Super Toy Con 2016

The Las Vegas Super Toy Con returned again this year, bringing in toys, pop collectibles, WWE superstars, B list celebrities, and cosplayers, except this year the venue has escaped the basement of Circus Circus and moved to a much larger space in the Orleans Arena.

The guest list has improved even more since last year, Super Toy Con 2016 brought in big money names including U Can’t C Me John Cena, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, and Kurt Angle. If giant men aren’t really your thing, Cobra Kai had some demonstrations, yes that Cobra Kai, Zach Galligan from Gremlins, the OG black Power Ranger Walter Jones with the OG blue Power Ranger David Yost, many cosplayers including Ivy doomkitty and Riddle, and fucking Sam Jones. Needless to say there was some actual fun talent.

This is the second Las Vegas Super Toy Con that I’ve attended, and knew a larger venue was needed, since the fire marshal had beef with overcrowding of the Circus Circus basement the year prior. My toy collecting has become a little more serious over the past few years, and this year I came ready to spend money, looking for carded G.I. Joes, among other great 80’s memorabilia like Thundercats and MOTU.

Unfortunately finding actual carded Joes from North America were harder to find than I had preciously anticipated, but it appears the international market is quite popular at the moment. Even with the international pieces, vendors were just asking way too much for the pieces. As display pieces, having most of the text in Korean on the cards wasn’t appealing to me. It wasn’t just carded Joes that were a bit pricey, with a con vendors comes con prices unfortunately.

One collectible that couldn’t be missed at Super Toy Con 2016? Pops. Attack of the Pops. Pops everywhere. I know they’ve been popular for some time now, but the Pop craze just seems out of control, we’re talking boothes made from walls of Pops, it was incredible. We’ll see how long this lasts or how fast it’ll fade away like Beanie Babies in the 90’s.

My only complaint about Super Toy Con 2016 was the layout of the arena. While the Orleans Arena was definitely large enough for the expo, the actual layout was quite inconvenient. For anyone who’s been to a stadium there’s a type of concourse that typically runs around the upper levels where you enter, then you have to find your way down to the courtside/ringside/ice level if you’re lucky enough. So there were vendors and other things in this area, separated from the main expo area, there were areas that I didn’t even know existed and ended up missing completely.  Riddle’s booth was in an area that I completely missed. The whole area didn’t have a map to follow, and their signage wasn’t the greatest to assist in navigation. This was really my only complaint about the con in a whole.

Besides con prices that are nearly unavoidable, the entry into Las Vegas Super Toy Con 2016 was totally worth the price of admission. At $12 a day and kids under 12 getting in free there’s very little excuse to not to attend. There were tons of things to do and see all day and every day of the con, and there’s a flipping wrestling ring in the expo floor for crying out loud. Las Vegas Super Toy Con 2016 was a lot of fun and with a few tweaks to the layout and some better advertising, I could see it becoming a staple con here in the Vegas valley much like Amazing and Wizard World.