Rudy Panucci On Pop Culture

Month: March 2021 (Page 2 of 4)

The RFC Flashback: Episode 207

We go back to February, 2015 this week for a full-length episode of Radio Free Charleston that was comprised entirely of file footage shot months and years before.  From 2014, we have Farnsworth and from 2009 we have Hellblinki, both recorded at The Empty Glass in Charleston. You can read the full production notes for this show HERE.

The JoeLanta/ToyLanta Index

The PopCulteer
March 19, 2021

In today’s PopCulteer I’m going to provide an annotated index to the coverage that we’ve provided for JoeLanta/ToyLanta in this blog since 2013. Photos are all taken from previous year’s coverage. {Special note: I suspect that this post will be filled with tons of typos–I cranked out almost 3000 words in a very short time. Please excuse the mess.}

ToyLanta began life as JoeLanta, which was originally inspired somewhat by The Official GI Joe Club Convention. Over the years the Official GI Joe Club (which shut down in 2019) shifted their focus from the original 12″ GI Joe from the 1960s and 1970s, to the “Real American Hero” Joe of the 1980s.

This left a lot of collectors of the original GI Joe feeling disenfranchised, so in 2000 they decided to put on their own show, based in Atlanta, that would provide a more intimate and more affordable gathering of collectors of the larger GI Joe, with a focus on custom figures and outfits, and elaborate dioramas.

JoeLanta quickly gained a reputation as the most fun toy convention in the country. JoeLanta eventually became a fundraiser for the non-profit Cody Lane Foundation (named after a young fan who had passed away) and is now focused toward raising money to build a toy diorama museum. In 2017 JoeLanta became ToyLanta.

Longtime PopCult readers may recall that, for the first several years of this blog, I was not able to travel. I’d been a full-time caregiver for my mother until her death in 2006, and rather than get a reprieve from caregiving, I was almost immediately pressed into service managing my uncle’s healthcare, and eventually becoming his chief caregiver.

Because of this, I could not travel to toy shows, despite being fairly well-known for writing about collectible toys since 1996.

By 2009, I had some help taking care of my uncle, and was able to get away for day trips to The Marx Toy Convention and MEGO Meet when both shows were in Wheeling. In 2013, Buddy Finethy, from JoeLanta, got in touch with me and persuaded me to make the trip to Atlanta for my first big toy collectors convention.

I’m always going to be grateful to Buddy for that.

Later in 2013 my caregiver responsibilities ended, and for the first time in over twenty years, I was really free to travel. JoeLanta became an annual trip and Mel and I always have a blast going down there for what became week-long visits that included shooting locations for The Walking Dead and lots of fun shopping in addition to the best toy show in the country. JoeLanta became ToyLanta a few years back, to reflect the expanded interests of the convention-goers.

This year, we have to stay home. Neither of us are vaccinated yet (next week, hopefully) and it would be reckless to travel with my weakened immune system. However, the show is going on starting today,  after a one-year hiatus due to the pandemic. At this point, I’m going to turn the story over to the links below, which will give you a chronological portrait of PopCult going to ToyLanta.

This is not a complete list of every post I’ve made on the subject. Many of them were redundant, just re-posting previous years worth of material to plug an upcoming show, so this index will just focus on the meaty, original content.

You know I’m bringing one of these home with me.

Let’s start in 2013…

I did announce my first trip to JoeLanta in advance. This was risky, since my uncle’s relatives had a nasty habit of trying to create emergencies to disrupt any trip I took out of town, but I did indeed mention my trip to JoeLanta in advance, and it’s in this post, which includes a dead video I need to edit at some point.

We made a short visit that year driving down Friday and back Sunday, but hadn’t quite unpacked on Monday, so I ran this as Monday Morning Art.  The following Friday I had a brief photo essay ready to go. Later that day I posted video of the State of the Hobby Roundtable, which I also participated in. A few days later I finally had my first JoeLanta wrap-up video ready, which included interviews with Buddy Finethy and David Lane, and my old online friend (who I’d met in person for the first time), Dave Matteson.

