We just returned from Day 3 at Joecon. Today was A LOT more laid back. We actually started the morning at the Children's Museum so that my daughter could play, and then made it over to the convention around lunch. We ate lunch and then headed to the panels!
We went to the G.I. Joe . . . From the Trenches, the Final Chapter! with Kirk Bozigian and Larry Hama. I thought this was a fun panel. I liked hearing the synergy between the marketing and the comics. It was genius and definit explains why GI Joe was considered THE boys toy to have. I thought Kirk and Larry did a good job talking and answering all the questions that were thrown their way. Great and fun panel. I also would have loved to see the Cobra Island play set they said they thought about doing. It sounded HUGE. Haslabs maybe?
After that we did Vehicle Design, Prototyping and The Discarded with David Kunitz. This was probably the panel I was looking forward to the most. I have to say it looks like the had a ton of fun making toys. I liked seeing how the vehicles evolved from concepts to the final product and such. I figured Brittany would also enjoy this panel because of all her crafting. They gave away some vehicle molds to people that could answer super specific trivia in the crowd. Apparently the numbers on the vehicles were never as random as they appeared.
We tried to make an exit back to our hotel and skip the vendor floor today once the panels were over. Right when we got to the door to catch our bus, the winds and rain appeared. We are talking INSANE winds. It was quite crazy. So instead of standing in the super high winds and pouring rain we decided to get a snack and then stroll through the exhibits and the vendors. The exhibits were rather impressive. The people with the displays can do some mega impressive work.
The vendors were WAY less crowded today. That's a good thing (for those of us that didn't want to fight the crowds), but if you are looking for something super mega rare, you probably should have gotten it yesterday. We mostly walked around and looked at everything. We did stop to talk to the guys who make the Complex Base Building System. Their booth wasn't packed at the moment and I was intrigued.
The Complex Base Building System is really cool. You can essentially build really elaborate dioramas with it, GI Joe bases, Star Wars bases, etc etc. Really cool stuff. One of their employees, George, stood around and talked to us for a while. He showed me how the system works and now I kinda want one... I've never been one to build dioramas, but I'd be tempted... If I pick up some tomorrow I'll definitely have to write about them. They also told me about some stuff coming up in future ways. Seriously cool and if you have some figures you need to check it out. Their stuff can be found at SmallJoes.com.
Over all we had a nice laid back day. We hit the panels I was interested in and strolled around. As with yesterday's experience (minus the parachute drop) everyone has been really friendly. Tomorrow will be the last day and I'll grab any last figures and such that I'm trying to get.
I finally got to look at my figures when we returned from convention. I had to check them all out to make sure that they were assembled correctly. You have to get that resolved before the convention is over. I played with the Laser Viper some. He is definitely my favorite figure of the pack.
