Review: Mr. Nekonote Station

So I went to C2E2 a few weeks ago. If your only exposure to cons are 40k heavy, please do yourself a favor and attend one of these pop culture/comic conventions. They are ever so slightly less geeky, although the winner of the cosplay contest was a female 40k inquisitor!

The plasma gun was pretty amazing.

So while walking through Artists Alley where commissions were incredibly cheap (but no one I spoke with had really done 40k art), I noticed that there were a few hobby vendors an aisle over amidst the booths full of vintage toys and fidget spinners. Most of those hobby booths were Gundam-focused, of
course. I wish I knew more about the genre because those models are amazing. I mean the Tau aesthetic obviously started with anime and gundam, but they've deviated quite a bit despite surface similarities.

I was on the hunt for a very specific chrome paint in one of these gundam booths when I ran across this:

I immediately thought of this in my mind:

Vlad had the right idea. To handle parts, I mean!

So what is it? Well, it says right on the side. It's a Mr. Nekonote Station. o_O
I'm guessing that there is some stupidly obvious (at least to someone Japanese) reason for the name, but I couldn't begin to tell you what that might be. What I do know is that what you see here is a bunch of corrugated cardboard strips in a card stock box, and a bunch of tapered dowels with clips on the end. I also found a large set of those dowels.

No, YOU rotate it 90 degrees.  >:(

The concept is simple: clip small items to the dowel and slide the dowel into any available spot. There is little to no friction so this should last quite a while.

One point of caution. The little clips are pretty gentle, but they definitely could bite into resin. As you can see in the diagram above they are clipping to the sprue or non-visible area. I'm going to have to see if I can find another attachment system or gentler clips for really tiny pieces.

So the real question is: Is this worth buying? I know some of you are thinking that you could just buy all these separate items and create this yourself, and I agree with you. But for $6.50 US for the base, it would be hard for me to justify fashioning one out of corrugated boxes, a box cutter, card stock, and tape. Apart from the overly strong clips, I have no complaints about the price quality or function of this station.

Now I need to find out more about this Mr. Nekonote...

Do any of you use one of these?