Like Red Dawn, V involves a group of resistance freedom fighters but instead of fighting Russians, they were fighting Aliens skinned to look like humans. The marketing they had at the Comic Con was pretty slick. They had booth girls roleplaying as ambassadors from the Visitors’ Mothership handing out pamphlets and pinning “I Love V” buttons on people. The pamphlets purpose is to communicate the Visitors’ intentions to “assist mankind with our knowledge and technology” and bring mankind and Visitors together “in an inspiring moment for us all.” Ha, nice. Us children of the 80′s know the Visitors’ true intentions.

So with all these re-makes (V, Red Dawn, Tron) I wonder if we going to see 25 years from now remakes of Heroes, Lost, Harry Potter, etc?

Last year we saw Hayden Panettiere on the main exhibit floor as well as Neil Patrick Harris. I saw Hayden again this year at the Heroes panel along with many of the other cast members but I was about 40 rows back.

Anyway, I never knew who Olivia Munn was until that day I almost ran into her. For her fans, I hope you enjoy this pic.

Thanks to Jay and Drew for introducing me to LightBox 2. This is my first post using the photo plugin.

More images to come soon. I’m still figuring out this lightbox thingy!

So this past Friday we waited with my friend Drew for the Deph FatCap Vinyl Toy Comic Con exclusive at the Kidrobot booth. I personally broke my own comic con record for waiting in line previously held by Hasbro. Last year We waited in a three hour line for Hasbro exclusives. Well, Kidrobot smashed that record as we waited close to four hours.

The exclusive purple FatCap was limited to only 200 pieces and were only available to the first 200 people at the Kidrobot booth on friday morning. It sold out as soon as the doors to the convention opened.

The artist Deph was at the KidRobot booth and he was autographing both the toys and the boxes they were packaged in. His art has a high attention to detail as you can tell in the figures and also how he autographs each piece (which is why the line took so long).

I’ve got a good amount of material to keep me blogging about the comic con for quite a while but here are some key points from this year’s comic con:

1. The swag given away by the various major vendors was considerably less this year. It was very noticeable from someone who has been going to every comic con since 1999. The kids used to love getting the free stuff in years past and they were kinda disappointed this time around. I’m guessing the economy has really tightened the marketing budget for many of these companies so we were kinda limited to mini-posters, buttons, and other generic stuff. There were a few companies that had some cool giveaways. Yu-Gi-Oh brought in a green screen so they can print out your picture and put it on an exclusive Yu-Gi-Oh card.

2. The level of difficulty in managing your kids at the comic con grows exponentially by the number of kids you have. I have a 15-year old but she is self-sufficient. We also have a six year, three year, and 6-week old. Bringing these kids was a tall order to say the least. Even though this was mostly a business trip I tried to make it a family trip also. It’s just too crowded to bring kids especially young ones. Logan (the three year old) was the toughest. It’s just too easy to lose them in the sea of people, aliens, and robots. Fortunately, I was able to send them home with Grandma and my sister’s family on Friday night.Next year, just me and the wife (and maybe Taylor the 15yo).

3. There were some noticeable companies missing from the Con like Hot Wheels and Disney. Maybe I just didn’t see them because they moved to a smaller booth but these companies/vendors were solid mainstays prior to this year. It’s a shame because my kids loved both booths and I always looked forward to seeing what exclusive Hot Wheels had to offer. Disney gave out some cool swag last year (fairy wings, which my daughter still has).

4. Of all the years I’ve been going to the Comic-Con this is the first time I ever attended a panel. Actually I attended three panels. The first two were Sanctuary and Glee. Taylor and I sat into these two panels to guarantee our seat in the Heroes panel. I absolutely enjoyed all the panels especially the Heroes one. I’m a big fan of the show. I was a little disappointed in how last season ended but after attending the panel and listening to the actors talk about the upcoming season, “Redemption”, it got me really excited again.

5. I spent a small fortune on parking this weekend. Do yourself a favor and get to the con super early so you can park in the 10 dollar structure before it fills up. Once that structure fills up you can fight for spots in the gaslamp, petco park, or various parking lots where you can pay from 15-30 dollars.

Overall, this was a unique comic con experience this year. I didn’t bring home as much loot and re-sellable items this year but I did get to see more than just the main exhibit hall. I’m definately going to change my plan of attack for next year.

I took a ton of photos this year and I hope to put them up in my upcoming blog posts.