In 2014, freed from my caregiver obligations, we made a longer trip to JoeLanta, which included our first visit to Senoia. I previewed that year’s show HERE.  I had also prepapred a PopCulteer column to run on the first day of the show in case I didn’t have time to report from the road, but it turned out that I did have time to get some photo essays online. This turned out to be the day with four PopCulteer columns. We covered the Walking Dead tour of Senoia, which took place on the Thursday before the show, and that bus trip also included trips to see the collections of Tim Merrit and Bryan Tatum.  The Sunday of ToyLanta we brought you a Studio Joe video from Tim and Lisa Weedn, who have become good friends and are hilarious filmmakers.

Still in March, 2014, I posted a photo essay of my haul from Joelanta. Someday I’ll get around to unpacking and displaying all this stuff.  Our next post included three videos, two of which are still online. This had a new Studio Joe film and the 2014 Walking dead panel from JoeLanta. We then posted our take of The Walking Dead tour, The “Joe at 50” panel, The 2014 State o the Hobby, The Marx Action Figures Panel with Scott Stewart and Tom Heaton, video of Tim Merrit’s collection, video of Bryan Tatum’s collection, Monday Morning Art based on Mike Gardner’s “Zombie Horde at Yellow Creek” diorama, and our big 2014 JoeLanta wrap-up video.

Mike Gardner’s epic diorama was so huge that it took two more photo essays, posted almost a month later, to cover them. Here is part one and part two.

We kicked off our 2015 JoeLanta coverage with a preview post that included Tim and Lisa Weedn’s preview video for the show.  We managed to get a photo essay online for day one of the show that year. We also got a photo essay of dioramas and custom figures posted while we were still on the road, too. After we got back home, I had a photo essay of the dealer’s room for everyone to see. Later on, we revisted the diormas with another photo essay.

2015 was the year we really went overboard on the videos, preserving many panels from the convention. Larry Hama gave a detailed breakdown of his famous GI Joe comic book story, “Silent Interlude.” There was The 2015 State of the Hobby.  The Phantom Trouble maker from The Needless Things podcast and Ricky Zhero from Radio Cult hosted a panel on character toys.  There was a panel devoted to Monster High.  Speaking of Radio Cult, we featured the band, performing at JoeLanta, on The RFC MINI SHOW. Don Teems joined Mel Larch and Mike Gardner on The Walking Dead panel.  Almost two weeks after the show, I was able to finish the big 2015 JoeLanta wrap-up video.  A post that compiled other 2015 JoeLanta videos also included a musical tour of the dealers rooms, set to the music of Chuck Biel. A few days later I posted raw video of the dioramas, set to more music by Chuck Biel, along with an extra photo essay. Then, from our extended trip, we had Mel’s video of Senoia, and The Walking Dead Shoppe. Filmed on the floor of the convention, our next RFC MINI SHOW showcased The Possum Kingdom Ramblers.

2016 was a bit of a strange year for your PopCulteer. For the second year in a row, Mel and I had gone to New York for the International Toy Fair just a few weeks before JoeLanta. I had tons of photos and video from Toy Fair to edit and post, and didn’t get it all done before it was time to leave for JoeLanta. At the same time, my hands were getting increasingly weaker, and I was having trouble keeping my eyes focused. We took Lee Harrah with us to JoeLanta, and he was a huge help, because by this point, I couldn’t even open a water bottle by myself. I managed to keep my weakness fairly well-hidden, but I knew something serious was going on with me. A month after we got back from JoeLanta, I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, which was a life-changing revelation, but was also a huge relief, just having a diagnosis.

Still, we managed a lot of coverage that year. Our preview post kicked things off. After we got back, I managed this first recap post, before diving head-first into coverage. We offered up The 2016 State of the Hobby panel a few days later. In 2016 we had two panels from Larry Hama, one just of the artist/writer doing a Q&A session, and one talking about his experience storyboarding Boardwalk Empire.   Mike Gardner’s diner diorama was featured in a photo essay. We also had video and more photos of the 2016 dioramas HERE. Lee Harrah was a guest on the Needless Things podcast’s Toy Stories panel. We crossed over with the other “RFC” and presented the Radio Free Cybertron Transformers panel.  We also caught up with the Earth Station One podcast for a Star Wars panel. We also had a panel devoted to Big Jim, and a revival of the classic action figure that, sadly, did not happen. In happier news, we decided to do a video devoted to The JoeLanta parachute drop.

2016 was also the year that, due to my diagnosis and the lovely hurricane of meds that followed, I didn’t get the wrap-up video finished until November. I was appropriately mortified by this.

