It’s summer, which means convention season! (It was summer, which meant convention season!) If you feel like I just posted about attending a G.I. Joe convention, and now here I am doing so again, you are correct!
Indeed, June was JoeFest in Augusta, Georgia, and August was JoeLanta in not-quite-Atlanta but Peachtree Corners, Georgia. Nothing important to report on airports or airplanes, but heading in a taxi from ATL north on I-85, we passed a few SCAD buildings (I’m an art school kid) and also a highway sign for the Center for Puppetry Arts, which my wife tells me is where Jim Henson or his namesake company donated the lion’s share of his collection.
First impressions: This was not downtown Augusta! Rather, the hotel is on a highway (not an interstate highway, but a highway) and surrounded by office parks. Nothing looked walkable, there were no houses or apartments nearby, so excepting the strip mall next door I might be stuck in the Hilton. I peeked into the con room to see dealers setting up. This is a much smaller show than JoeFest. (Click all photos to enlarge.)
And the JoeLanta con badge was notably missing a key action figure, or should I say action figure size.
I started to wonder if I’d made a mistake attending this show — was it going to be all oldsters selling 12-inch Joe from the 1960s and ’70s? Just before I’d left Boston, podcast host/partner Mark had mentioned a friend of the show was attending Power-Con. Should I have gone there instead? (A quick internet search showed me that Power-Con featured no G.I. Joe-specific guests, but there were two former Hasbro-Transformers people, plus Marty Abrams, who I’ve already interviewed for my book. A faint whisper of a memory recalled that Power-Con had started as a He-Man show, but that could be wrong.) And another friend of our podcast, well-known in G.I. Joe collector circles, was exhibiting at NJCC, the New Jersey Collector Con. Should I have attended that show instead? No, I was here in Peachtree Corners, and “Joe” was in the con’s name, and I was going to make the most of it. If I ran out of things to do, I could always relax in the hotel room, and I’d be heading home in a little over 48 hours — this was a Friday to Sunday trip, no Thursday-the-night before action — keeping it short and sweet. Good news: This first impression was quickly pushed aside by many friendly interactions, fun shopping, helpful networking, and an overall great time.
The hotel called itself the “Castle on the Hill,” which I can sort of see. There are four almost-towers and the driveway is up a bit from the road.
But the view from it is a little bleak, straight and then to the right:
Gosh, this sure was different from the charming shops and restaurants of Augusta’s very walkable downtown just two months prior! Also, I got the sense that none of my convention buddies, the G.I. Joe fans and experts with whom I chatted or hung out at the bar at the November show in Iowa and the June show, were present. At first, this worried me — who would I talk to? Who would I show my book to? But then I realized this was an opportunity. It had only been eight weeks. Maybe seeing all those guys again so soon wouldn’t be useful. (Fun, yes. Useful, less so.) And here was a different, but equally passionate crowd. Surely there had to be some Joe experts here who I’d enjoy talking to. Yes, I was going to focus on the positive.
Friday
Next to the hotel was a shopping center with a Target. This reminded me of early BotCons, before online shops sold every new toy you needed, when people would roll into the convention town and even through they were about to spend two days buying toys, would drive to the nearest ToysRUs/Wal-Mart/Target because maybe that chain wasn’t in your home state, or maybe Hasbro’s distribution hadn’t gotten the new so-and-sos to your area yet. I live near two Targets, so I didn’t feel the need to check this one out. Across the street (not pedestrian friendly, not sure how I’d cross) was another hotel, and another strip mall, and then another strip mall.
After I got my badge, I sent this to my wife:
Oh, you want to know about Bulletman? With no pants? He’s actually a GI Joe.
But seriously, a little con history: Around 2001 some organizers put on JoeLanta. These were guys who were attending the official JoeCon, but they wanted an event closer to home since not everyone could travel to the “national” show (which moved around each year, sometimes as far away as California.) They kept putting on JoeLanta, but the show got bigger and broader, and then roughly around 2010 they renamed the show ToyLanta. It wasn’t just G.I. Joe! But after a few years, there was some demand for a smaller show that was Joe-focused, so they started up a second show and named that JoeLanta. This whole three-part blog report (you’re reading part one right now) about JoeLanta 2023 refers to the smaller show that took place in August, but there had been a ToyLanta in March, twice as big!
As JoeLanta only took up half of the Hilton’s convention space, a second and separate show was happening in the other con hall and its other panel room.
That would be GooCon, which billed itself as “THE Molding, Casting & Special Effects Event.” Tickets and dealer check-in were available at the JoeLanta registration table.
In my “Did I make a mistake coming to this not Real American Hero-focused convention?” text to my wife, she said “Well, I would go to GooCon.” Which made me chuckle, and then nicely proved the point: Whatever my expectations had been, a toy convention was going to be a great weekend, and if I ran out of things to do, sure, I could pay a little and walk around that other show, which was surely not my area of interest, but how could it not be interesting? Throughout the weekend, the dealers setting up and the crowds heading into each show represented two different demographics. The Joe show was older and more male. GooCon was a little younger and more mixed. When I saw three women in their 40s wearing all black and one was carrying a large flat panel TV during set-up, I knew they weren’t heading into the toy room.