Fans really go the extra mile to enhance their Comic Con experience. Going to the con is like stepping into a comic book sometimes. There are thousands of people dressed up in their favorite pop-culture icons. Some costumes are truly fantastic and some are totally bizarre. Here’s some photos I took of my favorite costumes from last year’s Comic Con in no particular order (For G.I.Joe costumes, check out my blog several posts down).

The squad of classic cylons were most impressive. They had the voice synthesizers, visors with that red light going back and forth, and they role played pretty well. I noticed they loved hanging out at the Star Wars booth.

Star Wars Stormtroopers are as standard issue to the Comic Con as their BlasTech Industries E-11 assault rifles that they carry. No con is complete without the waves of stormtroopers and biker scouts (Mostly from the fan created 501st legion).

Some costumes scared the crap out of my kids like the Vampire chick from 30 Days of Night and the freakish Joker from Batman (recently escaped from Arkham Asylum).

Speaking of scary costumes this guy was like a train wreck. Hard to look at but you just couldn’t turn away. Like I said, there are some bizarre costumes at the Comic Con. I think he is supposed to be King Namor or King Neptune. Either way, I recall both characters being in terrific shape.

Not everyone that dresses up are 30-something year old men that still live in their parent’s basement. You’ll be surpised at the diverse collection of people that dress up in costume. Yes, even girls dress up (although some of them were promoting something).

From the photos released by Hasbro the exclusive looks very similar to the original (which you probably couldn’t buy without spending a small fortune). It’s my understanding that Soundwave will come with four “tapes”: BUZZSAW, LASERBEAK, RATBAT and RAVAGE. I’m feeling all giddy just thinking about it.

From Hasbro:
“One of the most recognizable characters from the TRANSFORMERS brand lore, SOUNDWAVE is making a retro-comeback for San Diego Comic-Con in honor of the brand’s 25th Anniversary. Hasbro is re-releasing the original 1984 edition of the figure that will include four of the SOUNDWAVE character’s cassettes, two of which have not been released since the 80′s. The cassette characters include BUZZSAW, LASERBEAK, RATBAT and RAVAGE. The four figures fully convert between robot and cassette mode and fit into SOUNDWAVE when in cassette mode.

It’s no surprise this particular Transformer was discontinued a long time ago. I’m pretty sure the target audience isn’t even old enough to remember what a “cassette” is. Maybe they should bring Soundwave back as an Ipod or an Iphone… that would be cool! Make it happen Hasbro!

Anyway, this year one of the Mighty Mugg exlcusives will be of Wolverine/Logan. From the stock photo he looks pretty awesome. For those that don’t know Wolverine is my favorite comic book character. I collected comics when I was in junior high and later on when I was in college. I was an avid reader of the X-Men and Wolverine titles.

From Hasbro, “This Righteous Rebel with claws coming to you in exclusive foil packaging for Comic Con. “Made from 100% Recycled AWESOME™!”, this X-Man sports a lovable sneer and retractable claws on both hands.” RETRACTABLE CLAWS??? SWEET!

I plan on buying a good number of these and will most definately keep one and open it. He’ll go nicely on my office desk right next to my Snake Eyes Mighty Mugg.

Hey, did I mention my son’s name is Logan? snikt!

For those of you with kids you’ve probably seen some of the Disney Car short episodes on the Disney Channel. One of those episodes has the loveable Mater telling Lightning McQueen of a time when he was a fire truck. This year’s exclusive is a 1:55th scale diecast carof Mater as that fire truck. I believe he will also come with the twins Mia and Tia skinned in dalmatian deco.

Rumor has it the set will run about $30 dollars. In comparison, last year’s Lightning Storm McQueen cost $15 dollars and came in an acrylic display case.

For those that haven’t seen the short episodes you can probably find them on YouTube. Oh, and while you’re there check out the short episode where Mater is an Import Drift Racer in Tokyo. It’s hilarious even for adults.

We still had a good time being at a different toy convention for the first time. Logan and Leia especially had fun.

Here’s the life-size Optimus Prime in Truck mode. The con was small but Optimus was huge and would be most impressive in robot mode I’m sure.

Like the Comic Con some fans at the BotCon came dressed in some pretty impressive costumes. Here’s my favorite costume of the day, Bumble Bee.

Sorry this photo has a lot of glare but here are some of the exclusives that Hasbro was selling at the BotCon. IMHO, way overpriced. $300+ for the boxed set. Nice packaging though. They were also giving a discount and a limited bonus figure away to those purchasing a membership.