Minasan! Hisashiburidana ne.. Genki??

Last Saturday, I dropped by the eagerly awaited Singapore Toy & Comic Convention 2008 (Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre).

Looking at the list of exhibitors on their website, there wasn’t any one that I was particularly excited to meet. Not TokiDoki, not Devilrobots (although I have their Eviroboys series). I only looked forward to the custom Blythes as well as Medicom’s Real Action Heroes.

AT THE EVENT

I was greeted by an amazing lineup of ball-jointed dolls, which are either Super Dollfie (Japan) or Dream of Doll (Korea), as you can see below:

The very few quantity of Medicom RAHs displayed disappointed me. But these custom Blythes were awesome, definitely a big treat for fans:

And then, there’s Medicom’s Devirobots and Tofus:

As well as Touma’s work:

THEN, GLOOMY SUDDENLY APPEARS!!!!

AND MORI CHACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seeing him here was surreal… He wasn’t even on the list of exhibitors.. and since the day I bought my first gloomy puran-puran keychain back in 2004, I really wished that I could meet him. Unlike most toy designer, his creation has a simple yet captivating concept: bears are wild creatures. Simply marrying this fact with a cute pink teddy bear brought gloomy to life!

So, I opened my wallet and I was out of cash, so I ran out of the Convention hall and kept running for 15 minutes to the nearest ATM, and ran back and luckily, there was still some good stuff left to purchase.. to celebrate the moment. Well, most people grabbed the smaller stuff cos it’s cheaper and they only want his signature. But I got the biggest thing I could – a nice posable black gloomy.

I walked up to him, shook his hand and said “Mori Chack! Finally!!” He asked me for my name for his autograph, and I said.. “Watashino tomodachi namaewa Mami desu” (my friend’s name is Mami). And I wrote まみ。His translator was like, ahhh nihonjin desune (referring to Mi-chan)… So, yeah. I got his autograph and the black gloomy for Mi-chan.

The fact that I got to meet him and take this photo was really gratifying He’s so down to earth and super dedicated – staying at his booth till 9pm on Saturday and 8pm on Sunday, even long after his stuff were all sold out!

POST EVENT

This is Ken (aka WolfX), a Macross/Evangelion freak. He’s lucky cos his company assigned him in Singapore for four days of work which coincided with the Toy Convention. Staying in neat hotels every time

He got Mori to sign his Gloomy Kubrick too:

And this is Deb and Tim (aka Hezra and Blitzen) with their Tofus!

At Orchard’s Swensen’s with Ken and Desiree (my Primary school classmate and Ken’s Secondary school classmate). Shit we got old.

FOR COMPREHENSIVE EVENT COVERAGE, PLEASE HEAD TO TOYSREVIL.BLOGSPOT.

Pictures below taken off Toysrevil.blogspot.com

^”Live” Mural Drawing outside the entrance to STCC Hall603
l-r: Mori Chack (Gloomy Bear) / Pete Fowler (Monsterism) / Simone Legno (Tokidoki) / Nada-One / Gary Erskine / Kika

P/s: I’m no longer in fucked up Play.com.my but I regularly visit XL Toys Forum as Nothing.