The PopCult Toybox
If you’ve been keeping up with PopCult you know that your Popculteer just returned from his annual trip to JoeLanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention. The trip was a blast. This year the PopCult crew consisted of yours truly, Mrs. PopCulteer Melanie Larch and our good friend, Lee Harrah. The 2016 JoeLanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention was a rousing success.
We returned with tons of video and photos (and I had to spend all day Tuesday finishing magazine assignments so I’m already behind schedule), and over the next week we plan to bring the entire JoeLanta experience to you.
Today was spent transferring video to the computer (it took almost two hours) and tonight we bring you a quick photo essay. The plan is to start posting video tomorrow, with our coverage filling up PopCult until at least next Wednesday. We will bring you panels, music, footage of the dealers and diorama rooms and of course the famous action figure parachute drop.
Mixed in with our coverage of JoeLanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention will be all our regular PopCult features, including lots of extra STUFF TO DO to make up for all the slacking off that we’ve been doing for the last month while indulging in our toy habit. After we bid farewell to JoeLanta, we will get back to posting video from our trip to Toy Fair last month.
Registration for the Commander’s Package
Tomorrow look for the JoeLanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention State Of The Hobby Roundtable video. All weekend long we plan to post panels devoted to Monster High, Talking GI Joe Repair, Transformers, Big Jim, Toy Stories, and more. We’ll also run performances by Possum Kingdom Ramblers and Radio Cult, and their surprise guests. You will hear from Larry Hama, the creator of The Real American Hero GI Joes. Our recap will try to show a little bit of everything, but we’ll also post extended video of the dioramas and the dealers rooms. Saturday we plan to run a huge photo essay of the diorama room.
2016 was the biggest year yet for JoeLanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention and if you couldn’t make it, PopCult will be the next best thing to being there.
Mostly GI Joe-centric cosplayers
Cotswold Collectibles showed off some fantastic new stuff
One big surprise was the announcement of a new 12″ Big Jim in the works
Early arriving guests mingled on the fifteenth floor Thursday night
Custom Defenders of Bulletman items were on sale
Friday evening registration took place for the Commanders
E.J. White presided over the famous “E.J.’s Lobby Swap”
Dave Roth, a buddy from the Marx Toy Convention in Wheeling, made it to his first JoeLanta, and wowed everyone with his custom Old West Ambulance Wagon
Everywhere you looked in the lobby there was cool GI Joe stuff
The wheeling and dealing went on into the night on Friday
The Convention opened to the public at 10 AM Saturday
The general admission line on Saturday was insane!
The place was packed, and this photo was taken before the general admission folks came in
With six dealer rooms, you’ll have to wait to see the video to understand the vastness of this collectible toy paradise
Despite competition from Atlanta’s biggest car show, there were still some cool pop culture vehicles on hand, like this Ghostbuster Response Unit…
The Zombie Hunter Tactical Team…
The Jurassic Park Jeep
Part of a huge Empire Strikes Back diorama
Just a hint of Mike Gardner’s epic Route 66 diorama (that’s Mike in the background)
A massive Star Wars diorama by Steve Bugg
Rudy,
Do me a huge favor, can you post this to the Big Jim group? The gang would love to see this! Having technical issues this evening.
Thanks!
Seriously? a 12″ Big Jim! COOL!