Fan Expo has been around in some form since 1995, but I feel they really hit a home run on organization this year. Having said that, with an 8 year old in tow I had a very specific agenda this year: is Fan Expo too old for an 8 year old? Like most boys his age he loves nearly everything Fan Expo has to offer. What does it have you ask? Well it includes The Comic Book Expo, Anime Expo, Science Fiction Expo, Horror Expo, and Gaming Expo. With this many Expos rolled into one it’s easily the largest of it’s kind in Canada and is now one of the largest in the world. Not bad for the tiny population of Canada to cobble together something so big. Because of the size, logistics can be extremely hard to organize, but Hobbystar has really nailed it and line ups moved quickly and smoothly. Last year they had really improved the line situation and I think I waited about 5 minutes, this year I didn’t wait at all. Taking a child through the shortish lines was a dream compared to something like taking our little guy to an amusement park.
Fan Expo rolled into Toronto on August 27th with all the wonderful promises it’s alway brought us, lots of panels to see, lots of things to buy, lots of autographs to be had. Oh, and the cosplay, the never ending cosplay is as wonderful as ever. This year I went with my 8 year old son for the first time and it really gave me a new view of the entire event. I’ve passed the torch onto this little guy and he grabbed a hold of it with both hands… dressed as a ninja of course.
While none of us geeks want to talk about marketing, the fact is that it’s the mighty dollar that creates the investment to make many of the things we like happen. The rise of marketing to geeks is not something new, we’ve been talking about mainstream geek culture for at least the last 15 years. Marketing companies finally figured out that all those kids living in their parents basements had disposable cash. A market like that brings investment and with investment comes better quality in some cases, and in other cases it brings a flood of low end but sometimes high value products. A lot of movies and comics that are out there are for kids and young adults. Some of the more expensive items are for full on adults like myself who have embraced their childhood passion for movies, toys, video games and comics. Of course our wives might call it arrested development, but in my infinite wisdom, I think of it as the stuff I like to read and watch when I have 5 minutes away from my son. The thing that I’ve been noticing lately though is that some of those big ticket items for parents are actually for the kids of those parents. What I’m saying is that we’ve come full circle, there are some insanely great expensive toys that only someone with means could afford, but only someone who is 7 or 8 would really enjoy. I think the idea is that parents are supposed to buy these toys and live out their second childhood through their kids.
Fan Expo has typically focused on the adults, but this year I noticed more children there, and there appeared to be more booths focused on the kids as well. Something I really appreciated was that Hobbystar offers a free coupon for kids between 7 and 12 accompanied by a paying adult. It’s $10 if no adult is present and it’s completely free for kids 6 and under. This is all good because they know we’re going to spend our dough on their vendors, and if the vendors are happy they keep Hobbystar happy. It’s all one big happy circle of life.
I’ve yet to meet a child that was not into comic books, so the comic area was certainly of interest to our little dude. The Horror Expo might be out depending on the age, but there’s a fair number of kid friendly booths in the Horror area as well. Nothing is as wonderful as all the little Cthulu for kids books and figures they had to offer.
From the get go I skipped over the panels, they’re not something a child is going to want to get into, but he loved all the costumes so we’d walk past the lines in order for him to have a good view of everybodys attire. We spent ages going through the lego areas, the various action figures and the models also went down well. Thing was that it wasn’t until we got to the boutique art places that I really saw my son come alive. So many wonderful artists for him to ponder over. You can see all the comics and figures all sorts of other places, but this one of a kind type thing that you can actually purchase kind of blew his mind. The only thing I’d wished was that there was more room in the aisles, but all in all things moved ok, and I certainly can’t fault the artists and vendors for drawing such a great crowd.
Overall I think that this year’s Fan Expo was a complete success, and if you’re a parent wanting to take your child you should really give this a green light. It’s something they’ll be talking about afterwards for weeks.
