The PopCulteer
July 26, 2024

Before we get into today’s photo essay, I have some bad news.  One of our cameras, the main one we used to record this event, gave up the ghost early last Saturday morning. I didn’t realize it until I went to edit the files, and 60% of them were unreadable. We will have a music video for you on Sunday, but all the footage is from the Friday night preview.

There will be one more video, an interview we shot Friday night, but another, longer interview that we shot Saturday will have to be redone when we meet up with Greg Autore again at JoeLanta at the end of September. Sorry, Greg.

This is the first time that one of our Kodak Zi8s has failed us. The fact that we’ve been using them for almost fifteen years means it’s probably long past time we replenished our camera arsenal. Apologies to our readers who were looking forward to more video, and to Mel, who worked her butt off Saturday not knowing that the camera was only pretending to work.

We had a great time at the 2024 Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo, and this is just the first photo essay. I’m selecting 20 photos to run before Mel and I head to Chicago for an early anniversary trip. There will be more when we get back. Expect the next photo essay a week from today.

And Sunday, you can come back to PopCult for our music video, featuring a tune by Sgt. Van & The Highway Dogs.

But for now…pictures!

As of last year, the home of The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo!

This Aztec Amethysts figure was the final project of beloved JoeLanta pastor, Terry Stair Jr, who passed away just a few weeks ago. He was working on this with Greg Autore, and we will re-interview him about this project at JoeLanta.

One of the cool things about Kentuckiana is that gawking is not only permitted, it’s encouraged.

The man who poses, Ace Allgood!

Living up to his name, all of Ace’s stuff was good, or beyond.

Seriously, if I win the lottery, Ace will get half of it.

Seriously, Ace, you’re killing me here.

While I focus on the 12″ GI Joe, you have to admit that the little guys have some awesome vehicles and playsets.

And at this show you could even find them still in the box.

Rocko Jerome was there with his incredible G.H.O.S.T. Agents comics (and action figure). I need to remember to tell you guys more about how cool this is.

The amazing work of Cindy Scott. We’ll devote a photo essay to her work soon.

Six Million Dollar Man fans were in luck. The booth next door was filled with primo Bionic Woman stuff, too.

I showed you this when I saw it at WonderFest, but I will likely take a photo of the Dr. Evil lab set every time I see it in Ricky Puckett’s booth.

Ricky also had the rare Japanese Kankichi Ryotsu figure…the first-ever super-articulated figure from the 1990s. Dragon and everybody since copied the limb joints off of this guy.

More gigantic Real American Hero stuff.

And we can’t ingore GI Joe: Classified, the line that is currently carrying the GI Joe torch.

Brad Curry’s cool 3D printed accessory card for the show. Of course I got one.

Tearle Ashby’s exceptional show set is based on an unreleased prototype for GI Joe from 1967. Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to talk with Tearle, but I may be coming home with one of these if he has any left at JoeLanta.

Greg Autrore holding the Aztec Amethysts figure. It’s always great to catch up with Greg, and this time he sold Mel some plush SpongeBob designs and prototypes.

We leave you with two random troublemakers…actually Brian Becker and Jack Hall, legendary collectors and buddies from JoeLanta.

We will have much, much more from the Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo in the next two weeks. I would’ve plastered it all over the blog, but Mel and I are off to Chicago this weekend…our third consecutive weekend on the road. But you can still check out PopCult for fresh content every day, and all our regular features.