Gulf Coast Toy Show

Saturday was the Gulf Coast Toy Show.

I've been meaning to go to this for several years now, but I always forget when the day that it happens finally arrives. For once, I didn't do that.

I don't live very close to Pasadena. It's still part of the general Houston market area, but it's a long ways from me. The drive there was annoying. Maps gave me a crappy route to follow that took me through several small towns on the outskirts of Houston where I had to drive at 35 mph for extended periods of time. I think I'd be happier if I drove farther but just went at speeds that made me feel like I was going somewhere than putting through small town main streets like a chump.

We finally got there, and it was in a big building at some kind of fairgrounds.

There were way more sellers than at anything else I've been to here in Houston. I've always gone to small-time events that were sponsored by a single toy store, so this was much more intense. I think they only have this show once or maybe twice a year.

These days, I'm mostly out of space on my bookshelves, so I've been almost completely concentrating on collecting figures for Ankletown Station or figures that I can put up for certain holidays. Sadly, there was a lot less that pertained to my narrow interests than if I had just been looking for all the general stuff that I have collected over the years.

I did find a bunch of things to pick up all the same. I only brought $40 with me to keep from blowing too much money, and I managed to only use $31 of it. Here's what I got.

That's Plo Koon, one of the myriad Jedi from the prequel films. I'm particularly interested in aliens for Ankletown Station. I want there to be a bunch of aliens.

That one is R4-P17. The other main thing I want a lot of on Ankletown Station is droids, so anytime I can get my hands on an astromech, especially at this price, I'll grab it. This one has yellowed, which is no good, particularly because it didn't uniformly yellow. If the legs were yellowed too, then I think it would be fine. The yellow actually goes well with the dark red of the head. I think I'll see if I can't match the legs up with the rest of the body by way of some weathering to make this droid one coherent piece.

There's a gungan from the prequels. I could leave him as is, but I admit I am thinking about taking its head off and swapping it onto some other body for a custom figure. Maybe he could be part of the guards who use the Halo body armor. This head on a Halo body might look good, right?

This is a Fortnite guy. I can't remember what he's called, but he comes with an astronaut playset that I would never have been interested in paying for, however I really wanted the figure, because it's a guy in an astronaut suit. Perfect for Ankletown.

Rish tells me that this guy is an Ishi Tib. I guess he's from the original Return of the Jedi film, although I never noticed him back there in the Jabba's palace scenes. I've seen him since in Clone Wars stuff, though, I think. He's a good alien.

This is another Fortnite guy. Maybe he's a little too cutesy. I don't know. He's a guy made of blue goo, and there in his head, there's a little fish-looking alien thing that seems to be driving the bus. I particularly grabbed him becuase I recently got a Fortnite figure that was made of blue goo as well, but was a female. It just seemed like it would be fun to have this guy as her boyfriend or something.

Lastly, I got this R2-D2. He's not yellowed, so that's a big plus. Maybe I'll paint him to make him look like a different astromech than the one we know and love. We'll have to see how it goes. At the very least, he was cheap, so if I screw it up, it's not a gigantic loss of money.

All of the Star Wars guys I managed to get for $5 each. The two Fortnite guys were only $3 a piece, so the whole thing was done for Ross-like prices. Pretty successful day for Ankletown Station, I would say.