Month: March 2019 (Page 4 of 4)

For the next week or two we are moving into the future on The AIR by looking at the past. I’ll explain below, but in the meantime, you can listen at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

This is ToyLanta week, and your loyal PopCulteer has to make his way down South to Atlanta, Georgia to take part in the action figure festivities. The big show kicks off this Friday, but yours truly and his lovely bride like to meander down and enjoy the sights on our way.

This means that all the PopCult posts you’ll be reading for the next eight or nine days have been lovingly prepared for you in advance in the fine kitchens of Stately Radio Free Charleston Manor, and have been flash-frozen and stashed away, to be retrieved, popped in the microwave, and plopped on your plate to enjoy while I’m otherwise occupied. I do promise that PopCult will have fresh content every day, but I have a little leeway as to what exactly “fresh” means when it comes to blogging.

Our prolonged absence also means that our sister internet station, The AIR, will be airing encore performances of our most-acclaimed, award-winning episodes of our programs. These programs have all been laboratory-tested to aid in the battle against depression, irritability and broadcasters who interrupt their programming for fundraising. You won’t get any of that on The AIR, just good, old-fashioned reruns of quality programming because we don’t want to try to do new episodes of all our shows while we’re on vacation.

Check out this here little widget to see our schedule, and tune in to hear what all the fuss was about…when these shows first aired.

Friday, March 8, ToyLanta 2019 kicks off. This is the annual huge, gigantic, epic toy show that is also a fundraiser for The Cody Lane Toy & Diorama Museum. This will be your PopCulteer’s seventh trip to the big show, and all week long we’re going to offer you special previews of what you can expect at the show. ToyLanta will run March 8 through 10 at The Marriott Century Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The show is open to the public on Saturday and Sunday, March 9 and 10, and attendees who purchase the Commander and Cadet packages get in to all sorts of cool pre-show and after-hours events.

Today we’re going to tell you about one of the after-hours events, scheduled for Saturday evening, it’s the ToyLanta Film Festival. Curated by Tim Weedn, this annual showcase of short films is anchored by the Studio Joe films by Tim and Lisa Weedn, and includes short toy-centric videos from around the world.  The photo at right is me and Tim,  captured in what may well be the worst picture of both of us.

Due to an unavoidable last-minute conflict, Tim and Lisa will not be at this year’s ToyLanta in person, but the film festival will go on. Tim has put together another bumper crop of great short films starring and about toys, and it will be pesented in its usual spot. If you still have time to schedule a trip, you can still get in on the fun. Even though Tim’s not going to be there this year, he’s already begun work on a special documentary about the GI Joe Adventure Team for next year, just in time for The Adventure Team’s fiftieth anniversary.

To give you an idea of what kind of cool films will be in this year’s ToyLanta Film Festival, let’s take a look at Tim and Lisa’s film from last year…

Remember, this weekend, March 8-10, it’s ToyLanta!

This week is a special week, and we start it with a painting that will be auctioned off this weekend at ToyLanta. “Undersea Adventure,” is inspired by vintage GI Joe Adventure Team box art. It is not only going to be auctioned off, but it depicts a scene which I will eventually bring to life as a diorama, using 12″ action figures. I went a little hyper-realistic on this one, but I hope it still evokes the feeling of a vintage Joe box painting.

As always, click the image for a larger version.

We begin a couple of weeks of classic shows this Monday on The AIR,  The Monday Marathon remains shrunken from 24 hours to 8. It still kicks off at 7 AM, every Monday, and it still showcases one of our popular music programs, but now it wraps up at 3 PM, to make way for two weekly marathon presentations of the best of two of our regular shows. This week it’s a marathon of Radio Coolsville, hosted by DJ Betty Rock. Starting at 7 AM, you can bear witness to eight hours of great alternative rock. At 3 PM you can settle in for eight hours of great New Wave music with Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. Then at 11 PM you can spend you overnights with eight hours of the best Progressive Rock of the last half-century on Prognosis. 

You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on this embedded radio player…

Friday, March 8, ToyLanta 2019 kicks off. This is the annual huge, gigantic, epic toy show that is also a fundraiser for The Cody Lane Toy & Diorama Museum. This will be your PopCulteer’s seventh trip to the big show, and all week long we’re going to offer you special previews of what you can expect at the show. ToyLanta will run March 8 through 10 at The Marriott Century Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The show is open to the public on Saturday and Sunday, March 9 and 10, and attendees who purchase the Commander and Cadet packages get in to all sorts of cool pre-show and after-hours events.

In this video from last year’s ToyLanta, Carlos Morrison moderates a panel about Space Toys, recorded at The Marriott Century Center on March 8, 2018.  Joining Carlos are George Felix, talking about Major Matt Mason; Terry Stair Jr., talking about Star Wars and Clay Sayre, talking about oddball space toys. Audience members join in, and the entire panel runs around fifty minutes.

