Inadequacies EXPO'd

Christopher Lee has a lot to answer for.

I refer, of course, to his appearance (after so many cancellations) at the London Expo on the eve of his 85th birthday, this last Saturday/Sunday. The whole event (or the Saturday, when I attended, at least) was a bit of a debacle.

It would probably be unfair to blame the whole thing on Mr Lee, considering things were going wrong before the show even opened, but his performance as the frontman for a heavy metal band was where things started to affect my enjoyment of the show.

Let's start at the beginning. The show was due to open at 9am and, by sheer chance (ahem), I happened to be staying nearby, so getting there for opening time was no problem at all. As my companion and I walked toward the ExCeL Centre in London's Docklands, I pointed out a small guy with a camcorder, who happened to be Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Studios, and one of the show's star guests. He was recording his arrival at the show, either for posterity or for extras on the DVD release of one of his movies... Who knows? He seemed very focussed on his recording, and trundled merrily along with a suitcase in tow. At the steps leading to the entrance to ExCeL, he stopped to record a long monologue.

"Let's head over that way," my companion advised, darkly, pointing at the far side of the staircase. "I don't want to be in his video."

At this point in the morning the place seemed quiet, with very few people milling around outside. Inside was a different matter. Still not 9am, and the queue for the London Expo had already reached the ExCeL's entrance and doubled back the other side.

The ticket booth was opposite the entrance (still shuttered when we first arrived), affording a good view of the full length of the queue. I was despatched in search of bacon sarnies, while my companion snagged a pair of Fast-Track Entry tickets. The queue for tickets was short enough that our entrance was secured long before the sandwiches were ready. As it turned out, the sandwiches were ready before the Expo's doors opened... and that really set the tone of proceedings.

When I rejoined my companion in the queue, it looked very much as though the Fast-Track Entry queue was quite short, running alongside a staircase down to the lower level of the centre. As it turned out, the queue ran most of the way back to the main entrance, then back down the opposite side. Yes, the queue we passed on the way in was the Fast-Track Entry queue. Doors opened late, the queue took ages to filter round and so, by the time we actually got in, the place was already quite crowded and the concept of 'Fast-Track Entry' was a bit of a joke. Compare to something like Memorabilia, where Fast-Track gets you in at 9am, and Standard gets you in at 11, the difference between Fast-Track and Standard at the May London Expo can only have been a couple of minutes. Strike one for the organisers.

First order of business was to snag a couple of tickets for the Sanctuary panel. Sanctuary is a new internet-based series starring Amanda Tapping of Stargate SG-1 (which, by the looks of things, has become - ahem - 'sanctuary' for at least two refugees from Farscape - Ben Browder and Claudia Black). I had little idea what Sanctuary is 'about', save that it features all manner of monsters and things. Due to something going wrong with my computer lately, I'm unable to watch much computer video. It stutters and lags and generally annoys me. Still, the idea of what is essentially a TV series being created for the internet is interesting in and of itself, and I wanted to learn more. I was faintly perturbed that the panel was to feature the world premier of 'webisode' 2 without showing episode one, but figured that wouldn't be a massive problem.

Tickets in hand, my companion and I began the all-important task of sizing up the retail opportunities. I've been to enough of these things - London Expo, Memorabilia, Collectormania and the London Film and Comic Con - to start recognising most of the regulars. Some are consistently interesting, others are just consistent. I don't tend to go in hoping to see anyone in particular, though I do feel disappointed if a good stand I've seen at previous shows is absent. That said, while many of the stands are good for standing around gawping, there are only a few I ever buy from.

