Day: June 20, 2010

toy day!

Yesterday, Jaykie and I went to the Philippine Toys, Hobbies & Collectibles Convention held at Megamall. It was the 9th Toycon, but it was the first one I ever attended. Entrance was at P100 per. The line snaked around the banisters, and I was already drenched in sweat before we could even step through the entrance.

But I had fun hunting down the accessories I failed to buy at the Komikon, and ogling the toys I’ll never be able to buy. Ha! Here’s myself wearing my new robot necklace. Whee!

Here’s the rest of my haul:

I also bought a DVD compilation of Genshiken. I read the first three volumes of the manga and enjoyed it terribly. I hope the anime version’s just as fun.

While inside the venue, I bumped into EK and saw Pao (read his account of the event here), and walked around a bit with Juabe and Guiz.

After Jaykie and I left the con, we had dessert at Bubble Tea (which seemed to attract a lot of cosplayers, for some reason) and continued our self-imposed celebration of Toy Day by watching Toy Story 3. The line was long and we waited almost half an hour before we could enter the cinema, but oh, it was worth it. (I reviewed the film in a previous post. Just go one blog post back, if you are so inclined.) After dinner, Jaykie and I sat down and played Magic. Yes, you read that right. (But I’m definitely the slowest Magic player, ever. I still don’t have a good grasp of the rules, I have to read every card played carefully, and I suck at Math, so it takes me an eternity to figure out how much life I still have. LOL. We played two rounds and I lost both!)

Good times! I’ll most probably go to the Toycon again next year.

And now, pictures! I love these little hats.

I pose with the ladies:

Tons of old Coca-Cola merch:

Wigs and more toys:

Avatar merch:

Jaykie: “Here I am! Rock you like a hurricane!”

Bats. He is not pleased.

Cosplayers:

Spot the Stormtroopers:

I love Toy Day! (I don’t know if there is such a thing, but let’s call it that.)

held at Megamall.

toy story 3

(First off, Spoiler Warning applies, but if you’ve seen the film, read on and let’s talk in the Comments section!)

Andy is now 17 and is packing up his stuff for college. The toys – Woody, Buzz, and co. – are losing hope: they have not been played with for several years, and now they are in danger of  ending up in the attic, or in a garbage bag to be thrown away.

I have always admired Pixar’s handling of drama and wonder in its animated films, but even then Toy Story 3 blew me away. As in the other two films, simple travels are blown into epic proportions: Woody’s travel from Andy’s to a house “just around the corner”, the toys fighting their way away from the curb to the garage, a tour of a daycare center, etc. The film evokes horror and film noir in some scenes, most notably in the flashback narration of clown toy, Chuckles (whose voice just killed me, killed me). I found two toys genuinely scary. I’ll give you three guesses.

There is an entire sequence that strongly reminded me of The Brave Little Toaster (a childhood favorite). How can a scene showing toys holding hands and readying themselves for a tragedy touch me so much? And yet it did.

Every Pixar film is an ode to childhood, but this one shows us a definitive goodbye to it. Andy’s mom enters his stripped room and starts to cry, and I wonder: did she feel like a toy discarded? Andy, in one of the final scenes, through a simple gesture, shows us how badly he wants to hold on to a more innocent time now slipping away. College looms large; one cannot possibly continue to pretend to destroy an evil pig with a space ranger and a cowboy.

Growing up is exciting, but oh, how painful it is.

This film is highly recommended.