Thursday, July 19, 2012

My SDCC Swag Report!

You can't come home from San Diego Comic Con without your suitcase gaining a few pounds in pure loot. I actually tried to take it easy with the shopping this year, what with the Nerdatorium practically bursting at the seams with collectibles and more bins full of toys getting added to the attic every week.

Still, some stuff I just couldn't pass up and, full disclosure; now that I'm sort of "in the biz", I got a lot of free stuff from store owners and other toy makers. That sounded sort of arrogant. Didn't mean it that way. I swear.

Anyhoodle, check out all this sweet swag!

First up is one of Funko's Vinyl Invaders batman figures, and this one is the SDCC exclusive black and gold versions. This was given to me by the owner of Funko, who knows my boss because he bought Funko from him 5 years ago. Sadly, the box took a bit of a beating on the trip home, so (and this will make the Funko Funatics freak) I'll probably open it to display on the shelf.


I also picked up this sweet Atari controller luggage tag from Flapjack Toys (another company once owned by my boss). I already have a Rubik's Cube luggage tag and LOVE it, so I think this one needs to go on my laptop bag.

 
This year, it sort of got to be all about the free buttons. I got obsessed.The Peanuts buttons were handed out at their booth and you had to go every day to get the one for that day. I almost missed one on Friday, but one of the ladies working the booth were kind enough to dig one up for me out of her personal stash. God, I love Peanuts and everyone associated with it. Also, dig our Mixo button in the upper right. I designed it!


Oddly enough, I bought almost NO COMICS this entire trip. I'm not sure why. Mostly I think it had to do with me not having a lot of time to dig through comic boxes and I knew that I had a two foot tall stack of unread comics at home already. But I did get these freebies at the DC pavilion...


One total score for me was when I found these bizarre little robot Disney character toys at some random booth. Just look at how adorable they are! I figured there was a mickey in the series, but they didn't have one. I bought them anyway. After a quick eBay search, it looks like there was a Mickey and a Minnie, both of which I'll have to find, because these little spring-limbed critters are just too cute.


The one action figure I swore I would get was the movie Avengers Black Widow figure. Right before Preview Night opened on Wednesday, I went around looking for one. It took 7 different toy scalper booths before I finally found a guy who had one of these, and I never saw another one the whole weekend. She must be rarer than I thought. I almost can't believe that I shelled out $20 to a scalper for this figure, but... well... it's Scarlett. Full review coming soon.


Another great purchase I made was this fantastic Bigfoot neo-Mego style figure from Bif Bang Pow! that I got at the Entertainment Earth booth. You can bet your bionic eyeball that I'll be picking up the Steve Austin as soon as he's available. Stay tuned for a full review of this fuzzy bastard, too.


 This was another gift from my boss. He really knows the way to my heart.


We got the above Batman Bearbrick from the Toy Tokyo booth, while we were discussing doing a Mixo exclusive for them. The owner of Toy Tokyo is a swell guy, a real character in the collectibles world, and he was cool enough to cut us a deal on anything we wanted, so I snapped up these amazing Monster Cereals Kubrick figures...

 
This is weird, but the one comic I did buy was this Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew trade paperback for 75% off cover price. I used to love this book back in the day, and this is a relatively new storyline collection that I haven't read. i can't wait to dive into this silliness.


But the best purchase I made the entire weekend was this suh-wheeeeet 3-way lenticular Spider-Man ring, that one of my friends said looks like a class ring from Spidey University. The center section flickers between a portrait of Peter Parker to Spider-Man to an image of a spider hanging in a web. This reminds me of a ring I wore for my entire 2nd grade year and in honor of that ring, I wore this one (which I bought on Thursday morning) the entire weekend.


So that's it for this year's SDCC haul! I'll probably take closer looks at some of this stuff in their own posts later on, but for now, I just wanted to give everyone a rundown.

Thanks for taking a look, kids!