To make up for that, in 2017 I went a bit overboard and ran previews for two weeks ahead of the event. I’m not going to post links to all of those, because most of the previews just re-posted stuff that you can see in the links above. However, the first one is filled with pertinent new info. Our first post durng the convention that year covered the name change from JoeLanta to Toylanta. and sprinkled in a few early photos.  I also managed to post photos of Mike Gardner building his epic Avengers diorama.  As soon as we got back, I posted photos of my haul from the show.  Photo essays from the show were posted HEREHERE, HERE and HERE.

A word essay with photos was posted HERE.  Having learned my lesson the previous year, I made it a point to do the wrap-up video first in 2017. Then we had panels with Felipe, from Louco  Por Bonecos and James Wozniak from Classic Recasts.  We also posted panels devoted to Monster Toys, The Walking Dead, MEGO and The Needless Things Podcast’s Playing With Toys.  In addition, we had a panel devoted to Super Joe, and this was the year that  Larry Hama, having exhausted much of his GI Joe material, spoke at large about his experience creating a role in a Sondheim musical.  I have a feeling he got the idea for this topic from a conversation he had with Mel when we first met him a few years earlier.

After we got back, an installment of Monday Morning Art was inspired by the custom figure and Bryan Tatum’s cool cave diorama piece.

In 2018 I did another week of preview posts for the show that used material from previous years, but among those posts I also had a new GI Joe-centric Monday Morning Art, with a digital painting that I had printed on canvas and donated to the ToyLanta auction. I had a placeholder post set to publish on the first day of the show, but I also managed to sneak in a quick set of photos of the pre-show trip and activities. I also edited a quick trailer for the show on the road, just to see if the laptop was capable of rendering video.

The reason I wanted to see how well the laptop handled video was because I got the crazy idea to do a video each day while I was there, so that I wouldn’t have so much video editing to do once we got home. This didn’t work out too well because people watched the first day, then didn’t bother watching anything else.  Also, I didn’t get a chance to start on the video until after midnight, and wrapped it up and posted it about six hours later, which meant that I was operating with about 90 minutes of sleep on the second, very long and busy, day of the convention. I was too wiped out to do any more videos while we were on the road. In fact, I spent much of Saturday hallucinated that I was being followed by cows.

2018 was also the year that…SURPRISE…the hotel was being renovated AND a water-main break meant that nobody could drink tap water or take a shower.  I whined a bit about it in this post. However we did manage to have a good time despite all that, and I brought you a taste of the ToyLanta Film Festival from Tim and Lisa Weedn.  I also showed off my toy haul from 2018, but you have to scroll down past a depressing essay about Toys R Us first. I re-edited much of the “Day One” video and combined with everything else I’d shot to put together a longer wrap-up video.

My allergies took a real beating on this trip, and we returned home to Arctic weather, and that combined with audio issues due to the renovations and breaking news about Toys R Us, meant that a lot of stuff from ToyLanta 2018 didn’t get posted for quite some time. To be honest, I still have a ton of stuff from 2018 sitting unused on one of my external drives. However, I did manage to get two panel videos done…just in time to promote ToyLanta 2019!

First I put together two short promos for ToyLanta, 2019, using footage from previous years. You can see those HERE. Then I posted toy designer, Greg Autore, and his panel on GI Joe toys he designed that never made it to retailers. After that, I posted the 2018 Space Toys panel, with Carlos Morrison, Clay Sayre, Terry Stair Jr. and George Felix. Tim and Lisa Weedn also made a cool trailer for the 2019 show, even though they couldn’t make it that year.  Another preview for 2019 was another GI Joe-inspired Monday Morning Art piece that I had printed and donated to the annualy ToyLanta auction for the Cody Lane Foundation.

2019 was a bit of an unusual ToyLanta for your PopCulteer because we made plans to do something on the trip for Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch, who is a huge fan of The Walking Dead.  For a very brief and limited time, the studio where they shoot TWD was giving tours of all the places that are normally forbidden for the general public. I told Mel to book us on a tour during the trip, and the only day they had open was Sunday, the last day of ToyLanta. My plan was to shoot tons of video and photos on Friday and Saturday, pull an all-nighter on Satuday night (after the Radio Cult show, which ran really late that year) and get up Sunday and check out and head to Senoia.  In previous years, the only thing happening on Sunday was great last-minute deals from dealers who didn’t want to have to carry stuff back home.

