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 look at photos of some of the toys that you can find at ToyLanta. Vendors come from all over the world to sell the coolest toys ever made. Here’s a bunch of photos of them, many of which I bought myself.
But first, let’s look at a promo clip for the show…
This is last year’s exclusive convention figure, limited to 100, and it’s a real work of art.
The figure is made by Cotswold Collectibles, with an outfit by Felipe Monaco’s Locos Por Boneco.
Descend Into Danger was just the latest figure in the JoeLanta/ToyLanta collector series. In previous years we’ve seen Steampunk Zepplin Commanders, Nautilus crewmen, Spelunkers, Big Game Hunters and others.
This year a Mountain Man is the limited edition figure to go with the Commander’s Package. This outdoorsman comes with a full Mountaineer outfit, flocked hair and beard, Kung-Fu Grip, plus weaponry, including a musket that would allow him to fit right in during football season in Morgantown.
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.
Here’s a quick trailer for the show…
Today we’re going to look at three of the special guests, Larry Hama, Larry Selman and Shane Morton.
Larry Hama is a writer, cartoonist, illustrator, actor, and musician who has worked in comics, tv & film. He’s best known as the writer of Marvel’s GI Joe and Wolverine comics. Most recently, he’s the author of The Death of Captain America a prose novel for Marvel that features characters (Winter Soldier, Black Widow, Nick Fury) who are prominent in the new Captain America movie.
Larry is currently continuing the adventures of GI Joe for IDW Publishing, and his co-creation, Bucky O’Hare, has recently returned to the world of toys after nearly a thirty-year hiatus.
Personally, I’ve bee a fan of Larry’s since his days working for The National Lampoon inking the comic strip, One Year Affair. It’s been a wild ride, watching as he jumped to Atlas Comics to create Wulf The Barbarian before a stint as an editor at DC Comics, and then his long career at Marvel Comics, editing, writing and drawing. It’s been great to get to meet him at JoeLanta/ToyLanta, and talk about his other endeavors in film, music and theater, as well as comics.
Larry Selman was born in Pennsylvania and raised in a military family. Following graduation from York Academy of Art in 1982, he built a successful career in the paperback novel illustration field. Collaborating with the top art directors and major publishers in New York and around the United States such as Bantam, Dell, Avon, Outdoor Life, New American Library, St. Martins and many more while establishing a reputation of excellence.
As an illustrator his work appeared on many of the Classic Collection of GI Joe- over 125 pieces of box art in an 8 year span. Several ofthe illustrations received prestigious awards from the packaging industry.
Leaving the illustration field he has been firmly established in the American historical art market for several years. Original works of art can be found at the US Army War College, Command and General Staff College Ft. Leavenworth and on bases and museums throughout the United States. He is the only artist to depict every era of American military history and every branch of service.
Larry has also contributed to the Jurassic Park franchise with some amazing packaging and promotional artwork.
In over two decades as a professional in the horror business Shane Morton has worked with such greats as Stan Winston studios and Rob Zombie. He has designed and built horror attractions and haunted houses all over the country, the Atlanta Zombie Apocalypse, being his biggest and best.
You can see his recent film work in the indie, grindhouse hit, Frankenstein Created Bikers, in Sam and Mattie Make a Zombie Movie, and on television with Adult Swim’s smash hit, Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell, where he was the Art Director of Hell and supplied special effects and make-up before becoming a producer of the show with its second season.
He continues to make music videos with Mastodon, his latest being Asleep in the Deep. He is the producer, writer, director, and lead actor of The Silver Scream Spook Show, which has been running for over 6 years now with 50 episodes and over 100 performances.
The guests are only part of the attractions at ToyLanta. The show kicks off Friday for early attendees, and opens to the general public Saturday.
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.
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.
A year and a month after the triumph and the first “With A Little Help From Our Friends” marathon of Beatles songs, Rubber Soul once again assembles an all-star collection of the state’s finest musicians to pay tribute to the Fab Four. On March 9, at The West Virginia Culture Center Theater on the State Capitol grounds, Rubber Soul presents: “With A Little Help From Our Friends – A West Virginia Tribute to the Beatles” As with last year’s show, this is a fundraiser for West Virginia’s Fund for The Arts.
This time around they’re not going to attempt to play every song The Beatles recorded, but they will present a “hard day’s night” of some of the state’s top bands diving into the Beatles songbook. This event features seven West Virgina groups paying tribute to the music of the Beatles. Each group will play music from an iconic Beatles album: Rubber Soul will play the “Rubber Soul” album; Qiet will perform music from “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band”; Of The Dell will play music from “Help”, “Revolver” and tunes from the touring years; Carpenter Ants will play music from various Beatles albums; Independent State will feauture music from “Let It Be”; Beggars Clan will play music from “The White Album.”
Minor Swing will be set up in the lobby playing instrumental Beatles hits.
Mark Scarpelli and his group, Rubber Soul, have been spreading the gospel of The Saints from Liverpool for years, and this will be an evening of music that proves that all you need is love.
Tickets are $25 in advance or $30 at the door. You can order tickets through Showclix. The evening will begin at 7 PM, at the West Virginia Culture Center Theater.
Last year’s event was one of the most-talked-about concerts of the year, and this year’s show is sure to be a splendid time (I would even guarantee it for all). Sadly, your PopCulteer and his wife, Mel Larch (who performed in last year’s show) will not be able to participate because the date coincides with our annual trip to Atlanta for ToyLanta, which I will be telling you about all next week. Still, if you’re in town and love the music of John, Paul, George and Ringo, there is no place else to be but at this show, a week from this Saturday.
In Parkersburg this weekend Classics Plasticks presents the sixth annual Classic Plastics Toy and Comic Expo. We’ve gone in previous years, and it was a blast. The only thing keeping us away this year is another trip to a different toy show that you’ll be reading about all next week. Saturday March 2 & 3 are the dates, and the hours are 10 AM to 6 PM on Saturday, and 11 AM to 5 PM on Sunday. Admission is $5 per person and kids 10 years old and younger get in for FREE.
Guests this year include Timothy Zahn – Star Wars author and character creator of Thrawn and fan favorite Mara Jade; Daniel Pesina, a martial artist who played Johnny Cage and others in Mortal Kombat; Comics creator Victor Dandridge Jr.: and artist, Michael Watson.
All this takes place at The Parkersburg Art Center, 725 Market St, Parkersburg, West Virginia. Admission is only five bucks.
This is last year’s exclusive convention figure, limited to 100, and it’s a real work of art.
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