I’ve always stayed away from Cons, expecting to be the oldest one there surrounded by teenie boppers in inappropriately revealing costumes. Also, not much typically interests me enough to draw me in. However, at this particular convention (Florida Supercon) held in Miami, Florida on June 18 – 20, 2010, two members of Ghost Hunters International were attending. My wife is an avid fan of the show, and she was going with me or without me, so I decided to give in and attend. I’m glad I did. My whole family had a great time.
There were a number of famous actors, artists, and former wrestlers present. A few things about the convention stood out for me and are worth retelling to my robot collecting brethren.
First, I got to meet Steve of the Robotastic Apocalypse blog. I’ve been following his blog for a while now, and we chat every now and then. He hooked me up with someone who provided some of the awesome catalogs presented in the gallery on this site! He also did a write-up on this convention. Steve directed me to a seller of original comic art. What was particularly cool was a cover of Shogun Warriors comic book #7! The seller was asking for about $1,200, if I recall correctly. He didn’t want to budge. However, it was cool to witness this piece of history in person.
I also met Cindy Morgan. She is best known for her role as Lora Bradley / Yori in the original Tron movie! (She was also the smoking hot babe from Caddyshack). She was REAL friendly, and she said that there’s a big viral marketing campaign to get her into the new Tron Legacy film.
There were many artists there – some were published artists, but some were not. One of the artists took old paintings like those that you find at garage sales (you know – the kind you would only hang in a bathroom) and added giant monsters in for a humorous effect. These were pretty cool.
One of the guys I met had some amazing kaiju prints. I bought a Godzilla one, and I had him pose holding up two more. These were really fantastic battle scenes – amazing detail and great compositions. Once I save up enough, I want to contact him and buy prints of the others he made. I can provide contact info for the artist if anyone is interested. I also contacted him to try to get better scans of his other work, but I haven’t heard back from him yet. I’ll update this if and when I do.
At this table, I also ran into a fellow vinyl kaiiju collector who I’d met once before. Jordan (Geekabilly on skullbrain) is a collector of vintage Bullmark toys. He’s got a great collection of classic pieces that makes me very envious! It was cool meeting up with him again. I’m always glad to meet fellow collectors with similar taste!
The dealer’s room had a few toys, but nothing too spectacular. They had the super-large Big G for an astronomical price, some cool Unifive Kamen Rider figures, typical kaiju Bandai toys and Gashapon, Revoltechs, and some Henshin Cyborg / Medicom figures.
Anyway, that about wraps it up in terms of robot / kaiju influences. Of course, there were the obligatory costumed attendees. Everyone lvoes seeing these, so here’s just a sampling of the recognizable (Domo, superhero, Pokemon figures) and non-recognizable ones (scary clown that my kids avoided like the plague, new creation for a comic book):
Thanks for reading. If you’re in the South Florida area, this is an annual event. Maybe I’ll see you there next year!