I needed a jog, both to shake off all that plane- and taxi-sitting, but I also wanted to get the lay of the land. On one side of the hotel was the shopping center with a Target. On the other side was an office park. These are strange places. Kind of awful, like how I took my GREs at one. And yet, The Office takes place in one! This one was desolate. There was a sameness on the outside, whether it was more of the small-shop/office scale, like this might be a chiropractor or a wedding photographer,
or taller, larger automotive parts or security systems warehouses,
or the non-descript rear loading bays:
This whole complex was mostly devoid of cars and people, and made the whole convention experience quite strange. I kept thinking “Where the hell am I?” in more sense than one. Things solidified when I finally saw this sign while heading back to the hotel.
Again, I wasn’t far from the Hilton, just a five minute walk. But turning around, this was the view across the street:
Not friendly to cross on foot, although technically there was a pedestrian crossing at a traffic light, but there were no sidewalks. I’ll include a few photos of the on-the-other-side-of-the-hotel shopping center in Part 2 or 3, but suffice it to say, I noted that probably all of the restaurants on this hotel list of nearby restaurants would require a car, so I was relieved to walk to the shopping center and get food there.
A convention experience is quite different for the attendee who drives all the way from home or rents a car at the airport.
The con hall opened for early attendees at 6pm. I entered, and immediately saw Ace Allgood. We last saw each other in person before the pandemic at JoeCon ’18 I think, and Allgood has lent me something for my book. We caught up — work and family in the last five years — and in showing him something on my laptop, we were reminded that I owed him something in trade.
Allgood’s tables were modestly populated, but he had a little screen playing 1960s and ’70s GI Joe toy commercials, a DVD compilation he has for sale! He confirmed for me what I had put together, that JoeFest was more Real American Hero and JoeLanta was more Action Soldier and Adventure Team. In fact, Allgood had tabled at JoeFest a year earlier, but found it wasn’t the right crowd for what he was selling.
Have you already gotten the two confused? Here’s a device: F comes before L in the alphabet, right? And JoeFest comes before JoeLanta in the schedule. Went to JoeFest in June, now was at JoeLanta in August. There, you’re all set.
Allgood travels to sell at about six toy shows a year, and in talking to him, I realized a more specific way that he might be of help to my book. The things I wish to scan or photograph, I mostly already have, but a few items for Chapters 1 and 20, the beginning and the end, require help and favors from Joe fans. We brainstormed for some kind of meet-up for the fall. Once again, I had booked a trip to a JoeCon without checking the vendor list. Allgood said “Do you know Derryl is here? You should talk to Derryl.” Indeed, I had caught that fact just a half hour earlier, and indeed, talking to Derryl would be a good idea.
Derryl DePriest worked at Hasbro from 2001 to 2018, and he’s best known for his contributions there to not just the G.I. Joe and Star Wars toy lines, but the overall brands. Before that, DePriest wrote this book:
He also travels to sell at a few toy shows, and sells extras from his collection on ebay. I had been meaning to interview DePriest for my book, but recently I was able to track down a long interview with him that answered many of my questions. But this was still a great opportunity to chat. We talked about graphic novel reproduction of old comics, and the big hardcover Omnibus format. I mentioned a person from the world of toy collecting in the 1980s, a photo of whom I was trying to track down, and DePriest pointed to Greg Brown, who was tabling next to him. “Greg might know,” he said.
And I was very, very glad I’d come to JoeLanta.
My earliest toy convention experiences were about buying toys and soaking up the excitement of a particular brand (Transformers, G.I. Joe) for a day or a weekend. There were dealers selling unbelievable things, and panels with unbelievable guests, and sometimes concerts (like the music from Transformers: The Movie, what a con that was!), and being overwhelmed by this sense that here were dozens or hundreds of other people who cared about something as much as you did, and that many of them knew things or had things you didn’t know or didn’t know existed. “Oh, the dealers from Japan are back!” was a feeling I had a few times around 1998, ’99, and 2000 when trying to buy rare Transformers. Over time, my feelings have softened. Part of that is owning a store and part is having a big collection. I have a lot of things, graphic novels and books and comics and toys and art, at my fingertips. The feeling that I need to reclaim something that I had as a kid isn’t as strong. And the need for access, to talk to very important people because they knew something, has also lessened.
But I still wish to talk to people! Now it’s a feeling of searching and hunting for their histories and their stories, what I can check off when I conduct an interview for my book, or when an interviewee says “Yes, I did keep a few things from when I worked on the G.I. Joe toy/cartoon/comic/other in the 1980s.” And then if I can obtain access to such remnants, it’s not about adding to my collection, but being able to put here at the blog or in my book.
Writing this book has reframed how I feel about conventions. It was demonstrative when at the earliest toy shows I attended, the Hasbro employees talked to everyone. They showed off new product and answered questions no matter how smooth or awkward, how young or old, how savvy or ignorant the fans were. That was their job that weekend, to show product and answer questions. And Hasbro employees, whoever they were, did this at every BotCon, and JoeCon, and HASCON. The same went for voice actors. They spent their days reading scripts with a few people at a recording studio, and here were a few hundred or thousand people lining up to see them, applaud for them, ask about their craft. They were thrilled to be invited. Most people at a convention are happy to chat. Many are happy to help.