However, after we booked the tour, we discovered that every single one of the GI Joe panels had been moved to Sunday. So I didn’t shoot any video of the panels that year.

But, I did have the wrap-up video posted before the convention was over…so there was that. After we got back, I posted a photo diary of our trip  down and then the show itself.

Amid another MG flare-up, I posted the raw video of the dioramas from 2019, and photos of my toy haul from that year.  Much later, I was able to post photos of the diorama and custom figures HERE, HERE and HERE. I also snuck in an abstract painting of Bambie and Ricky from Radio Cult jamming at Buddy Finethy’s restaurant, Hawg ‘n’ Ale.

Last year there was no ToyLanta. I covered its cancellation in real time HERE.  I was able to bring you last year’s planned Film Festival, compiled by Tim and Lisa, HERE.

This year I pointed you to where you can get updates from vendors and attendees during the show. After the show’s over, more content will posted officially by the ToyLanta crew. Speaking from experience, I know that it’d take a full-time crew working like crazy to run a toy convention and post live updates at the same time.

That is our PopCulteer this week. I hope you enjoy this handy index to our ToyLanta coverage to date. Keep your fingers crossed, because our plan is to return to ToyLanta next year and cover it out the wazoo.  I hope to cover some of this year’s show remotely next week, but no wazoos will be harmed in the production of those posts. In the meantime, check PopCult every day for fresh content.

Everybody Was…Well, You know…

The PopCult Comix Bookshelf

Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter: Coming of the Dragon!
by Dennis O’Neil, Ric Estrada, Wallace Wood and various
DC Comics
ISBN-13 : 978-1779508102
$49.99 (discounted at Amazon)

This collection of mid-1970s comics is a rare treat for yours truly. Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter: Coming of the Dragon! collects the entire run of a comic book that I did NOT regularly read or buy back in my early days of comic collecting. I think I only had three or four of the stories reprinted here before the volume was released.

This is remarkable because the book is largely the work of one of my favorite comic book writers, Dennis O’Neil, who passed away last year shortly before the publication of this book was announced. The art assignment was passed around to many diverse hands before landing with the overlooked and underappreciated Cuban master of comics art, Ric Estrada. We’ll talk about the art in a moment.

The story itself is a wild adventure yarn, with one foot planted firmly in the early-1970s Kung-Fu craze and the other in the world of gritty pulp novel series like Mack Bolan and The Destroyer. Richard Dragon is a teenaged thief who is taken in, trained in martial arts and put on the right track by O-Sensei. Later Dragon and his dojo buddy, Ben Turner, join an international crime-fighting and anti-espionage agency. Most of this is new to me, and it’s a real kick.

Richard Dragon was not created to be a comic book character. He starred in a single paperback novel, credited to “Jim Dennis,” but actually written by O’Neil and comic strip artist Jim Berry. When the paperback novel didn’t elicit a second volume, O’Neil sold the character to DC Comics, who were looking for a new comic book title to compete with Marvel’s Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu and Iron Fist comics.

It lent an air of credibility to the comic to have it “adapted from the novel by Jim Dennis” in the early issues, although it was actually O’Neil adapting his own book.

The stories themselves are top-notch globe-trotting martial arts adventure, presented for a mid-1970s comic book reading audience. There is no explicit sex or language, but there’s plenty of martial arts action and espionage intrigue to keep the action fun and entertaining, and O’Neil was a master at character development and direction.

Once we get past the adaptation of the original novel, O’Neil introduces concepts and supporting characters who have gone on to become major players in DC’s comics, movies and television programs. Characters like Lady Shiva and Bronze Tiger began their lives as supporting cast members of Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter. Dragon himself became DC’s go-to martial arts sensei, turning up in titles like The Question, Birds of Prey, Batman and others.

The art for Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter was provided by a rotating crew before Estrada settled in. The first issue was drawn by Leo Durañona, an Argentine artist known primarily for his horror work for Warren Publishing at the time.