This year ToyLanta will present more panels devoted to all sorts of toys, from cereal premiums to Jurasic Park, Star Wars, Transformers and, of course, GI Joe.

ToyLanta 2019 happens March 8-10 at The Mariott Century Center in Atlanta Georgia.

Come with us, back to November, 2012, for a wonderful episode of Radio Free Charleston that’s jam-packed with great music, an outtake from the world’s highest parachute jump and an introduction to a new Olympic sport!

“Calvin The Spiffy Spaceman Shirt” had music from Frenchy and the Punk, Amanda Brigette and The Nanker Phelge, plus a hilarious outtake from Felix Baumgardner’s Space Dive and a look at the newest Olympic sport, Spumling.

Frenchy and the Punk are seen on this show performing at The Empty Glass with the song “The Magician and The Dancer” from their 2010 CD, “Happy Madness.” Amanda Bridgette makes her RFC debut with her lovely Contemporary Jazz song, “Fondly,” in a music video directed by Emily Burdette, whose talents as a singer/songwriter were on display in RFC 169 . This tune also features Charleston jazz icons Bob Thompson, Ryan Kennedy and Tim Courts. The music video was produced by Lisa Bragg and filmed in Charleston, West Virginia at the State Capitol. The Nanker Phelge perform “Bankrobbers,” recorded live at the very first ShockaCon at the South Charleston Mound.

Of course, our major coup this week was our exclusive outtake from Felix Baumgartner’s space dive. It’s a little known fact that this worldwide sensation was actually a well rehearsed stunt and things didn’t always go as planned, as you will see in this hilarious blooper. Also in this episode of the show, sports videographer Frank Panucci brought us an in-depth look at the exciting new Olympic sport, Spumling. This was sure to be a worldwide phenomenon when it was officially unveiled at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi..at least it would have if not for the tragic Spumfire disaster that sadly left everyone in the world who knew how to play the sport either dead or injured.

The PopCulteer
March 1, 2019

It’s time we wrap up our coverage of Toy Fair for this year. At least for now.

First, we offer a PopCult tip of the fedora to Greg Autore, who attended Toy Fair last month, and offered to share lots of photos of the 1/6 scale offerings for us to use here. We wrote about Greg HERE, and can’t recommend his website enough. All of the photos in this week’s PopCult are courtesy of Greg Autore, a talented toy designer and consultant, and a fine photographer as well. We’ll be revisiting Toy Fair with more of Greg’s photos in the coming weeks. Thanks again, Greg, and see you in a week at ToyLanta.

Our header image this week is Greg’s photo of the Kotobukia statue of Scarlett, a member of GI Joe, coming this summer.

The huge trade show for the toy industry wrapped up a a week and a half a go, and next week PopCult will focus on bringing you the best advance coverage of ToyLanta that we can,. After we get back, we have more of Greg’s pictures plus some other news to bring you about this year’s toy offerings. First, we have some links to other coverage.

Mattel is a bit of an odd bird at Toy Fair. They meet privately with toy buyers throughout the year, and even shut down their New York office recently since they only use it once a year. Much of the news about Barbie and Hot Wheels has been available for months. For the most extensive photo coverage of what’s coming from Mattel for Barbie, go HERE .

Photos of the Mattel showroom can be seen HERE, including Barbie, Hot Wheels, Toy Story 4 and several of their other toy lines.

Good photos of Mattel’s DC action figures, Imaginext and multi-colored Batmobiles can be found HERE.

With that out of the way, let’s get a look at Greg’s photos from a couple of the high-end action figure folks…

ASMUS Collectible

One of the more interesting high-end action figure companies, ASMUS will be releasing figures based on Lord of the Rings, The Hateful Eight, Devil May Cry, and more. Most of these super-detailed figures will retail for around two hundred dollars, give or take a twenty. Check some of them out below…

Eomer, from Lord of the Rings.

Vergil from Devil May Cry

It’s an interesting mix of licenses, that’s for sure.

Quantum Mechanix

The Q Max folks always have some amazing high-end figures on display, and this year they showed off a large assortment, which will retail in the $180-$250 range…

What could be more horrifying than a foot-tall figure of a nun, from the movie Nun?

Maybe a Clown. Definitely if it’s Pennywise, from IT.

One of the very smart things that QM has been doing with their high-end figures is that, when they do several based on one property, they only release one or two a year. This is, I believe, the fourth figure they’ve done from Supernatural. This way fans can save up for them, instead of deciding to pass on the whole series because they come out all at once.

The Dread Pirate Roberts is the first 1/6 offering in their Princess Bride line.

Captain Picard starts off the Star Trek: The Next Generation series.

Scotty, from Engineering, is the sixth figure in the Star Trek : TOS line. We got to see the first offerings from this line when we last went to Toy Fair in 2016.

That is our PopCulteer this week. Be sure to check back for our regular features, and get ready to hear about ToyLanta for the next couple of weeks.