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CyberCon Expo 2003 - Small Con, Big Fun
Having attened the first Cybercon (not the same organizers though) back
in May of 1999 in Tom's River, NJ, my expectations were not very high.
I didn't expect to see many interesting items for sale nor did I expect
much of a turnout. I was in for a surprise.
The Holiday Inn in Cherry Hill, NJ was not a far or complicated trip from my home base in Queens, NY. The only travel issue that Saturday morning was the rain and how I was going to tape Ultimate Muscle and TMNT on the Fox Box.
The
dealer room was a little more than twice what I anticipated and it was
packed when I showed up at 10:30 AM. The merchandise spanned all eras
of Transformers; plus there were many dealers will Go-Bots, Masters Of
The Universe, t-shirts, G.I. Joe, and a multitude of other related 80's
lines. There seemed to be a large amount of loose Beast Wars at cheap
prices, and boxed Japanese Beast Wars at rediculously cheap prices; such
as Archaedis
boxed for $1 and the Japanese release of Beast
Wars Buzz Saw for $7 (and I'm kicking myself for passing on that,
since we need pics of it here
for the archive at TFU.INFO). Some dealers had Japanese G1 figures, though
at unfathomable (read: unreasonable) prices, like a loose Lio
Kaiser minus Hellbat
for $300+. On the other end of the spectrum, Micron Legend (Japanese Armada)
toys were well available and reasonably priced, like Starscream
for $30. John Runski's table had the first and only Tiger Track at the
convention, as seen in the pics below. As with all conventions, there
are always deals to be had, but I'll go into that a little more later
on.
Just
to the left of the Optimus Prime statue that greeted me when I arrived
was the table for Hard Hero, where they were showing off their newest
busts: Devastator, Grimlock, and Wheeljack. Hard Hero has yet to impress
me with any of their busts, though their Wheeljack is a pretty good likeness.
Devastator looked much more menacing unpainted at Botcon 2002. Below are
some images from the Hard Hero table.
Another
nice thing to come of CyberCon Expo was the friendly batch of people that
were attending. Normally at Botcon, I tend to find myself in groups of
5 or 6 people of a pool of 50 or so long time Transfan friends, which
never leads to being lonesome. However, aside from one dealer, no one
I knew personally were attending the 'con. Fortunately, dealers and fans
were feeling talkative and friendly throughout the day. I had the pleasure
of running into Transfandom.com's
Aerosurge, who introduced me to his compatriots and invited me to lunch.
He also pointed out to me the kickass batch of off-brand transforming
motorcycles, one now being ridden by my Kid Muscle figure (left)
and featured in this month's knockoff spotlight, at Tony Bacala's table.
You can order them from
his store here.
Lastly,
there was the art room, which I nearly missed. I'm glad I didn't. It's
always fun to take some time to check out people's hard work in kitbashing.
On piece that caught my eye was someone's rendition of Galvatron made
with Gundam parts (right). Very nice and well done. The show's
winner was a rendition of Devastator and Optimus Prime (below)
as seen in Dreamwave's first volume of Transformers comics. In the 3-D
categories there were a number of Armada and RiD figures painted up like
G1 characters; such as Armada
Cyclonus as Springer,
Armada Hot
Shot as Wheeljack,
RiD Prowl
as G1
Red Alert, and BM
Skydive as Swoop
(all art images below). In the 2-D category, there were lots
of battle scenes, a painting of Unicron, and my favorite, the G1 Dinobots
set in Beast Machines (below).
All-in-all,
it was a great convention. My finally haul was more than I expected. I
came home with a boxed set of Crystal
and Black
Rodimii, a carded Bulletbike,
a loose-complete Actionmaster
Snarl, a loose-complete Pretender
Bumblebee, loose-complete G2
Starscream and Ramjet,
a Go-Bots Super Vamp, and all 4 of the off-brand diecast transforming
motorcycles.
The show seemed to have done well. At the convention, the show's organizer mentioned to me the possibility of a sequel in October. Since then, the offical site has announced there will be another CyberCon Expo sometime in Novemeber. So, if you missed the fun the first time around, be sure to come next time.
For
further information and more pictures from CyberCon Expo, check out thier
offical site.