The art for the second issue seemed like it was farmed out to Marvel, featuring pencils by Alan Weiss and Jim Starlin (creator of Thanos) and inks by Al Migrom. All of those artists had previously worked on Marvel’s martial arts comics, and it was really unusual to see them turn up at DC in 1975. I’d love to know more about the art for this issue, but alas, once again DC has skimped on the background info for an otherwise great comics collection.

Issue three was drawn by the legendary Jack Kirby and inked by his then-regular inker, D. Bruce Berry. This was one of the stories assigned to Kirby while he was still contractually obligated to draw four books a month for DC, but was near the end of this contract before his return to Marvel.

It ranks as possibly the least-inspired work that Kirby ever turned in, and it’s a bit odd that DC is stressing his contribution to this book so much, especially since any Kirby fan probably already has this story reprinted in a Kirby Omnibus from a few years ago.

With issue four, Ric Estrada began his run on the book, and he pretty much made it his own. The first five stories that Estrada drew were inked by the legendary and overpowering Wallace Wood. Wood ranks among the greatest comic book artists in history, but by this point in his career he was reduced to taking random inking jobs just to pay the bills. Wood loved working over Estrada’s pencils because he could take Estrada’s strong layouts and smother the finished art under his inks without having to substantially re-draw anything.

The end result was pure Wally Wood eye candy, but his style was so overpowering that it almost didn’t matter who the penciller was. The end result still looked like Wally Wood. It was spectacular, but the original penciller’s style would be buried, no matter if it were Estrada, Steve Ditko, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez or Walt Simonson, it all had that Wood slickness to it.

That’s not a complaint, but it’s a trip to be able to compare Estrada’s Wood-inked work to the stories where he provided finished art, or was inked by Jack Abel. It can give you a real appreciation for Estrada’s natural style, and also Wood’s ability to make everybody’s art look like Wally Wood.

In addition to the original run of Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter, this book also includes an issue of Brave & Bold, where Dragon teams up with Batman, and a “Whatever Happened to Richard Dragon” short story from the 1980s. The whole book is written by Dennis O’Neil, except for two fill-in issues of the original series, plus the Batman team up and “Whatever Happened To” story.

Text features in Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter: Coming of the Dragon! are scant. All we get are three profile pages reprinted from Who’s Who in DC Comics, and a single page with four bios of some of the creators, which is a bit of an annoyance. With so many contributors to this book, it’s understandable that they would limit the bios to four, but the creators they picked to spotlight make a person want to scratch their head.

We get short biographies of Dennis O’Neil and Ric Estrada, which makes pefect sense, as they are the writer and pencil artist on the bulk of the book. But after that we get the longest of the four bios for Jack Kirby, who only drew one issue of the original title, and didn’t appear to have put that much effort into it. We also get a bio for Jack Abel, who inked three of Estrada’s issues, and was reportedly a really nice guy, but he has less work in this book that Wally Wood, who is one of the most respected comic book artists in history.

Wood doesn’t get a mention, nor does Dick Giordano, another legendary artist, who provided most of the covers for the original series.

It’s a shame that DC is churning out so many great collections of terrific and overlooked comic books from decades past, but isn’t providing any historical context. There are a lot of questions that could be answered about this material, like “Who approached whom about DC buying the rights to the original novel?” and “Why was there a guest editor in the middle of the run?”

It would be nice to have a little more background.

Still, Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter: Coming of the Dragon! is a damned fine collection of martial-arts adventures comics. It’s a time-capsule of the Kung Fu craze of the 1970s and it has some excellent storytelling. That DC is still mining this series for movies, TV and cartoons is a testament to its timeless qualities.

You should be able to order this from any bookseller by using the ISBN code, or simply grab it at a discount from Amazon.

ToyLanta Is Real And Virtual in 2021

ToyLanta happens this weekend, and although your PopCulteer is among the folks who can’t make the trek to Atlanta for the fun this year, I’m going to tell you how you can enjoy a taste of the festivities from the comfort of your own home. Fans from all over the country will be gathering to indulge in the fine art of toy nutzoidism, and they will be masked up and social distancing, but not everybody can make it there this year.

Last year the folks who put on ToyLanta organized  VirtualToyLanta, an online substitute for last year’s canceled toy show. That Facebook Group is still around, and folks are already posting cool stuff in it. I believe the plan is to post new stuff at least once an hour during the show, so us folks who are still pandemic-grounded can see what we’re missing. You can join the Facebook Group to see way more cool stuff from the best toy show in the world.

