won’t personally be buying any more Miniverse food kits, but I am excited for Toy Mini Brands Series 3.
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Zuru Toy Mini Brand x Tamagotchi Original Miniatures
These have actually been available for a few years now, but we haven’t wrote about them! Mini Brands are the real brands that of things you know and love in your hand. There are over 90 miniatures of your favorite brands to collect. In these capsules that you can find at toy stores and other department stores, you’ll receive 5 mystery miniatures in every capsule.
image source: Fuzzy N Chic Liew
There are two versions of miniature Tamagotchi’s, one that was released a few years back, and the more recent one with updated packaging. It looks like they’ll need to update the miniatures again with the rebrand! There are even different Tamagotchi Original shell designs too, which make them super collectable!
Have you gotten your hands on these Tamagotchi miniatures?
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Sibling saw mini toy brands at work and thought to pick one up for me because he knows I like them. But the weird thing is that it’s series 2, but not the same series 2 I already have?? This one has frozen moments, no rose golds, and MANY different pieces I haven’t seen in any other set. What is this??? It’s super cool don’t get me wrong but so weird
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Whoops more
One of my non doll friends requested my hand for scale lol
I’m a big fan of the beef teriyaki and the minute maid specifically, and also the fanta because I don’t give my larger bjds enough attention and it will be perfect for them
Even if I wouldn’t buy any of these in real life I still think it’s fun for my dolls to have them, honestly the only reason I never bought any before is because I didn’t like the wasteful plastic wedges. Now that they’re in paper pouches I’ll be buying a lot more of them whoops
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zuru toys mini brands includes a mini lps. switch controller thing for scale
he truly is. the littlest pet shop
oh ........ tiny entity.
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More Shopstivus items:
Searched the Black Friday sales for Miniverse
and got very little, but there are some of the Mini Bratz listed and the Miniverse Make It Mini All You can Eat mega set.
which I would be interested in, but I already have it! My S.O. surprised me with it for my birthday earlier this month.
I was surprised to discover that the cute, colored backgrounds in the different segments are just bits of printed paperboard laid in there and not attached at all.
If you want them where they are, I suggest opening the whole thing very carefully and using some double sided tape
(I like this one)
to tape the panels in one by one. Mine all fell out and I am not sure I got them back in there where they were before.
There are lots of Mini Brands deals, like the advent calendar for $15.
and 2 for the price of 1 for a few of the balls (link is to the whole search)
There are more Shadow High and Rainbow High deals than I found yesterday, though I think they're just matching Target's current prices.
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I saw your other post and needed to ask you: Are there generally no more trinkets or toys in cereal boxes nowadays?
You occasionally get a prize around Halloween in the post cereals, but the practice is largely defunct.
Toy prizes with food (in the US) are mainly now available through Kinder Joy (which does a very nice mini-toy) and recently through Zuru, who do weird gummy-wrapped eggs (also decent, but not as clever on average).
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