Spacebridge seem to turn up at just about every convention going and, after a very poor performance from them at my first Memorabilia, they seem nicer and more helpful every time I see them. At Memorabilia recently, they had some movie toys on show (marked "Please Do No Touch!") but this time, they had Blackout and Ratchet on sale for £25 each... that's about £5 over the predicted street price, but a good week or so before they hit the streets. I bought both, and felt satisfied that I'd paid a good price. Spacebridge always have a selection of Botcon exclusives lying around in their bags, but these seem terribly overpriced. The more I see them, the happier I become that I'm now a member of the TransFormers Collectors' Club, and could still buy the 2005 boxed set at its original price, if I wanted to. I could buy parts of it from Spacebridge, and the total cost of those parts would exceed that of the complete boxed set from the Club shop. That said, they have many classic pieces (Gen 1 Shockwave for a mere £300) and reissues as well as the more contemporary pieces.

While I nosed around on the stand (agonising yet again over whether or not I want to buy Gen 1 Ratbat) and earwigged on a conversation about the movie and its toys, my companion got out of the way of the crazy masses who thought nothing of barging through her to reach the stand. She later told me that for every guy who passed by and exclaimed "Wow, TransFormers!", there was a girlfriend who'd tut loudly and roll her eyes.

The next order of business was establishing the where and when of the Sanctuary panel, so we'd be there in good time. Along the way, we took in the wonders of Activision's TransFormers movie game (looks staggeringly unoriginal, but beautifully done) and Hasbro's own display of movie toys.

At this point, I have to say "Hasbro UK, what are you thinking?" About two months away from the release of what should be the most important movie in the company's history, and you show up at the London Expo with one small glass cabinet containing a paltry assortment of first wave movie toys. Are you insane, or just stupid? Was this not the ideal opportunity - not to mention the last before the movie goes on general release - to showcase the toy range that goes with the movie? Do you not have more than five toys in the line-up? Could you not afford a second glass cabinet to show us all Leader class Optimus Prime and Megatron (for example)?

Hasbro are one of the Expo's sponsors, and regularly throw in all their tabletop RPG things. Considering that, in the year the TransFormers live action movie is released, there are NO TF-specific conventions in the UK (Auto Assembly - Cancelled; TransForce UK - Cancelled), Hasbro's UK branch should have been pulling out all the stops to ensure the entire country knows that TransFormers are back (though they've never really been away) and bigger than ever, with powerhouse names like Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay and Industrial Light & Magic behind the brand... Had it not been for Activision's stand and the trailers running back-to-back on Spacebridge's portable DVD player, one would have been hard pressed to see any movie promotion... and the TransFormers-branded Robot Wars area was tenuous at best.

They should also have encouraged all UK TransFormers specialist webshops to attend, perhaps even subsidising them... but Spacebridge were the only ones there.

Sad, but oh so typical of Hasbro...

But back to the event.

On the whole, in terms of stalls, it seemed rather emptier than many of the others I've been to. The show was in a large hall laid out in quarters, but the front half seemed very crowded compared to the back (apart from the Manga Alley, which was quite tightly packed). There were quite a few whopping great open spaces, and a couple of insanely tight corridors. Bizarrely, the organisers had chosed to place Amanda Tapping and her Sanctuary co-stars in the first retail 'road', meaning there were snarl-ups almost right at the entrance to the show. As my companion and I struggled past, one of the stewards was barking at a group of people to either join the queue for the signing or get out of the way. Strike two for the organisers.

After a brief wander round to get the lie of the land, we trotted back outside for a short break, and an opportunity to sup fruity drinks whilst gawping at cosplayers. I'll say one thing in favour of even this Expo - it's drawing in more cosplayers every time, and the costumes are still quite varied... Apart from the vast number of people wearing exactly the same (ie. shop-bought) black robe trimmed with red cloud patterns.

The event seemed far more crowded with people than any of the previous London Expos and sadly, as became quickly apparent, attendance seemed to have outstripped the organisers' ability to cope.

To cut a long story short, sometime before the Sanctuary panel was due to start, we saw a long queue forming outside the stage area. We joined it... but it soon became apparent that this was actually the queue for Christopher Lee's foray into rock stardom, which was running behind schedule because they wanted to perform a sound check. So far, so normal... but the Expo's organisers hadn't seen fit to set aside the time for this, meaning it was eating into his performance time because the sound check started late. Not quite strike three yet... but that's not the end of this sad little saga.