One of the highlights of ToyLanta/JoeLanta is always the dioramas and custom figure contest. This is where the toy collectors show off their creativity and make incredible custom action figues, accessories, vehicles and scenarios. This year there is some epic stuff in the works, including an epic seafaring adventure scene from Mike Gardner, and Troy Baker’s amazing Jonny Quest diorama.

In this post we’re bringing you some videos that focus on the dioramas from past years at JoeLanta and ToyLanta. Plus we’ll have links to some of the photo essays that I’ve posted over the years.

Above is the video of 2019’s ToyLanta dioramas. You can find photo essays covering last year’s dioramas and custom figures HERE, HERE and HERE.

Here we have the raw footage from the 2016 JoeLanta Diorama room…

That year we had photo essays for Mike Gardner’s epic diner and garage diorama as well as the custom figures.

Photos from 2016 can be found HERE.  A 2017 photo essay looks at Mike Gardner’s Avengers diorama from that year.

I did a Diorama video in 2015, and you can see it below and check out the accompanying photo essay HERE.

2014 was the year of MIke Gardner’s massive “Zombie Horde at Yellow Jacket Creek” Walking Dead diorama, and it got its own two-part photo essay HERE and HERE.

There are a few photos of the 2013 dioramas scattered in posts HERE and HERE. It was my first time, and I was a little overwhelmed by the experience.

Check PopCult Friday as I attempt to compile an index to every ToyLanta/JoeLanta post that I’ve had in this blog. It’s one way you can enjoy the show, even if you can’t be there.

SPRING BREAK!!!!

Hey! It’s Spring Break on The AIR this week! You know what that means, right?

It means reruns.

Basically, I had some routine computer maintainance to do over the last couple of days, and it took much longer than expected, so I didn’t have time to make new radio shows for this week.

Sorry about that, but you get what you pay for.

The plan next week is to return with new episodes of Radio Free Charleston, The Swing Shift, Beatles Blast, MIRRORBALL and maybe Curtain Call. We are expecting the return of new episodes of our Haversham Recording Institute programs from the UK sometime in April.

But this week it’s all reruns, so you can tune in at The AIR website, or on the embedded player over in the right-hand column to relive our recent past.

And check PopCult for new stuff every day, as always.

Monday Morning Art: Night Train

Our art this week is a semi-abstract digital painting based on a few photographs I took several years ago while riding in Business Class on Amtrak during an overnight run to Chicago. The car was mostly deserted and I decided to play with textures and abstract shading, and then painted over it digitally using my impasto brushes. I wanted attempt to capture the feeling of barrelling through the country in the dark, while safely enclosed in a passenger car.

It’s been over a year since I got to take the train anywhere, so this is me missing it a bit.

If you want to see it bigger, just click on the image.

Meanwhile, Monday at 9 AM on The AIR, we bring you the six most recent episodes of The Swing Shift, The AIR’s weekly collection of the best Swing Music from the last century, curated and hosted by yours truly.  You can tune into a recent episode of  Prognosis at 3 PM.

Due to the lockdown in the UK, the Haversham Recording Institute programs will be in rerun mode for the next few weeks.  Luckily we have a pretty extensive library of high-quality repeats to share with you.

You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, Saturday at 10 AM and Sunday at 2 PM.

You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

Sunday Evening Videos: ToyLanta Memories

Every year that I’ve attended JoeLanta, and later ToyLanta, I’ve produced a wrap-up video to try to capture the energy and excitement of the experience. My first show was in 2013, which was at the tail end of my 20-year period as a family caregiver, when I couldn’t really travel for anything that wasn’t health-related.

That first year was a revelation. In the space of about three hours I met over fifty people who had been online-only friends for the better part of two decades. The JoeLanta crowd welcomed me and Melanie (now Mrs. PopCulteer) into the JoeLanta family, and the annual trip to Atlanta has been a big part of our lives ever since.  I’ve made a wrap-up video every year since our first, although in 2016 I didn’t get it finished until November (that was a bit of rough year for your PopCulteer).

When the show transitioned to ToyLanta a few years back we enthusiastically embraced the expansion, since it all goes to benefit the Cody Lane Memorial Toy and Diorama Museum, a dream that we are all still working hard to realize.

