I’ve been debating on whether this should be a video because all my other album unboxings have been on Youtube, but since this isn’t a recent release and I’ve already said all I can about Gfriend, a blog post should suffice. So let’s proceed with the unboxing of this Summer Mini Album from my favorite K-pop Girl Group.
This album was released back in July 2018 when, if you’ve read my Gfriend Story, I wasn’t even aware of these girls. But in the year of the Lord, 2021, I am now (and forever will be) a Buddy. I plan on collecting all the Gfriend albums that I missed and this is the latest one in my collection.
Shout out to The Peach Co. for always hooking me up with my Gfriend merchandise. Of course since this isn’t a Pre-Order (obviously), I missed out on getting the poster and the polaroid. This is strictly just the sealed album itself.
This is probably the album whose aesthetics really caught my eye. It’s very playful and just my type concept. It’s probably my 2nd favorite concept of theirs after their Laughing Out Loud concept which remains superior. As you can see from the album’s cover, the girls are really feeling the summer vibe. I got the Summer Version simply because it’s colored blue, as opposed to the Sunny Version which is red. If there is an option for a blue color, I will always choose it.
The album has 5 tracks, all of which are worth a listen. Aside from the title track “Sunny Summer“, I recommend “Vacation” which is just as fun to listen to and will surely put a smile on your face.
However, my personal favorite would have to be “Windy Windy“. It’s far up on my list of favorite B-sides. It starts out slow with Eunha and SinB’s soothing voices and then transforms into an upbeat melody that just takes you for an enjoyable ride. You simply have to listen to it to understand what I mean, and watch out for my favorite Yuju high note near the end.
But to be honest, there’s no reason to skip a song in this release, as is standard with Gfriend’s discography.
Now back to the album itself.
On the reverse side of the front cover, you get the CD. It’s held by a small piece of foam, which is how it’s been for most of Gfriend’s albums. Again, I really like the design here, especially the “sticker label” aesthetic of the album’s name being juxtaposed with the playful handwritten elements. This is one of the few times where even the CD design is well executed.
Since this was a sealed album, I was excited to check out my pulls for the photocards. I’m not really a die-hard photocard collector, but since they’re part of the K-pop album experience, I had no choice but to accommodate them.
And there they were, slipped in between the pages of the photobook. Looks like I pulled the unnie line!
Yaaaas, finally I was able to pull a Yerin photocard! If you don’t know yet, she is my bias. One of the reasons I got into Gfriend was to hear more of her laughter. She’s the cutest bundle of joy I’ve ever seen and I wish her the best on her future solo endeavors. 🥲
On the reverse side of the cards are their signatures and a short message. Look at how cute those signatures are. I found it hard to read their hangul handwriting so I didn’t bother translating. 😂
Browsing through the photobook will hurt too much so here’s a few pages I really liked. Each member getting their own specific logo is a cool touch that I liked. Sad that they didn’t continue it.
These photocards are the only inclusions in the album (aside from the aforementioned Pre-Order Bonus Poster and Polaroids that I didn’t get). If I recall correctly, Source Music didn’t have a lot of gimmicks with their albums until the Labyrinth era.
I also bought something really cool from The Peach Co.: a photocard holder. This is official Gfriend merch from their final comeback, Walpurgis Night. Such bittersweet feelings come up whenever I see this. 😭
And so, I will be adding my new Photocards to the pages.
Because I’ve pretty much collected all the Gfriend albums I liked a lot, I won’t be able to fill the entire book with just Gfriend photocards. I’ve already put in my Weeekly and woo!ah! photocards, as well as some unofficial ones I got as freebies.
And that’s about it for this album. It’s definitely one of my favorites and it’s a great addition to my growing Kpop shelf.
I’ve built up quite a collection during my first year of getting into K-pop. Maybe I’ll show them off in a future blog post! As you can see there are still a few that I haven’t opened yet, so watch out here or on my YouTube channel for updates.
Thanks for reading! If you’ve got anything to say, let me know in the comments below. For now, stay safe and let’s survive.
-jgzn
Jai Online 