The PopCulteer
June 5, 2026

I have a confession to make.

We hadn’t originally planned to go to WonderFest USA in Louisville last week.

Don’t get me wrong…it’s an incredibly fun show and we’ve had a great time every time we’ve gone in the past, but when we worked out our travel plans for the year, we did not originally include WonderFest.

Again, it is a fantastic show. It combines horror, science fiction and fantasy fandom with the amazing hobby of model kit building and a loving appreciation of the craft of special effects for movies and TV. It’s even where they present the annual Rondo awards.

I should stop here for a second and talk about how Mel and I plan our trips. We are each other’s favorite travel partner, by far. I can’t think of anything more miserable than having to go on a trip without Mel, and I think she pretty much feels the same way about me. This does not mean that our interests overlap entirely. Many of the trips that we take can be classified as “Mel Trips,” or “Rudy Trips.”

A “Rudy Trip” would be when we venture out to a toy show (or a toy store) or go someplace that’s just sort of bizarrely weird (Jungle Jim’s, we’re talking about you). A “Mel Trip” is a trip out of town to see a theatrical performance, or a trip the FiestaWare factory or to the studio where they shot The Walking Dead.  Usually we find a way to combine our trips, so that we both get to see something we really want, but even if that doesn’t happen, we enjoy seeing each other happy so much, that we always have a great time. Over the years, the criteria for our trips have merged and melded together, so much of the time we both get to claim a trip (Last year, for my birthday trip, we went to Cinncinnati to see The American Sign Museum, but we also visited The Lucky Cat Museum, and a Barbie Exhibit at the Cinncinnati Museum Center and got in tons of shopping).

Armed with this information, you would expect that WonderFest would be a “Rudy Trip.”  You’d be wrong, sort of. I love going to WonderFest, but prior to this year, our main reason for going has been that Greg Nicotero, makeup artist extraordinaire and an executive producer of The Walking Dead and Creepshow, has been a guest and appeared on panels.  Mel is a huge fan of TWD and Nicotero, so up to this year, WonderFest has been a “Mel Trip.”  I always had a great time, don’t get me wrong. I’ve met one of my artistic heroes, William Stout, several times, and I get to see friends like Steve Stovall, Rocko Jerome and Anthony Taylor, but our main reason for attending the show has always been for Mel.

Mr. Zilly was well-represented

This year was different.  Greg was not an announced guest, but I really wanted to go. I am really excited about the revival of the Aurora Monster Scenes and Prehistoric Scenes model kit series, currently underway from DennCom and Atlantis Models, and I wanted to go to the show to find out what might be next, and maybe buy some of the compatible sets being made by smaller companies.

You’ll be reading about those in the coming weeks.

But this year I was the one who really, really wanted to go.

Mel’s enthusiasm wasn’t as high, but she was still game for the trip.  Ironically, the day after she made our hotel reservations, it was announced that Nicotero would be attending the show, but when we got there we saw that he’d had to cancel due to a schedule conflict. It didn’t really ruin the trip.  He hadn’t been scheduled for any panels or anything.

Because this was a “Rudy Trip,” and I didn’t really want to spend all my time documenting the event, and instead enjoy the show as a civilian, I didn’t take nearly as many photos, and shot very little video.  However, I did want to try out a couple of really cheap new cameras (which I will be writing about in the coming weeks) so I do have about 25 images for you today, drawing from Mel’s phone camera, and the three different cameras I had on hand. We have a decent photo essay for you, and if I can work out some technical bugs, I should have a short video this Sunday, along with another dozen or so photos.

About those experimental cameras…one of them is the Kodak Charmera. It’s a working digital camera about the size of my thumb. They’re sold as a blind-box item, so you don’t know what style you’ll get, and the digital image quality, for photos and video, is about state-of-the-art for 25 years ago. I noticed that they don’t handle bright lights very well, as you will see in some of the photos below. You also feel sort of ridiculous using them in public, because people will stop and ask if it’s a real camera.

I felt like Agent Smart, shooting microfilm when I was using this thing. I also got a little tired of people asking, “Is that a REAL camera?”  No, Einstein, I’m just running around like a freaking idiot pretending to take pictures with a toy camera. Aside from that, it’s actually pretty cool, and I’ll be writing about it in PopCult.

Because I wasn’t really planning much in advance, the vast majority of today’s photos are from the Model Kit contest, while most of the video that you may see Sunday was shot in the Vendor’s room. That still needs to be sorted out and edited because I’m working with file formats that I typically don’t.

But enough explanationing, here are a bunch of photos from WonderFest USA, 2026…

I was able to catch up with Anthony Taylor and buy his two new books, which you will be reading about in PopCult in the near future.

Rocko Jerome, of G.H.OS.T. Agents fame, and Steve Stovall of Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo and Adventure Commando fame, shared a table with a cool, very limited action figure collaboration set.

Photo by Mel. A pretty epic diorama kit, I think based on “Supernatural,” a show I unfortunately never watched.

The Triceratops is my favorite dinosaur.

A grouping of model kits, dominated by an amazing large-scale Slave Leia.

I probably should’ve got more shots of the crowd

I was wondering why people were coming up to me, telling me that I had to see this astonishing customized kit of Dick Dastardly’s car. Then I remembered that I was wearing a “Wacky Races” shirt.

It’s not every day you get a photo of Charlie Brown shooting some guy in the dick.

A diorama of what it would be like if Spacecraft tried to use I-64 last Tuesday.

There were tons of really cool, small-scale bookshelf dioramas, but many of my photo attempts were too blurry.

And now we begin the Kaiju portion of our photo essay.

While this is a great paint job, I swear I have one of these in the corner of my livnig room somewhere.

The Snot Monster and Carrot Top

I’m not sure if this Godzilly was part giraffe, or if he just swalled a Blue Chew factory.

The critter what inspired Godzilla, and not the only Ray Harryausen (not to be confused with Danhausen) model on display.

As I have explained, Mel takes photos of her plush Squidward and Plankton when we’re on trips to send to our friend in the UK, Pixie. Here Plankton encounters a model of his old friend and nemesis, SpongeBob.

In another photo by Mel, Plankton finds his spirit animal.

In a charmera photo, with a cameo by Mel’s hand, Squidward meets up with an old buddy from work.

A great model of Harryhausen’s Cyclops, with two well-made, semi-nekkid peoples behind him.

This just looked incredible. I have no idea where it’s from.

This is just one of the many intricately-painted dinosaur models on display.

Not one, but TWO model kits based on the “So Beautiful and So Dangerous” segment of the “Heavy Metal” movie. Wow!

The “Sitting In An Unladylike Manner” model kit.

We leave you with this amazing, large-scale model of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, after a tanning bed mishap.

With that, we wrap up today’s photo essay of WonderFest, 2026.  If all goes well, this Sunday I’ll have a short video, mostly of the Vendor’s room, along with a few more photos.

That is this week’s PopCulteer, check back for fresh content every day, and all of our regular features.