Smeagol7 sends along his adventure in Toronto (can you have adventures in Toronto? – sorry, Canadian joke.. -Xo) at the Canadian Expo: 2001 Convention, read on!
My cousin and I went down to the Convention Center in Toronto. This was on Friday seeing it was the only day we could go (August 24th). So we went down to the center at 3:45 PM, 15 minutes before it started at four. The line was HUGE man! Well we cheated a bit and cut in (Heheheh). After 20 minutes we paid 40 bucks Canadian for all weekend pass for all three cons. The only thing we could do was go to the dealers room since we were pressed for time. I later found out we could do just that for 15 bucks.
We go up on the escalator and go into the dealers room. Now this is where we get to talk about LOTR. So we get free comic books and look at some action figures, then I saw em: SWORDS! Samurai swords, medieval, fantasy swords! Two, no wait, three tables of swords! Big metal real ones! The big ones were about 60 bucks, I couldn’t believe it. My cousin, unfortunately, would NOT let me get one. Oh well, they were still pretty cool.
We head over to a big table with posters, and I saw three big LOTR teaser posters for the movies! Big ones mind you, and I got one! So then the guy tells me they have another one on the other side, and I saw it: Big LOTR poster, Original, Bakshi LOTR poster. Not the copies: the REAL thing. The thing actually used in the theatres when the film came on in the seventies! I real LOTR collectors item. I was 60 bucks, and I bought it!
I was looking at the posters, I heard the sound of Gandalf’s voice coming from the TV a few feet away! I rushed over and saw that they were playing the third trailer on a TV. Everyone gathered around the TV and watched. Other trailers came up after that. The trailer was on a VHS. Besides that they had LOTR promo tattoos! Now the funny thing is the company on the back of the tattoos was Alliance Atlantis. This was also the company that was on the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back trailer VHS that they were giving out. I’m starting to wonder if LOTR was also on the VHS, and if that was the VHS they were playing on the TV. I’ll have to find out from my cousin because he got one of those VHS’. The shop that was giving these things out said they would have all the merchandising when the movies came out. It looks like LOTR is doing very well here in Canada for the movies. I’m wearing those tattoos when FOTR comes out in December. After picking up an Akira manga from the anime section, we headed home. I think this was a very good convention and I was surprised to find LOTR items seeing as it was more sci-fi than fantasy. All in all, a very good convention indeed!
