So, I have a friend with a bad habit of going to the San Diego Comic Con on a yearly basis.  He spends a few days at “Nerd Prom”, usually gets some fun stuff to decorate his cubicle / apartment with, and takes a ton of photos.

Last year, therefore, I sent him on a Quest for Derpy.  I have enough dirt on him that he couldn’t say no outright, so he reluctantly agreed and then immediately delegated the actual procurement process to a friend to hide his shame.

I didn’t get a Derpy out of this, because Hasbro had no idea exactly how much demand they would need to try to satisfy.  I did get a rather nice T-shirt as a consolation prize, and I was greatly consoled.

This year, because I make a habit out of emasculating my friends, I sent him on a new Quest for Pony.

It did nearly kill him – at one point, apparently, he was forced to stand NEAR the Hasbro booth to stay in a queue for a ticket to purchase the show exclusive, but con security wouldn’t let anyone stand still, so he had to walk in circles until such time as they started handing out the tickets.

Nonetheless, and here I dismiss his pain with a flippant air, he DID come through and I have new merch in my life.

Remember, this was a character that had, over two seasons, a total of about 10 seconds worth of screen time with absolutely no dialogue, whose name as portrayed here was pure fanon.  Just the existence of this ADULT COLLECTIBLE toy speaks to Hasbro’s grudging acceptance of their entirely unexpected fan base, or at least to Hasbro’s grudging acceptance of our willfully-opened wallets.

It also shows that, when given a chance to build something that doesn’t have to go on a blister card and retail for six bucks, their designers can turn out something pretty impressive.  They went all out with the glitter and crystal highlights, and the four spotlights in the base illuminate when you push the prominent button just to the left of the THIS IS NOT A TOY warning.

It’s very sparkly.

Oh, and my Equestria Girls blu-ray arrived today, so my wife and I sat down and watched the main feature and all the extra featurettes.  I’m happy to report that the movie is still good on a second viewing, and I’m glad to have something other than the IDW comics to last me through the drought between seasons. I realize that I’m a member of a very small group of people who are waiting for November 23rd for an ENTIRELY different reason than most of geekdom, but I like to think that we’re just getting double the nerdgasm on that day.

As a nice touch (and this is my first Shout! Factory blu-ray, so I don’t know if this is typical for them or something new), the Digital Copy provided is just a straight-up MP4 file.  No fussing around with iTunes codes, no weird activation routine, just go to a web site, enter a code, download the file.  Madness!

I started Bioshock Infinite over the weekend, so I’ll probably go on about that in my next post and spare you any more MLP-related posts for a while, but I figured I’d leave you with a photo from a recent vacation which I hope you’ll find delightfully meta.

For the record, I had picked the shirt for the day completely at random out of a suitcase full of mostly non-geeky shirts, and we stumbled across this particular marker entirely by chance – it happens to be on the road to Register Cliff.  It just all worked out.