This year  I will not be able to attend the show, which happens next weekend. However, to raise awareness, I’m re-posting my wrap-up videos to give you a tiny hint of the cool stuff you can see if you’re vaccinated and can make the trip. We plan to be there next year, and our wrap-up video will be posted right here in PopCult. Until then, we have our memories…

Continue reading

The RFC Flashback: ToyLanta

This post is a bit of an encore, reposted largely from last year, when it was part of VirtualToyLanta. Over the years  Radio Free Charleston brought you tons of footage of Radio Cult and friends that we shot at ToyLanta, and before that, JoeLanta. ToyLanta is the big toy convention that will return next weekend. You can read about it HERE.

Radio Cult is Bambi Lynn and Ricky Zhero, with Jay Jay Slotin on drums, and they tear through the hits of the 1980s and beyond, plus they have some pretty impressive originals, too. In the clip above, you’ll hear them do “Highway to Hell” and “I Love Rock N Roll.” Every year Radio Cult puts on a special Saturday night concert for the core JoeLanta/ToyLanta attendees. I believe that’s still in the works for this year, but I don’t know if they’ll be having guest musicans join in.

Above you see an RFC MINI SHOW starring Radio Cult. Below you’ll see a later RFC MINI SHOW with Radio Cult and guests, David Lane, Mike Gardner and Alex Massey. Below that, we have The Possum Kingdom Ramblers, which is a bluegrass supergroup with Bambi and Ricky, teaming up with Timothy Price and Jas Ingram, under the direction of Buddy Finethy. The Ramblers are seen performing on the dealer’s floor of JoeLanta.

Further on you’ll find some of the full Radio Free Charleston shows that have one or two songs from the band, some with surprise guests.

Continue reading

ToyLanta 2021-One Week Away

The PopCulteer
March 12, 2021

ToyLanta, the Great Toy Show of The South, will take place next weekend. You may remember that last year’s show was cancelled right at the beginning of the Coronavirus Outbreak, and that resulted in what was one of the most difficult PopCulteer columns that I’d ever written.

The folks at the Cody Lane Memorial Foundation and ToyLanta are going to try to mount a show at their new location this year. Some people think it’s a bit early to be doing this, but they intend to enforce mask and social distancing protocols, and there was a risk of losing the venue if they delayed the show again, so they are soldiering on. Every effort will be made to hold a safe and healthy event.

I won’t be able to attend. I’m still waiting for my vaccination. A lot of the regular guests and attendees are unable to be there this year, but the show will have a full vendor’s room and several guests, and if you’re within driving distance of Atlanta and vaccinated, it’ll be hard to pass up. This is still the best toy show in the country for a lot of action figure collectors.

There will be lots of live-streaming happening at the show, and we’ll have links and more details next week.

For more information on attending the show, visit the ToyLanta website and check out the images below.

It was fifty-two weeks ago that I had prepared a huge preview of last year’s show in advance. Two days before I was to publish that post the dominos started to fall and the country began to shut down. I found myself revising the post all day Thursday and Friday, and was in the odd position of knowing that some guests were going to cancel before they’d had a chance to tell the event organizers. That’s how sudden the shutdown hit us all.

I think everybody knew that the show was not going to happen by Thursday evening. Atlanta was an early hotspot, and at that point, nobody had any clue how long the shutdown was going to last and how high the death total from the pandemic was going to rise. It took the organizers the better part of Friday to make sure they could pull the plug without violating any contracts with vendors and the venue, so I had to keep updating the post while being careful not to report any cancellations before the organizers knew about them.

The cancellation of last year’s show was a huge downer and a pretty rough time, even though the organizers managed to present a Virtual ToyLanta event that took some of the sting out of missing the in-person festivities. This year we find the country in a much more optimistic and hopeful place, and I hope this show is a big success and a harbinger of good things to come.

Over the next few days I’ll be sharing some videos of ToyLanta memories, and I’ll have an index post to all of our PopCult coverage sometime next week.

It’s great that the ToyLanta crew is keeping the show alive, and all signs point to next year being a triumphant return for yours truly and Mrs. PopCulteer. Last year was the first year that I didn’t go since I was invited down by Buddy Finethy in 2013. We’re looking forward to 2022 and sending our best wishes that they have a great show next week.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features and special ToyLanta memories.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 PopCult

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