Though San Diego’s annual Comic-Con is about the popular arts in general, the presence of the LEGO fan community there has expanded in the last several years. This year, The LEGO Group rented an exhibitor space that was about twice the size of last year’s space and was in the center of all the action. In addition to kid’s play tables, there were two daily raffles oriented toward adult collectors (I don’t know many 8 year olds who would pay $50 for 3 minifigs). My personal highlight at the LEGO booth was that I actually built the Star Wars Dropship/AT-OT and helped with the giant Ultimate Collector Series Millenium Falcon, then got to see them on display in the fancy cases.
Enhanced version of my photo by bluemoose
BrickJournal, the quarterly LEGO fan magazine, had a table that included several adult fan creations and its own fan panel on Friday morning of the convention. One of the highlights of the panel for me was LEGO set designer Mark Stafford sharing some of LEGO’s theme concepts from back in the ’80s and ’90s that were not pursued beyond the development phase, and simply aren’t going to happen as official themes, which is why he was allowed to display them (Above: 1920s-1930s Prohibition theme). As a history person, I envy him the ability to pour through the LEGO archives for hidden gold.
At the SandLUG meeting on Saturday night, Mark said there are additional photos in slides, but nobody can find a projector that works on those slides, so he hasn’t been able to get a good look at them. Which brings me to the other great highlight, which was meeting lots of great people both at the convention and those who made it to the SandLUG meeting, including Megan Rothrock (LEGO set designer), Joe Meno (editor of BrickJournal), Steve Witt (LEGO community relations), and Joel Baker (new model designer at LEGOLAND California).
Josh’s post from late last week already showed some of the great new themes and sets that were displayed at the LEGO booth, but some of you wanted to know what was actually inside the Comic-Con Exclusive, so here’s the pic of the contents still in the packaging:
I would have built it for you and taken pics, but this is the only one I managed to pick up in the raffle and it’s destined for another Brother Brick.