Singapore Toy, Game, and Comic Convention: Day 1

Con time!

It's Con time again for us here in Singapore!  The last edition we had was barely 8 months ago--the dates for this year's STGCC got moved earlier to be more in line with the summer Con season in the States so yay for us!

Me: "Time to go, then!"
Christian: "Ok, but I'm holding on to the pass!

Well, last year the Con was three days starting Friday but this year, organizers Reed Exhibitions streamlined the thing down to two days.  Though this seemed like a down-sizing and got the fanboy in me down a little bit, it proved to be the right move on Day 1.  Last year, the halls were fairly easy to move through because there weren't many people.  This year, everyone seemed to be there all at the same time!

Peoplez! And Mario and Luigi running from them

The Rangerlord also pointed out that word had spread about the Con (in it's third year) and he'd noticed more people from neighboring countries and even further abroad attending.  My wife also agreed they'd done a better job of getting the word out--she'd heard news about STGCC on the BBC and they'd also gone on Channel News Asia for a bit of a promo interview spot.

Speaking of the Rangerlord, last year, I'd met up with him on Day 1 and we hunted for toys, comics, autographs, and other goodies.  This year, our ranks swelled as he brought along his two girls with his artist brother-in-law tagging along.  And I had Melissa and lil' Christian with me.  Needless to say, it turned out to be a great opening day!

Mel thought this was a pic of a real guy

And I thought this was a real donut

The first thing that hit us when we entered the exhibition hall was the awesome Hot Toys display!  Well, that's way understating it because it was more like a Hot Toys mega booth.  I'm not into buying 12" scale figures but boy are these well made and life-like.  Throw in the fact that they look like the superheros look like they're screen counterparts and this was easily the most photographed booth!

Can you spot Green Lantern?

We met up with the Rangerlord and his company at Artist Alley and guess what?  They were in their superhero identities


We continued our wanderings as best as we could, leading our entourage through the throng of people.  Then we came upon the another impressive booth.  This one belonged to the Star Wars 501st Legion (Singapore Branch), who had a wonderful 3.75" Clone Trooper display.  These guys are a costuming organization of fans, so they were all dressed up: Stormtroopers, Imperial officers (both male and female), Boba Fett, Little Kid Boba Fett, R2-D2 and even a Jawa.

Besides patrolling the means streets of the Con to maintain law(lesness) and order, these guys also did their part for charity.  They had a couple of Nerf guns set up for anyone who cared to fire it at their Stormtroopers--for a price, of course. $6 got you 10 rounds outta the Nerf handgun (as you can see, I'm the foremost expert in Nerf Guns...Nerf Herders maybe but definitely not Nerf Guns...) and $15 got you 25 rounds outta the heavy repeater.  All the proceeds are going to charity so as you can imagine, the troopper were helluva busy.

Hiding behind the droid. Typical.

"Move along..."

At one point,while we were looking around at the toy vendors, a pair of Storm Troopers walked by and got poked by Batgirl, who was using the stick of her balloon as a weapon.  At another point of time, Supergirl tried to pull R2-D2 away from another two 'Troopers and an officer.  Both times, they distracted the Imperials with cute "hellos" and made their moves when the baddies had turned back away.  Sneaky, but all in vain because as we know, the Dark Side of the Force always wins.

Baby's lovin' the new look DC heroes

The DC and Marvel booths were also very nicely decked out in larger than life-sized posters for the fans to take pics against, so we were happy to oblige.

At this point, we were asking ourselves the same thing you're wondering now: where are the toys?

He even got along with the Avengers...

I have to admit, I thought I might have had to leave the Con empty handed because there weren't as many good deals as last year from what we were able to see.  So far, I'd only gotten a couple of free Green Lantern Heroclix from Kinokinuya (Japanese bookshop that sells a large quantity and variety of graphic novels).  The Rangerlord had also spotted a deal for single-bagged Lego speederbikes with stormtroopers for S$15 each and I'd picked up two of those.

Captain America? Not so much...

I also finally got my Secret Wars Mr. Fantastic and Ultron from Melvin, who had picked it up for me from last year's Con! :P  (Sorry if I got you in trouble with the wife by leaving my stuff with you, dude!)

"I don't care if he's a specially drawn  cover or not!!!"

Besides these, I'd bought some awesome signed art prints of Supergirl, Green Lantern and Darth Vader and the Bounty Hunters from Imaginary Friends Studios, but no other toys had caught my eye because prices were similar to those at the local weekly flea market.

But then I found these:  Henkei Scourge and Blurr for S$30 each!  And they guy whom I got them from was offering a free gift of a gold vac metalized "custom weapon" foreach Transformer purchase.  I bit.  And it turns out this "weapon" was a third party spring-loaded "Mech Tech" claw that most regular-sized TFs could hold.  I wanted to give this to my Henkei Grimlock but yes, it turns out he ain't one of the "most TFs" that could hold it. :/

"I still ain't lettin' go!

It's a gun-claw!  Or as I call it, a glaw

When we left STGCC at about 6pm, the crowd still hadn't dispersed.  Christian was rather tired but fighting to stay awake because there was so much to take in.  We'd spent almost 4 hours there and I had a modest haul--I didn't think there was much more to find in terms of good deals.  Still, there were nice little tiny surprises like the free "weapon" and the good deal on the Tranfsformers.  Hopefully, the next day would prove to be a little more surprising!