PopCult Rudy Panucci on Pop Culture

ToyLanta Dioramas and Custom Figures Part One: The Winners

March 29, 2019 by Rudy Panucci

The PopCulteer
March 29, 2019

Okay, so here I am, ready to bring you the long-awaited photos of the dioramas on display at ToyLanta, which happened three weeks ago, and the internet gremlins have decided to bedevil my blogger interface. My eyes are doing much better, and I’ve slowly been editing this images for the past couple of weeks, and now I’m going to have to dole them out a few at a time.

To make a long story short (and a photo story serialized), the layout of PopCult started going nuts every time I try to post more than ten photos in one post.  It worked fine last week, but this week, not so much. So, since I have so many photos, I’m going to be divvying them up into at least four posts. And I’m going to be stretching those out over the next three or four days. You probably won’t see part two until later in the day on Saturday, and then rest will be posted Sunday and Monday, so you have bonus content to look forward to going into next week!

Today we’re going to look at winners of the custom figure, diorama and vehicle contests. In a later post or two we will bring you the rest of the contest entries, and then we’ll wrap up with the featured dioramas and displays by Mike Gardner, Steve Bugg and the displays from Clay Sayre. I also want to note that a few of the photos have been previously posted to Facebook by Dave Matteson. Dave adminstered the contests, and in many cases, he had much better photos of the figures than I did, because my hands were a bit shaky from Myasthenia Gravis. So thanks, Dave, for all the help getting the list of winners, and for the pictures I swiped.

Today, though, we focus on the contest winners. Like Jack Hall’s first-place figures, The Banana Splits, as seen at the head of this post, with more photos below.

This was pretty much the show-stopper. Jack Hall managed to come up with a set of figures and vehicles that punched all the nostalgia buttons of the folks at ToyLanta.
Jack found his inspiration with someplush dolls, then he hired master seamstress Kathy Ellis to tailor-up Banana Splits costumes to fit GI Joe. Here we see Bingo and Fleagle, and their Banana Buggies.
Here’s Drooper and Snorky (sans head), with their Banana Buggies. Fans of Mr. Cartoon, here in WV, may recognize Drooper’s head as the headpiece that eventually, minus the hat and glasses, and with a coat of paint, became the head of Beeper.
While Jack’s figures came in first place, his vehicles came in second-place over-all. The competition was fierce.
Joey Tutor’s amazingly-detailed Recon Motorcycle took first place in the custom vehicle division.
Cathy Jones won first place in the diorama catagory with her wonderful “Sunday Drive.” Every year Cathy has the coolest Steampunk entries.

 

Michael Dickey took first place in the Youth vehicle catagory with this cool Mech Suit.
Michael Dickey Also took home first place in the Youth Catagory for his cool Vietnam-era figure.
The second-place custom figure winner is the Paramarine protoype, based on the early mock-up figure made by Don Levine before they settled on the name, “GI Joe.” This was by Randy Sapp.

Okay, we want to cogratulate the winners. We have much more to bring you, but we’ve hit our limit of ten photos for this post. Check PopCult over the weekend for more posts, along with all our regular features, as we prepare to enter a new month, with loads more new pop culture news, reviews and stories for our loyal readers.