TeXt Marks The Spot

This was originally going to be a series for a print magazine, which, unfortunately bit the dust shortly before going to press with the first installment. Ah, the fickle world of print. In retrospect, the series works better as a recurring blog post anyway. Each week, leading up to the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, I chose 5 exclusive toys (some I’d previously reviewed in depth, some making their debut on the site) to highlight in a roundup. The idea was to keep the info in the roundup pretty lean and factual, leaving editorializing to the individual posts about the toys. I provided artist and company info, booth numbers, edition size and prices where available. Probably the most fun I had was creating the banners (see above), little Adobe PhotoShop gems containing as many as 20 layers. It brought me back to the year 2000, and my first job in California, masking toy images for a Japanese e-commerce portal. Some people like yoga or meditation, but give me a high-res image to mask and I’ll just chill on that.

The series begins with the text:

Every year, fanboys and fangirls of varying stripes descend on San Diego for Comic-Con. Although the event has extensive programming, there’s one activity that unites the collectors with the cosplayers, the MMP gamers with the manga readers, the superheroes with the steampunks: the pursuit of SDCC’s exclusive toys.

Designer toys are always among the highlights of SDCC. Imagine taking something that is already in limited supply by its very nature and then making a small portion of rare inventory available only to the members of an annual convention. Since most designers and distributors keep a tight lid on what they’re bringing, it’s impossible to say what surprises are in store for SDCC attendees. ToyCyte will be publishing a weekly bulletin of SDCC revelations.

Check ‘em out weekly by clicking on each banner above and below:

P.S. You can always read my latest toy reviews here.