Greg Brown leaned toward us and said yes, he might be able to help.
This is getting all serious. Do you want to see some toys? Yes, let’s interrupt this with some toys that were for sale!
Gosh, aren’t toys great? Yes, they are.
Back to Friday at around 7pm. Greg Brown leaned toward us and said yes, he might be able to help. We talked for awhile. At 8pm, the con room closed. Brown, it turns out, owns Cotswold Collectibles. As I don’t collect 12-inch figures, Cotswald has been somewhat off my radar– I know the company sells 12-inch stuff, and has been around since the 1990s, and that’s about it. Brown and I, along with his friend and co-dealer Keith Holmes, sat out in the hallway and I showed them some of my book. Then we went to the hotel bar/restaurant where Brown told me more about Cotswold and JoeLanta in general. They left at 10pm as Brown was helping moderate of the “State of the Hobby” panel.
I wish to point out how cool and weird it is to have a convention panel start at 10pm.
I’m going to jump ahead by a few moments here so that I can break up all these paragraphs with a photo. Here’s the panel that I would get to shortly, already in progress. Left to right, Steve Charlton, Greg Brown, Brian Becker, and Buddy Finethy.
After finishing my late dinner, I headed over. It was even more unusual because the four panelists weren’t sitting at the front of the room, but along the side. There wasn’t a big audience. Further, this didn’t have the traditional feel of panelists holding court, or audience members asking questions. Instead, the whole thing felt like everyone in the room, panelists and attendees both, were just having a casual chat. Halfway through the panelists introduced themselves, and along the way asked some of the audience members who were speaking up to introduce themselves. I couldn’t decide if it was completely disorganized and off the rails, or very much community-minded.
At one point, the topics of modern G.I. Joe Classified action figures and the Transformers brand came up, and Brown pointed to me and told the room that I was writing a history book, and perhaps I could chime in. Between teaching and podcasting, yes, I am always ready to talk to a room full of people, and certainly at a Joe con I’m ready to answer questions, but it had not been my intention to be anything other than a quiet observer. What did I know that a room full of guys in their 50s, 60s, and 70s, all passionate experts about Action Soldier and Adventure Team, needed to hear? But I was asked, and everyone looked my way, so I opined a bit, and as I described some modern links between Joe and TF. And later, when someone brought up Mattel and I mentioned the recent Jurassic Park/Transformers toy crossover, it felt like I wasn’t intruding. Again, someone on the panel asked me to introduce myself, and this happened a few times with other folks in the audience. This would be a feeling I noted all weekend, that this convention was particularly welcoming, that the organizers and some of the long-time dealers who were honorary staff really wanted to know what I, what guests, thought, both about G.I. Joe and about the convention.
Buddy Finethy’s mantra is pushing creativity, not just toys. That JoeLanta and ToyLanta are not about plastic, but about ideas and making things. He saw succcess in how many customizers there were in the community, that customizers had become micro-producers. I mentally nodded, and this would be proven in person over the next day and a half.
In total, at the State of the Hobby, there were four panelists and 16 men and one woman in attendance. People talked about streaming and Disney+, and 3D printers and how toys should have television commercials, and where 12-inch Joe and 12-inch non-Joe are these days.
Certainly an unusual way to start a con! I had expected a panel called The State of the Hobby to be a keynote, with some central expert laying out the last year’s trends, or comparing one toy or region or convention or launch to another. Isn’t that what conventions are for? For dentists and PhDs to show off the latest tech to straighten your teeth, and to present a paper on some scholar/author/historical topic/breakthrough? You know, a new study out of the University of so-and-so shows that 8th graders develop social skills faster if they play cooperative sports rather than competitive ones, that kind of thing? Or, since this was a toy convention, weren’t people headed to the lobby bar to socialize? You know, compare notes on where the hobby is, and also, how-ya-been-this-last-year? Interestingly, the answer was no.
Here was a lesson in how informal the show was, and yet at the same time, how focused. Yes, four panelists ran the hour, but they wanted to hear from the audience, too. I think one of them mentioned being a teacher or a tutor for several decades. Yes, that tracked.
I wanted to retire, so I took a quick look at the hotel restaurant/bar on my way to the elevator. A few people were there — there was some kind of high school or college basketball recruiting event at the hotel, so between toy fans, and GooCon-goers, and athletes and their families, a few people were sipping drinks. But this wasn’t the critical mass of bar socializing I’d taken part in at the last two shows I’d attended. And I didn’t overhear anyone say “let’s go to the bar” and then stay there until 2am. A relief, actually, I wanted to sleep.
Here’s another photo of toys for sale…
and here are the elevators, which had a Las Vegas vibe I couldn’t quite place.
Above, on the right, is that Excalibur? What is going on with this hotel?
Yes, winding down sounded good. Up in my room.
—To be continued in Part Two!
A Real American Book! 