Our Visit to FanExpo 2018 - Toronto, Canada

Hey all,

Last Sunday, my wife and I decided to tag along with a couple of friends and head to FanExpo 2018 in Toronto, Canada. For those who have not heard of this event/show:

FAN EXPO Canada is the largest Comics, Sci-Fi, Horror, Anime, and Gaming event in Canada and the 3rd largest Pop Culture event in North America.

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This event is a lot of fun for my wife and I, and these days, any opportunity to get in some quality couple time , we take (yeah, we left the kids with the in-laws 😂).

FanExpo (a weekend event, Aug. 30th - Sep. 2nd, 2018) has evolved over the years since it's inception as the "Canadian National Comic Book Expo" back in 1995. Today, it features headliners (or "whales", if you will lol), such as A-list t.v. series/movie stars to keep it's numbers growing. This year the main 'attraction' was Michael J. Fox, of the infamous "Back to the Future" movie series... you may have heard of it.

As fantastic as this is, my wife and I don't really put too much emphasis on the "headliners", as we're there for the shows other features. However, if we did opt to attend this event based solely on who was going to be there, we have a couple of people on our bucket list that we wouldn't mind meeting in person... and perhaps even do a quick photo with.

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Leonard Nimoy
(R.I.P.)

All are/were amazing human beings & actors, and we love their work! Leonard Nimoy actually did grace the FanExpo with his presence a few years back, but the lineups to meet him were long and the price was pretty hefty. We ended up seeing him from a distance of about 10 meters, crowded by fans and his team of "No Pictures Please" people. After that, we thought... ok... that was good enough, and went about our business.

Now, back to this years FaxExpo. As we decided not to go fan crazy over Michael J. Fox and the rest of the stellar line-up, we paid a little less for our entry tickets and visited on the Sunday. It's a bit cheaper as most of the featured entertainers have already left, having spent a couple of jam-packed days with their fans and getting the heck out of there. So what did we do at the FanExpo? Quite a bit actually, and I have super-sore feet that still hurt to show for it lol (ok, maybe they don't still hurt... but they did!)

The show was hosted at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and split over two buildings: the north and the south. Basically, all the neat and nifty fan-related "stuff" you can buy is located in the north building, and the south building is known as "Artists Alley".

Our trip began in the north building

To the right are lineups to see some minor celebs.
The "goodies" are on the left.

Overview of north building - not as busy because it's Sunday!

Here we found a few cool items for sale!

Oversized head, Chewbacca doll!

 
A Ken Masters, Street Fighter II Action Figure!
By far my favourite Street Fighter II champ... and look, he's No. 07
What could this mean, @o07? 😂

Lots of t-shirts! These two stuck out.
@mister-meeseeks, is that you?

We came across this one "booth" with a HUGE bin of D20 and D6 dice for sale, and wow did it ever bring a flurry of people around! It was constantly surrounded by fans looking for their favourite dies at bargain prices.

After lots of "window shopping", we headed to the South building.

After many stairs, steps, escalators and pushing
of elbows, we made it to the last hall.
But not before seeing a little cosplay dance-off competition!
Check out the minecraft kid kick it!!!

Now, Artists Alley was rammed! Lots of fans here.

Sony Playstation had their area...

...as did EBGames and Microsoft Xbox! Gaming fans, rejoice!

EBGames literally had a store built within the FanExpo - pretty cool!
Inside their "store", they had a Nanoblocks display of some Pokemon creatures.
They were definitely eye-catching...
maybe @steemmonsters could use this treatment? Fans?

Then came the DragonBall Z section!
I'm not a huge fan, however, they had
a kick-ass area and awesome life-size figures!
_{(What Legendary dragon is that?!)}

I mean, come on! Check out these figures of Goku and Frieza 😃

We also came across this new deck-building game, a la Magic the Gathering, Yu Gi Oh, etc. (and to some extent, Steem Monsters). It's called UNCAGED: World Fighters and you can find their Kickstarter here.

@rentmoney, I know you're going to find this to be pretty cool!

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Sadly, that was the end of our trip, but I have a couple more interesting tidbits of visual before you go.

This Dalek was about to be rolled out to the elevator, as the event was coming to a close. If you look carefully, though, one of the helpers.... does "something" lol and the Dalek responds with "Inappropriate" 😂

Lastly, we have a picture of me and a very quiet dude... guess which one is me.

I hope you smiled a little while reading, learned something or laughed at a video, or two. As always, it was fun putting this post together, and I look forward to the next one!

Peace out,