World Character Convention Tokyo #21

On December 12th 2005, World Character Convention #21 took place at Tokyo Big Sight in Japan. The show is based around - you guessed it - characters. A little bit of anything and everything that incorporates characters is on display and, in most cases, for sale during the Character Convention. This show is not as big as Wonder Fest. It seemed to be closer to the size of Tokyo Toy Fest. The tickets for this show were Kubrick "Future Mickey Retro" figures with a string on them so you could wear them around your neck, I guess.

Unfortunately, Horror.com did not get many pics from the show this time, but we did spend some time at the show and checked out what the dealers had on display. There were, as always at these type of shows in Japan, tons of Star Wars toys and figures. Because of the timing, King Kong related toys and figures showed up at a few of the booths, as well as some King Kong movie promotional posters around the hall.

Major figure toy companies like Bandai, Medicom, & McFarlane were well represented, whether by having their own booths, or by the quantity of their action figures available at lots of the dealer booths. There was some custom figure decoration going on, a number of limited edition pieces (mostly sold out), some people (designers?) signing toys, etc.

There were a few shoe companies with special shoes which featured various character related artwork. This artist / shoe (or other fashion) company collaboration movement shows no sign of slowing down. One of the shoes being hyped at Character Con was a cool Nike vs. Pushead Dunk.

As far as Horror specific character items, one of the coolest on display were some Child's Play dolls featuring Chucky - who else? Chucky toys & merch seems to make a strong showing at most of the model / urban vinyl / designer toy shows in Japan. Even though they are not horror related, honorable mention goes to the Napoleon Dynamite action figures by McFarlane - instant classics.

Vintage toys and monster toys (modern toys featuring vintage Japanese monsters) were well represented at the various dealer booths. There were also a fair number of Japanese anime model kits, military models, clothing, model cars, and all of the other random stuff that vendors bring to every one of these shows.

Overall it was a good show. Especially recommended if you are a hard core collector looking for specific limited edition pieces that some of the companies release just for this show. If you are interested in going to the next World Character Con in Tokyo, check out the official website. It's only in Japanese, but it will be updated with dates for the next show in 2006.

Also check out the Horror.com World Character Convention picture gallery. We didn't bring back many pictures this time, and most of the ones we did get were with a phone, so they look pretty sad. Hopefully we'll get some better pics next time!