A new toy has appeared in FarmVille. It’s called the “Mooncycle” and it has a rabbit riding it. It looks identical to a North American Sailor Moon toy called the “Moon Cycle”. What a strange reference…

The rabbit riding the Mooncycle is likely a reference to Sailor Moon’s character Usagi who’s name literally means rabbit. The Moon Cycle never made an appearance in the Sailor Moon anime or manga. It’s existance as a toy always confused fans. Looking at the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon pilot we can see some similarities between the design of the Moon Cycle and some of the vehicles used in that show such as Sailor Moon’s Sky Flyer.

This appears to be a decoration and as I understand it this toy will only be available for a limited time. Looks like you can only buy it with FarmVille money meaning you need to spend real money to get it, it’s not something you buy with in game currency. Although I don’t play FarmVille someone did make a farm on my account so here’s my farm showing the item for sale for 7 FVs:

I bought a Moon Cycle toy from a clearance aisle years back but unfortunately I’ve been unable to locate it. I was really looking forward to taking photos of my rabbit on the thing. Here’s a scan of the box:

It is quite strange that Sailor Moon is called “Lune Marine” in French despite her name as Sailor Moon being long established in France by the time this toy was released.

Here’s an old commercial for Sailor Moon toys featuring the Moon Cycle:

Thanks to Sailor Moon Forums poster SailorDonut for spotting this one.

Every day we’re seeing more and more cels from the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon pilot being sold on ebay. Today we get our first look at cels that come with hand painted backgrounds which give us a great look at what this show would have looked like. The Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon show, sometimes called Saban Moon or Fox Kids Sailor Moon, was a pilot for a Sailor Moon show that mixed live action footage and western animation. Luckily for fans in the west we got the Dic dub instead but these cels are a great close up look at what this show may have looked like if Sailor Moon history had been much different.

The main new thing we see in this set of cels is Sailor Moon’s space ship referred to in the script which we had an exclusive first look at, as the Galleon. This ship appears to be destroyed by Queen Beryl’s own ship the Dark Galleon in the clip of the show we’ve seen. Galleon is a term generally used to describe very large multi decked ocean faring ship from the 16th to 18th century. This auction of a cel of the Galleon comes with a background of space and stars. It, like the other auctions from this seller, are not “Buy it now” so we’ll have to wait a week to see who ends up buying this one. You of course should not bid so that I can win them all real cheap…

We also get another look at Sailor Mars on her Sky Flyer in this auction. The background image looks a bit like a nebula in space. There aren’t really any stars but it looks quite neat.

There’s also this auction of a cel showing Sailor Moon with a background that I can only imagine shows the inside of the Galleon though it may also be a structure on the Moon of some kind. In the window a number of planets can be seen. This kind of image is typical of space sceneries in cartoons where the vast emptiness of the universe is not well considered or perhaps simply ignored for the sake of the visuals and space is instead shown as an endless stream of closely clustered planets and nebulae. If this is indeed near Earth or the Moon no other planets should be visible to the naked eye. This image might make sense if this were taking place on Jupiter however, which is a location in the pilot.

Finally we have an auction for a cel showing Darian, also known as Tuxedo Mask, giving Sailor Moon her Star Pendant. The cel isn’t anything special without the inclusion of the background which shows what looks like a large portal or port hole and some pipes or wires coming out of it. A very peculiar sight. My first thought is that this could be the Vortex mentioned in the script but that Vortex should not be near the place where Sailor Moon receives the Star Pendant and is more likely in outer space. There is always also the possibility that these backgrounds don’t match the exact scenes they’re paired with, though most of them seem to fit and the backgrounds seem consistent with what we’ve seen of the show in the clip of the pilot.

These cels are not from one of the two other sellers who were auctioning Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon cels earlier. They are from a seller named icollect-online. I have purchased cels from other anime and cartoon series from this seller in the past and have had nothing but good experiences.

The story of the Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon show, known to some as “Saban Sailor Moon” or “Saban Moon”, is a long and fascinating tale in what could have been. Basically in 1994 there was a plan to make an American Sailor Moon show featuring a mix of live action and animated bits that was something like Power Rangers meets She-Ra. The whole history is long and complex, most of which can be inferred from this article which shows it to have been a project by Toon Makers’, Bandai and Renaissance Atlantic. I’d love to go on explaining this at length but I will leave that for another time. All that has been available of this to date has been this short clip which played at a convention years ago… until now!

Cels used in the original pilot episode of this show have surfaced on ebay, which constitute by far the best quality images of this show that have been found online to date. You can easily find the remaining cels by searching for “toon makers sailor moon” on ebay. I’ve purchased a number of these cels and once I receive them I’ll be sure to share better pictures with all of you. Interestingly enough a lot of these cels are from scenes not seen in the short clip which has been made available online.

Most notable in these auctions are an auction (sold) for a cel of Sailor Moon which also includes a cel of her weird vehicle now known to be the “Sky Flyer” and a script for a segment of animation which seems to be from the first episode. I’ll transcribe that at a later time.

There’s also this auction for a cel of Sailor Moon’s transformation which also comes with a number of sketches of that sequence. This auction is currently still available for $499.99.

Here is an auction (sold) for cels of face shots of all of the Sailor Soldiers, now called Princess Warriors, as well as pencil sketches to go along with them.

There are also many, many, many auctions for cels of Luna, who is now a white cat, as well as one of Sailor Moon on her Sky Flyer. These single cels are all $99.99.

A lot of new things can be learned just from the postings of these items, mostly from the script itself. We learn of the name of the Sky Flyer, the name “Princess Warriors”, we see that Darian (Tuxedo Mask) was to be in it as well as Queen Beryl and that the girls will transform with “Jewels of Power”. It should also be noted that some of the sheets including information about the animation have the name “Rugrats” crossed off.

These cels aren’t cheap, and it remains to be seen if any of these might be reposted at lower prices if they don’t sell well. For now the seller has been adding more of these cels occasionally so it would be best to keep an eye out for them, I know I will. Though not part of a show that ever made it to air these products are a weird and truly rare part of Sailor Moon history that reminds us of a step to the path which ultimately gave us the Sailor Moon dub we all know and (some of us) love.

Thanks to Cutiebunny from the Sailor Moon forums for finding these.

If you haven’t watched it yet, here’s the video of the show: