The PopCulteer
December 13, 2024
Sometimes I hate writing this blog.
Don’t get me wrong, 99% of the time it’s fun and rewarding and I enjoy doing it. But I hate writing obituaries.
And today I have to write one for one of my best online friends, whom I just got to meet in real life eleven years ago. I’m talking about “Tanker” Dave Matteson.

The last time I saw Dave, at Kentuckiana in July
Longtime readers of PopCult may remember Dave because of the custom figure and diorama contests he ran at JoeLanta, ToyLanta and this year, The Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo. Dave and I had bonded over our love of the 12″ GI Joe, but we became closer friends trading emails about anything but that.
The hilarious part of this friendship is that many people who witnessed our political arguments in the old alt.toys.gijoe “sandbox” message board thought we hated each other.
We did have some major political differences, but after a couple of spirited back-and-forths in the newsgroup, we took it to email and discovered that we really liked each other. On top of that, we discovered that when we weren’t arguing politics, other people would start, and they would get really nasty.
For a year or so Dave and I had fake arguments to draw the heat and keep other newsgroup members from fighting. At points we were actually writing each other’s insults and coordinating the whole thing. It’s the closest I ever got to being a professional wrestler.
It worked, but it provoked a lot of ill will, and as folks moved on to other message boards, Dave recreated The Sandbox as a Facebook Group. His first rule was, “no politics.”
Which was a huge relief. It can be exhausting pretend fighting with a close friend.
Dave was my go-to-guy when I needed help identifying a weapon or piece of armament from a GI Joe set. And more than once he had me driving to new places to capture photos of rare tanks that he’d located. The feature image at the top of this post is a composite of two drawings, one of the tank he sent me to Weirton to photograph in 2021, and one of Dave, in his element at ToyLanta.
Over the years we stopped talking politics at all. Dave was a true patriot, a veteran and he knew the dangers posed to Democracy by Russia. When we’d meet up at conventions, we’d pretend to start talking politics, which would send folks running out of the room yelling “Tanker and Rudy are fighting again!”
And then, once they’d leave, we’d talk frankly about our various health issues.
Dave was concerned that I was pushing myself too hard after my Myasthenia Gravis diagnosis in 2016, and I was concerned about Dave’s heart. I think it was almost fifteen years ago when I got a call one night from Dave’s wife, Rita. He wanted me to be one of the few people in the hobby who knew that he’d suffered a heart attack and had to have bypass surgery.
That was more important that toys or fake political fights. Dave wanted me to enjoy my long-delayed life with Mel, and I wanted Dave to get to be with Rita and watch his kids grow up and prosper.
Tuesday morning I was sitting in my hotel room in Chicago, preparing to tear down the mobile office so we could check out and hop the train home when I got a message from Dave’s daughter, Maggie. It was a group Facebook message and said that Dave was on life support and that it did not look good.
About half an hour later we got word that he had passed.
This was devestating news. Just last month Dave (apparently having checked himself out of the hospital) walked his daughter down the aisle. He got to meet up with Rob Marshall, an Australian friend of ours who was in town for the wedding, and from all indications things were looking up. The train ride home was pretty somber, and I didn’t feel like writing, which is why yesterday’s post was just fluff.

Dave with Rob Marshall (left) and another good friend of his, Keith Mayo (right) just last month.
Dave told me some time ago that he felt like he was living on borrowed time since the first heart attack. I’d been friends with Dave for nearly 30 years, and this really hurts. Dave loved all his friends, even the ones he fought with, and he’s going to leave a void that won’t be filled. I wish he could’ve borrowed some more time.
That is this week’s PopCulteer, and I really wish I didn’t have to write it. Check back for fresh content every day in PopCult

Dave with Buddy Finethy at the 2023 JoeLanta show. Buddy is the person who insisted I go to the show back in 2013, and a big reason I agreed was the chance to meet so many online friends, especially Dave, in person.
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