We left the queue and wandered some more, popping in on the Stikfas stand, where they were promoting a Guyver-related stop-motion animation competition. Many years ago, back in the days of the Amiga, I played about with stop-motion animation. I've always wanted to do more, particularly after seeing the work of the Eyeson team so, when one of the stallholders mentioned freely-downloadable stop-motion animation software, my ears pricked up and my wallet opened. They didn't have the Stikfa I really wanted - the gangster - so I opted for a pair of ninjas, and my companion bought a cute little teddy bear. What fun one can have with a pair of ninjas and a teddy.

When, having popped outside for some fresh air (somewhere amongst the throng of frantically puffing smokers) and more gawking at those crazee cosplayers (not to mention bearing witness to far too much 'glomping' whatever the hell that is), we returned to the halls, we got there just in time to see the queue for the Sanctuary panel being lead out of the hall. Evidently having the stage area at the back caused the queue to mess up the flow of people not waiting for the Sanctuary panel.

The queue seemed quite orderly when we joined it, but it didn't take me long to lose track of how it wound round an alcove before heading off down the ExCeL's central promenade. After a fair old wait in the queue, it was announced that they were hoping to get us all back in for 1.45 (a whole forty-five minutes after the panel was originally scheduled to start). At 1.40, there was still no movement, and the 1.45 target seemed highly dubious. My companion - tense and headachy because of the general shambles of the show, not to mention utterly bored of waiting - implored me to get her out of the queue. Since everything seemed to be running late (eventually meaning one or more of the day's scheduled activities would have to have been cancelled) I agreed. Strike three, in a big way.

Of course, the show was still crowded and my companion was still in no mood to be jostled, so I suggested she wait outside, in the relative calm of the café seating area, while I had a final browse.

I didn't buy anything more, so I've probably set a new record for Money In Wallet vs Money Spent at this sort of thing. My total spend was less than sixty quid in the end.

After the Expo, I had suggested a (slightly) more sensible shopping trip near where we work, but we ended up detouring to Brent Cross instead. Much the same sort of shops were available, with one notable exception, but most of the shopping we'd intended on was done nevertheless. While wandering around, I saw a nice looking shirt, but balked at the £100 price tag. Serves me right for looking at designer shirts. We also popped out to the French Market, where I grabbed almost £15 worth of various flavours of Turkish Delight.

When we left, it had started to rain, marking the change in weather than had been predicted for the weekend. It wasn't a downpour, but considering how summery it had been during the week, it was enough of a change.

Once home, the remainder of the day was spent killing time before Doctor Who (a decent start to a two-part story) and, frankly, I spent so much of Sunday sleeping it barely counts as a day.

Today, a Bank Holiday, there were so many things I wanted to do that I only got round to in the most half-arsed way. I scrabbled around to get a webcam up and running to try out the stop-motion animation software, only to find my computer's performance is so laboured these days it just wasn't worth trying... It was also somewhat disheartening that the 'freely downloadable' stop-motion software mentioned in the competition brief was anything but freely downloadable - any movies you make have 'Trial Version' splashed across them. I started repainting my second Cybertron Armorhide into an approximation of Classics Huffer, using paints I'd bought during the week, but felt so uninspired I didn't get very far. I did lark about with movie Ratchet and Blackout, enough to see that they're rather cool toys, but didn't even try to photograph them because the light was so poor all day.

While I managed to get through the day without sleeping, I honestly can't recall much of anything worthwhile happening... and right now it seems my allergies are kicking in, as my nose has been running constantly for the last couple of hours.

Just how I like to start a short week.

On the upside, the sales manager for my Wednesday magazine is off on holiday... At least, I hope that's an upside. He tries, but he's pretty ineffectual for the most part. Better than most, but still not great.

I'm getting so tired of work right now... But I'd better sign off, or I'll end up tired at work, which is never good.