Memorabilia Fair Day One!

Memorabilia 2012 Day One

I attended the most recent Memorabilia fair at the LG arena in Birmingham on the 24th and 25th November. It has been years since I've attended an event like this so was looking forward to it. I don't buy comics or toys any more though I still enjoy that culture and the atmosphere. 

I attended with my two friends Pokemon Master Alan Kwan and the film maker Malcolm Kennedy. We had early entry tickets for both days. On the first day Malcolm and I arrived at 9 to be greeted by a disorganised mess of a queue, the attendants sent us form one side of the queue and back again. Once finally in we had a wonder around until Alan joined us (he was travelling from a different location to us). 

Upon entry we were given a free 50th anniversary issue of Spiderman and a program, posters were on offer but we didn't want to carry these around. The stalls were selling a wide variety of merchandise and collectables. It was cool to see a mix of toy dealers and smaller start up businesses selling custom made merchandise rather than the over priced “collectables” as a lot of stands were selling. I appreciate old toys that are mint in box are expensive as they are hard to come by but I find it ridiculous that a Batman figure fresh off the production line can have such a high price tag. 

The smaller custom stands were selling limited edition designed posters, t-shirts, mugs, clothing, console cases etc. It was awesome to see these stands as all of them were being manned by the designers and makers of their products. We got chatting to some of the owners of these stands and its far more satisfying knowing that you are giving the money directly to the products designers. 

One of the stands I bought an ace super hero mug off was Head shot clothing. The lads on the stand were super friendly and had loads of great stuff definitely worth checking out.

In the middle of the arena were all the celebrities asking for £15 to £25 for 30 seconds of their time. They ranged from actors from Starwars, Only Falls and Horses, Michael Biehn and David Hassellhoff to name a few. There were even some glamor models who just about managed to cover their nipples (well done them). 

Dalek made by Robots live and a house robot

As we worked our way to the other side of the arena we found the Robots Live ring. As far as I could tell this was the same as Robot Wars from TV, I assume they had to change the name for licence reasons. We watched one of these events. I was never to fussed about Robot Wars when it was on TV but seeing it live is totally different. Its really good! The first robots out were the smaller light weight Robots that were mostly wedges with flippers on. These were really fast and chucked one another all over the ring. Next there were boxing robots and they did a segment I think was aimed at kids. Then the final part was the heavy weight Robots and were again predominately wedges but these were even more satisfying to see fight. They're all much bigger than I imagined, it was really exciting seeing such powerful robots smash one another up. 

Around midday the arena began to fill up and it became very crowded so we decided to get lunch. Malcolm had brought sandwiches with him so me and Alan began to look for somewhere to eat. There was a Subway straight outside the arena but it had huge queues. We settled on the Weatherspoons but it had a special LG menu that was very expensive, we were going to buy some paninis but they had sold out, it turned out anything under £10 had sold out. So we had sweets and fizzy drinks for lunch. 

In the afternoon we continued looking around the stalls and made a few purchases. I bought some canvas prints, DVDs, postcards, a Megaman keyring and a Pokemon league cap. The event finished for the day at 5PM then we headed home. In a couple of days I’ll post my report on Day Two.

Batman preparing for a poo!