The rarest Japanese item in my Wonder Eggs collection...

Hello friends, I hope that you are well. It’s been a few months since my birthday, but I wanted to share something that I got at the end of 2025. As you may remember I was the co-host on the Pink Monorail Podcast. My wife Shelly was a theme park historian, and teacher. On the show we did a deep dive on the parks, technology, and the people that shaped the industry. Her favorite park was E.P.C.O.T. which was Walt Disney’s secret project before he passed away in 1966. It took all of his remaining team members in order to complete it in 1982. Shelly has a collection of rare E.P.C.O.T. items from Walt Disney World over her workspace. She used to have a much larger, and much rarer collection of animation, and theme park items from all around the world. Unfortunately they were stolen by a family member, and sold for drug money. The few things that remained she was very proud of.

By comparison I was a huge fan of Wonder Eggs which was the first video game theme park. I did a multi-part series on it, the links are below. I had a much smaller collection of Wonder Eggs items which I had been slowly acquiring over the past decade. I could literally put everything I collected in a shoebox. One of the things I got for my bday was an old issue of Namco’s magazine NOURS which covered the opening of Tamago Teikoku aka the Egg Empire. This was the sister park built next door to Wonder Eggs.

I can often find Nours magazines from 1998 and later, but issues from 1993-1995 rarely come up on the Japanese auction sites. I got the fifth issue which was from Autumn of 1994. It was filled with photos, and a complete write up of the Egg Empire. It also covered what changes happened with the Wonder Eggs attractions. I was fascinated with how much had changed in the few years since its opening. It was a time capsule of one of the most important eras in theme park history, and sadly not a lot of historians were even aware that it existed.

The most important thing that I was able to score for my birthday was an actual employee badge from Wonder Eggs. It belonged to a person whose name was "Suzuki." Up until that point the only items I had acquired were from visitors. Or could be purchased in the gift shop. Things like plush mascots, tickets, pins, flyers, and even the official park soundtrack on CD. Getting something that was from an employee was astounding. I had never seen one for sale previously, and even when searching through previous auctions none had never come up. I just so happened to be at the right place, at the right time when it appeared.

The name tag wasn’t cheap, however given its rarity it was worth the price to me. It looked great in my collection. There were very few items left on my wish list, but I don’t think I’ll get anything cooler. If you collect anything unique tell me in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!