Another weekend of massive mego geekdom has come and gone. They always go too fast. A thanks to all that go through the work to make it all possible. Dave, Brian, Chris who does the exclusive figure, Tom who takes more pictures than a Japanese tourist so everyone that can't attend can feel like they did (a little). Paul who rents the suite we spend so much time in. Before I left some had asked me what it was like, what was there, and basically why to go, so here it is. If I miss anyone or get a name wrong, I apologize, I only slept about 12 hours total between Thursday morning and Sunday night. I'm hurtin today.
The Suite
The best thing about the meet, as many say, is the people. It's always great to see old friends and meet new ones. The suite is kinda like that great college party you went to and still talk about 20 years later. Except it happens every year. This year we saw a grown man in an AJ suit. Most of you have seen pics, but we’ve seen it in person. Conversation and interaction with people you post with everyday is the real feature of the Mego Suite. I believe we hit 15 or 16 on Thursday, and 25+ on Friday and Saturday night. It’s an all out Mego lovefest pretty much.
The Dealer Room
We’ve all been to toy shows before. The Meet is more like a family cook-out with toys to buy. As well as shopping there is much mego related conversation going on all day long. It’s only about 20 tables, but they’re pretty much all mego or mego-like stuff. Some of the rarer items I saw purchased were a boxed Hall of Justice, a diamond logo Spidey, Circle Suit Spidey, a FF Lizard, some original 1999 figures, some original and very rare Zorro pieces, as well as a large assortment of boxed and carded figures. Scott had his Di-Da displays which are a sight to be seen in themselves. ScottA had his great custom boxes and cards, one of which now adorns the Ron P (Stabilio) Bizarro I bought in the auction. Joe D had some cool DVD’s of pretty much any TV show you ever watched as a kid, and Berto (Blue Meanie) had almost every loose mego figure ever made and any loose original part you could need to complete a figure. Several others like MegoSean, megojim, Hulk, Flynne, batmanmc, jemboy, MegoGeek, stevemoore, AAAAA, also had assorted loose figures and parts available as well as other items.
Doc Mego is there with every repro part you could ever want. Custom suits and heads by Brian Leitner and Austin “Reproheads.com” Hough were also popular purchases by many. Cast a Way Toys had their prototypes for their new lines that are arriving soon. John “Type3Toys” Farley had his amazing customs there, as did Art Baltazar(Megomilk), though the awesome drawings he was doing kept the focus on him when you were near. For those not aware, he draws the Tiny Titans comic for DC. If you have young children that are too young for the elaborate story lines but you want to expose to comics, I suggest checking it out. He also put on a one man comedy show in the suite on Sat night. He’s a funny guy and a talented artist as well.
The Seminars and Events
The Meet is also a learning event as well. Learning the truths and rumors about any mego figure or prototype, to restoring a figure to it’s original glory, to learning the way to distinguish the original from the repro, or what the status is with EMCE toys and their upcoming plans it was addressed in the seminars. There is also the custom figure raffle, where we pretty much fight each other for some awesome donated customs, Brian Leitner got the highest amount this year with his 12” Galactus as he did last year with his X-men Colossus. There’s also the donation raffle, all to benefit the site we all know and love.
Of course there are other things that go on. The Thursday night dinner and the Saturday night wrap up dinner, etc. but that’s the basics. Hope those that attended had a great time, and those that didn’t can next year.
The highlight for the Meet for me is sitting around with my extended Mego family and just shooting the breeze until 3AM (or later), and I throughly enjoyed our breeze shooting again this year. It's just too bad we don't all live closer to one another so we can do this more often.
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