Third time's the charm?
Day of the event
Saturday and Sunday 2. -3. December 2017 Gloria, Helsinki
Guest of Honor's:
Femi Taylor - OOLA - Return Of The Jedi
Paul Blake - GREEDO - A New Hope
The event included: discussion panels, vendors, themed food, cosplay competition, tattoos and of course, guest's Q&A.
I was there only on Saturday and I left really early, so I'm just sharing my experience for the short time I was there. I can't say that I was impressed by this year's event. Very much like the first year, this felt really lackluster. I don't know what it is but this convention is missing something! One of the missing things was definitely people. The place was half empty the entire time I was there. Last year when Jeremy Bulloch was there, there were lines you had stand in and wait for your turn. This time, I could have just walked straight to the guest's table without queuing (if I didn't need a half an hour to gather courage to do so) because there were no other people around. This makes me feel bad for the guests, I hope they didn't feel like they were wasting their time. I dislike crowds very much, so it feels weird saying that there were too little people.
My biggest gripe with this convention is how I don't feel I'm getting my money's worth. Sure, the one day ticket that costs me (about) 25€ grants me entrance to this nightclub like venue place I very much dislike, and what do I get in exchange? Hours upon hours of waiting for something to happen. The few panels there were during the day, none of them was about Star Wars! Therefore, I'm not tempted to spend time listening to a topic that doesn't interest me at all. In contrast, at every anime convention I've been to over the years, I've always had to plan ahead and pick out the panels that interest me the most. Sitting through panels are great ways to pass the time when you are waiting for any main events that usually happen later during the day. In Hoth-con's case, as I was there only for Saturday, so the main thing I was waiting for was the Femi Taylor Q&A (Paul Blake Q&A was on Sunday).
Let's say the venue place opened it's doors at 11 AM and the Q&A starts at 6 PM, that leaves me 7 hours to linger around. I take a look around, I check out all the merchandise for sale, I play the pinball game, I get something to eat and drink, I go see the exhibition, I get the guest's autographs and photos taken with me, and I buy stuff. Even if I go full slowpoke trying to stretch the time, that still leaves me 4 hours of waiting for the Guest's Q&A. I get fed up from the waiting and leave the venue place. I played some Pokemon Go, checked out some stores nearby and even after that, there were till hours left for me to wait. At this point, I decided to head home, because that alone was going to take me hours and it was wintertime, so it was already starting to get dark. I got what I came for, the autographs, so despite all the waiting I was happy, but also somewhat disappointed about missing the guest's discussion panels. I won't deny that I was also very frustrated, because I know this convention could be so much better!
Enough of the negative, here's my positive things about Hoth-con 2017:
I really liked the food that was named to fit the Star Wars theme! Usually I don't put much money into buying food and drinks, but for this occasion I treated myself. I bought a drink called the Nerf Herder, I don't remember what flavor it was, but it was good! Gotta love the mini lightsaber-glowstick! As for the cupcakes, I was unable to pick just one so I took both the chocolate Death Star and the mojito BB-8. The mojito was a little bit too strong for my taste and so, classic chocolate wins!
Aside from getting the autographs, the next best thing was to check out the very nice exhibitions by Veera Pirilä (cubistic Star Wars character paintings) and Janne Mällinen (stunning images created from photographs of SW action figures). Check them out!
Pirilä's homepage
http://www.veerapirila.com/
Mällinen on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/truupperi/
There was also this laughably small artist alley.... I've never bought anything from an artist alley so I went ahead and bought this art print. I'm ashamed to admit I don't remember the artist name anymore, even though I did ask him to sign it. ^^;
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I couldn't help it, I had to buy my first Jabba the Hutt figure, especially when it borderlines almost cute like this one! And the Lego-Oola (probably fake) just for the occasion.
Maul, for the sake of collecting more Maul. The plushie is from a vendor at the convention. The still in package one, I found it in a comic book shop that also sell tabletop game pieces, which I suppose this one also is. The two smaller ones I bought from a shop that sold used DVD and Blu-ray movies just a few blocks away from the convention. I was looking through the two small cabinets with various film figures they had in the shop and spotted these two!
I was happy to see this one vendor having some other of my favorite series in his selection. The bookmarks, postcards, pins and coasters were too cheap to resist, so I bought a whole bunch of them.
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yay! <3
