SDCC Day 2 – Part 1 – Finally…

A little disclaimer to start: Well, I have just about recovered from SDCC and related workload. Since I returned from sunny San Diego, I’ve been working about 15 hours a day: some of it real work for my job and some of it on eBay trying to get back some cash on what Pregremlin and I bought at SDCC. We had about 25 auctions going over the course of a week. Plus I’ve been in training, moving desks, and meetings for about 9-10 hours a day almost every day at my real job. So, while I have plenty to rave about for the rest of SDCC, it took a while to get it prepared to post here (like the 4 hours I spent sorting through 300+ photos and retouching the ones I actually want to use). Due to the enormous amount of things that happened during days 2 and 3 of SDCC, I have decided to split my ramblings into two parts for each day so that the posts aren’t overwhelming. Here’s a pic of how excited Dtrain was for the con:

Friday began with the most dreaded of tasks: acquiring Hasbro’s faux exclusives. The new-and-improved method for doing so involved standing in line for an hour to receive a ticket to stand in a line that was constantly closed in the exhibit hall.

By 9:10 am we had our tickets and then were faced with the line to get into the exhibit hall which didn’t open until 9:30. Our ticket time said 10 am, so we stalked the Hasbro booth starting at 9:40 when we got into the hall. I finally decided to stand in a line of people waiting to get into the closed line (fearing we would be dispersed) when the security guards decided to make a second line to get into the line. We were escorted across the hall to an area where maintenance crews take the garbage cans to be emptied. Then, they took 20 people at a time back across the hall to get in line. Our instructions were to hold onto the random person in front of us and let the random person behind us grab onto us. As each set of 20 before us went through this exercise, I saw people fall and drop things lots of times. We made it across successfully, but one guy in our line kept dropping stuff and had to go back to the pre-line to start over. Then a few people around us didn’t have the ticket or the ticket was for a later time and they got kicked out of line. I helped one poor soul get his two toys.

I’m not sure how long we stood in line before we bought the stuff, but when we did buy they were just throwing the toys around to make sure people were getting through the line quick enough. They also stamped our badges and indicated every single toy we bought to make sure no one got more than their allotment. I had so many boxes and bags I could barely make it out of the line. To my horror, the guy I bought the toys for pointed out that the packaging had been damaged by Hasbro. Any way, he got the best two of what he wanted and Pregremlin and I struggled to the FedEx area to get the stuff shipped back to us. By the time we packed and shipped (which cost approximately $5 million), it was a little after noon, so we had enough time for a quick cig and then we had to get into another line to see the Whedon / Dr. Horrible panel (see Day 2- Part 2).

I’m going to sidetrack now for a second, because I have two things related to this Hasbro bullshit that I want to post. First, Hasbro put all of their SDCC exclusives online for sale on Monday when we returned. The only thing you could not buy was whatever sold out at the con. The toys were cheaper and the shipping was about the same as what we paid. I wrote a letter to Hasbro concerning this matter and promised them that I would not be continuing to buy their convention exclusives, as well as publicly telling everyone else not to either. DO NOT BUY HASBRO CONVENTION EXCLUSIVES.

Now, I did pick up a couple of Hasbro exclusives to give away here to PCP readers. One Marvel Savage Lands set and one G.I. Joe Snake Eyes and Timber Combat Heroes set. The next post will describe how you can win these items.

Now for some random exhibit hall pictures:

Now the exhibit hall has way more to offer fans than I can possibly show here. Even though I was there, I still doubt I saw it all. One of my favorite summaries of the exhibit hall and SDCC can be found here: Bully Says. Overall the exhibit hall was extremely crowded on Friday and Saturday, but a lot of high-quality swag (or free stuff for the uninitiated) was given out by many booths. Everything from T-shirts to magnets to USB flash drives to autographed promo posters. I am going to skip the Whedon panel until the Day 2 – Part 2, because it is directly related to another event we went to that night. But I do have another exhibit hall story…

FOX was distributing some heavy-duty poster tubes with promotional pics of many shows as part of it swag giveaways. I bought a Supernatural poster I was hoping to get signed on Saturday, so I decided to try to get a tube so that the poster wasn’t demolished by the time I got it home, thus began the FOX Poster Tube Incident of ‘08. Here’s a pic of the tube:

FOX cleverly decided to post the next time this tube would be given away at their booth. It was close to hall close time so we decided to go for it. There was already a line ringing their entire booth when we got in. I was standing next to a cool older dude and some other neat people. As the time approached and people began showing up on our sides, we were concerned that when the give-away began we would either be denied by people rushing the line or possibly even KIA (killed in action). Now, even though I often mad-rage at line jumpers during conventions, I am usually not very assertive when it comes to certain things. However, me and the cool people I’d been standing with in line decided that if the eye candy working the booth wasn’t made aware of the possible consequences, we might indeed be KIA over a poster tube.

So, I made eye contact and addressed four of these women and explained the situation to them. I told them that we had been waiting quite some time, and were happy to do so, and we realized we were not the front of the line, but if they didn’t take measures to ensure that the line kept looping into the booth the inside loop folks could be hurt or killed over a poster tube. They assured us they would do their best to make sure that did not happen. I had my doubts, but they began discussing it with everyone in the booth and tried to make sure it did not happen. Our little group that had bonded in line did our best to make sure no one in front or behind us was cut off, and surprisingly the FOX booth workers did care enough to help everyone out. We made it into the booth and got our poster tubes without being hurt or KIA. Extreme kudos go to the ladies working the booth for caring enough about others to make sure no one got hurt.

Here’s one last picture of Pregremlin and dre222 wearing another set of procured swag:

Day 2 – Part 2 should be up sometime this weekend, and don’t forget to check out the next post to see how you can win some SDCC exclusives.