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Well since you guys took the time to highlight your favorite moments of Dragon Con. Allow me to reciprocate with my most enjoyable Retro Con moments. This was the third year my wife and I attended and each time is progressively more fun for us.
The show was awash in a sea of cosplayer’s ranging in age, gender, shape, size complexity and shear awesomeness. Our favorites were the two year old BB-8 who kept photo-bombing everyone’s pics all weekend in a display of total cuteness. And the Jem who spent a good hour with us detailing why the new movie will suck and how outrageously awesome the new comic book series is.
We did get to meet Jim Martin voice of Gary Gnu from the Great Space Coaster, what a wonderful human being. At his panel we learned the saga of how the rights to the Great Space Coaster changed hands half a dozen times until winding up in the vault of some obscure company in Germany. How Jim bought the rights back and is digitally restoring the entire series with the help of NFL films. A deal he made with the NFL in exchange for their use of all the Mean Joe Green footage from his appearances on the series.
There were two really great costume contests one for the adults on day one and the other for the kids on day two. They also introduced this year a “Truly Outrageous Karaoke Contest.” There’s nothing more fun than watching people sing off-key in full costume. At the trivia contest I won a human size version of Voltron’s blazing sword. My wife just missed winning a prize as well but lost by giving Babylon 5 as an answer to a Bruce Boxleitner question when they were looking for Scarecrow and Mrs. King. I take the blame for that one though, I watch the B5 DVD’s so much; it’s hard for us to think of the actors in anything else.
The surprise hit of the show though had to be the charity auction. It was hosted by John Moshitta voice of Blur from the Transformers and star of the 80’s Micro Machine commercials. The auction was moving along at a reasonable pace until a bidding war erupted over a screenplay of the 1986 Transformers Movie signed by the entire (living) cast, including Weird Al. All of a sudden the bidding grew from tens to hundreds to thousands of dollars. At the end of it all the screenplay sold for forty-five hundred dollars and half of the con had gravitated over to the panel room to watch in amazement.
If the auction was the surprise hit, then the final panel had the surprise twist. Our friend Connie and avid cosplayer was a guest on a live recording of “Captain Kyle’s Cosplay Spotlight,” a YouTube program. She was interviewed in character as Cosmos an Autobot from the original Transformers cartoon. Her voice seemed extremely spot on during the entire length of the interview. We all thought that the soundman was modulating her microphone in some way. When they reached the end of the interview though, it was revealed that the voice actor (Michael McConnohie) who played Cosmos on television was behind the curtain the whole time providing the voice to Cosmos for the interview.
We also met Crazy Joe of Slice of Sci-Fi and MegaPodzilla fame. Seeing how freaking tall he is in person makes his famous junk punch rants seem that much more ominous. I have only one regret from the weekend though, it was finding out afterwards that the voice of Sonny the Cocoa Puffs bird was a guest at Retro Con and I missed out on meeting him. For next year’s con I will definitely be doing my IMDB homework.
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Knowing is half the battle......!!!
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