Cosplay USA

Maybe I’m just a pirate at heart, but one of my favorite parts of any convention is swag! That’s right, any kind of loot I can get. Since E3 is basically over and isn’t what it used to be, this has to be the coolest place for my walk of life, the looter…

Since a lot of you guys didn’t get to go, I’ll share my swag with you. Shall we have a look-see?

At the top left you can see the program guidebook. This comes in the registration goody bag.

Then at the very top are some flyers from the shuttle service run by some guy. B) He said that if I distributed them, he’d give me a free shuttle ride but I think he forgot. I paid him anyway because I thought it was a cool idea to run his own shuttle, it always got me there in decent time, and it was cheaper than the cab. The cab ran $20 from downtown San Diego at the Convention Center to our hotel at the “Circle O”. I usually stay downtown but man those pedi-cabs can rip you off too. There was a Ninja Turtle operating a green pedicab but I dunno I don’t trust those Ninja Turtles…

Next you see the San Diego Comic Con version Skell-animal red ”Jack” rabbit plush. I saw a pink kitty one at another booth but man I’m already broke.

Underneath that boring receipt invoice is a Acme Archives San Diego Comic Con Exclusive Yoda Clone Wars Character Key. If you know what that is, cool! If you don’t, it’s some funky picture of a character that looks like an animation cell, framed with some cardboard and numbered. Good times.

Strange Co. gave me a free bag. It has a huge tag attached to it. D: I guess it’s part of some lady’s vision to re-use bags. I have a ton of bags; I don’t think the problem is that people don’t own bags, we’re just not cultured to have them available yet.

Above that stuff is NBC Heroes stuff. You can see the edge of the poster with Sylar’s head on it. They also had cheerleaders at the convention handing out pins and comics. The coolest part of the cheerleaders cosplaying was the special effects makeup that made it look like Sylar got to them…

The fan says “I’m a fan”. It’s from Square Enix. I expected to see better industry cosplayers from them… They had a lot of give-aways but you had to come with a voucher at specified times and I couldn’t commit to any established time…

Under that is a free issue of Juxtapoz magazine. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it has a lot of cool alternative art.

Below is a T-Shirt from Universal(?). There weren’t many T-Shirt give-aways and the ones that were there needed a voucher. I couldn’t figure out how to get the voucher to make your own screen print tee of Transformers 2. I was sitting outside the exhibit hall resting and eating a piece of pizza from down the street and the guy sitting there worked for this company and gave me a voucher. I rushed in and grabbed my “Push” T-Shirt. It’s for some movie coming out… Sorry the picture isn’t so flattering. I was almost too tired to take a picture of everything at all.

There is a Wonder Women of America book that was published in the UK and licensed or sold here by Strange Co. It features many pictures of female cosplayers from Comic-Con 2007. I’m in the book so I got this complimentary copy. It isn’t the most flattering picture of me ever, and I was just wearing random pirate gear, but better than nothing! I’m happy I made it in the book. Some things in life depend on that exact time, place, and situation… and I happened to be right there. They hosted a book release party Thursday night. I would have liked to have gone, but my health requires special attention right now and rest is better advised after such a long day of flights, limited sleep, crowding, working, etc.

There are random free comics here also… Some were from Aspen Comics, some from other booths.

From the Hasbro booth, I picked up the Snake Eyes and his Wolf Mini Figure (Battle Heroes). I also got a Cobra Commander for a friend. I wanted him for myself too but I couldn’t justify it. Now that I look at E-Bay prices, I’m crazy! There goes that certain moment, place, situation I was talking about… well it’s gone. I could sell the one I got for around $60-80 but I think it’s better to hold my word and give it to my friend. It’s the golden rule… remember that? Treat others as you’d like to be treated… I also got their Hasbro Toy Concept Art Sketch Book. It’s pretty groovy.

Jun Planning was there… totally unexpected… so there were Pullip Dolls. They had “Another Alice” Pullips: Alice, White Rabbit, Queen of Hearts, and some guy Pullip. Sorry, I don’t know his name; he’s just not as cool. They were selling for $80 even; no tax, no shipping. I wanted to cry and die right there. They only accepted cash and check so I set off across town. I will be holding an E-Bay campaign to make up what I spent. Money is terribly tight but I see dolls and I get posessed. Any Pullip fan would understand, this was a crazy deal. Alice also came with a Flamingo, not shown here from some reason.

Other things not shown: a signed art print from artist Camille and two Tokidoki vinyl mini toys. They are like death cactus kitties. Their names are Skelletrino and Skelletrina. You can look them up online, they’re very cute. They’re like the Tokidoki Adios reaper guy except way cute! You can see their faces here if you look really closely in the very top right corner on top of the white box.

The green penguin plush is a prinny from Disgaea. I have the pink and blue ones. I didn’t go to Anime Expo this year… I bet they had him there. Alas I’d never seen him before but he belonged and I had to take him home.

In the goody bags there was a card booster of Maple Story. That’s the thing with the big cute mushroom on it. <:)

The yellow bag is a canvas bag from Viz Media. It has pictures on it from cool animes like Death Note. They usually make a new one each year in a different color.

There are also stacks of post cards. Some are REALLY CUTE! I wish I had gotten separate pictures. Hey, I’m lazy.

There’s also a stack of brochures. One is soliciting employment with a company from the Heroes world. If you haven’t noticed yet, yes, I like Heroes. I’m still a little bit mad at them since last season was cut short but I’ll get over it. They know that too, so that makes me mad but I’ll get over that too!

The pile of pins and stickers is at the right edge by the Blue Bear bag. I didn’t get that there… I just brought it with to protect a wig.

The bottom right row has: My badge - how all the magic happens. Otherwise I’d be back at home. A Ryu headband from Capcom - which resulted in many many partial Ryu cosplays all over the convention. The cutest I saw was when people put them on their plushies. A green mug you can barely see that says “Good Morning Internet”. Business cards and redemption codes. And a partridge in a pair tree! How many of you guys are actually still paying attention? :D?

**Only a few more Comic-Con 2008 posts remain! Don’t miss the video to be posted shortly!**