PopCult Rudy Panucci on Pop Culture

Doll Show Photos Part One

Last weekend your PopCulteer and his wife attended the Queen City Beautiful Doll Club’s fall show at EnterTrainment Junction in Cinncinnati. I told you about the show last week and brought you a video roundup last Sunday.

I promised a photo essay, but that has been delayed until now due to some technical issues here at PopCult Central. In addition to our connectivity problems, when I dove into the editing, I discovered that I had way too many good photos for just one essay. So this is the now the first of two photo essays devoted to the show. You can expect part two tomorrow.

Today we’re going to look at some of the non-Barbie dolls at the show, and also look at some custom displays and a pretty epic collection of custom Barbie Dolls that was being sold off at the show.

In Part Two we’ll focus on Barbie and Pop Culture dolls (although you’ll see plenty of Pop Culture today, as well).

Many thanks to Keith Davis for extending the invitation to attend the show, and to Margie and her staff who organized such a great toy show. Now let’s look at the photos (captions are the text below each photo)…

This dealer had an impressive assortment of collector Barbies and Hot Toys high-end action figures.

A cool mix of vintage and reproduction advertising dolls.

Displayed sort of like comics in boxes were vintage Barbie outfits on backer boards.

It’s a cute, cuddly Winston Churchill among the baby dolls.

Barbie was the dominant doll at the show, but there was a huge assortment of other goodies on hand.

For instance, these Exclusive Premiere action figures from the late 1990s spearheaded the ReMEGO movement that resulted in the recent revival of the MEGO Toy Company.

A cool space-themed display by GI Joe customizer/kitbasher Mark Koehler, AKA “The Mad Evil Genius Scientist Doctor Zorkon.”

Mark also created this take on Trump’s Space Force, with a crew of pop culture stalwarts helping man the intergalactic craft.

Hey, you know I’m going to find the GI Joe at the doll show. Didn’t pick this one up, though. I got one in Chicago back in July.

 

It was also cool to see some Marx horses at the show (well, technically Thunderbird is the horse, while there are two Pancho ponies).

 

I’m not going to get into the whole “doll vs. action figure” thing here, but there was a goodly amount of Star Wars at the show.

 

Monster High was also well-represented, as this beloved doll line lives on on the hearts of collectors.

 

I think Monster High might present a bright future for doll collectors.

 

One dealer at the show was selling off an amazing collection of custom figures, designed by a terminally-ill, 87-year-old collector in Maine.

 

The prices were very low and people were snapping up these gems like crazy.

 

Mel picked up three of the dolls for her own collection.

 

When Mel went back to possibly add another, she was told that all the remaining dolls had been bought up by one person.  Still it was good while it lasted, and a lot of folks had a chance to own part of this one-of-a-kind collection.

 

There are a few high-end fashion doll lines, like “W” and Fashion Royalty, and a couple of dealers had their impressive products on hand (with equally impressive prices).

 

We also saw high-end Momoko dolls from Japan.

Of course, the star of the show was Barbie, and tomorrow we’ll look at Barbie and a few other pop culture gems.