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I had previously attended a similar toy expo event at the Maryland State Fairgrounds way back in 2017. I remember enjoying myself as I saw all kinds of toys and other related vintage stuff (such as a vintage jukebox). I even managed to buy two cheap items—The Simpsons Season 2 DVD set for $6 and the Monster High Abbey Bominable doll for $5—that I still own as of this writing.
Until recently I hadn’t attended another such event due either to not being able to afford to go, conflicting schedules, or the COVID-19 pandemic. When I saw on Facebook that this event was being held, I decided to buy my $10 ticket in advance and check it out.
This event was billed as being even bigger and better than before complete with holding it in two buildings instead of the one building that I went to at the 2017 event. I also decided to drive the entire way to Timonium instead of just driving to North Linthicum and taking the light rail the rest of the way because I still have memories of what happened when I tried to do this at last year’s German-American Festival and the train never arrived because of track maintenance issues.
It turned out that I would’ve been better off taking a chance on the sometimes unreliable Baltimore light rail because the Maryland Toy Expo was one of three events that were being held at the fairgrounds at the same time. (One was a coin show that was held at a nearby building. I used to collect coins as a child and I still have my collection from way back then but I didn’t bother with stopping by. The other event was an outdoor festival of some kind and I could hear live music from a distance but I didn’t bother with investigating it because it would’ve been a long walk in hot weather.) Fortunately I parked at a spot that was relatively close to the toy expo.
I went in the building that was the closest to the space where I parked my car, got my paper bracelet (which proved that I purchased a ticket), and walked around briefly until I felt hungry. There was a food stall outside of the building along with two picnic benches to sit on. (The other building also had a food stall with two picnic benches but it served the same food.) After lunch I decided to plot my visit where I would make the five-minute walk, visit the further building, see all of the vending tables in that building, then make the five-minute walk back to the other building that’s closest to where I parked my car, tour the vending tables in that building until I grew tired, then make the short walk to my car and leave.
I made a video slideshow of my photos from the Maryland Toy Expo along with some music. You can view it on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube. If you prefer still photos, keep on reading this post.
There were a few cool things about the bigger toy expo that I didn’t see at the 2017 event. Each building had two huge movie-themed displays complete with themed vehicles and other large props. One was based on Ghostbusters.
The other was based on Jurassic Park.
There were also a few cosplayers at this year’s event.
One of the buildings even had an Artist’s Alley, which is what one usually see at anime and science fiction conventions. It’s the first time I ever saw something like this at a vintage toy event. It was neat seeing all kinds of fan art based on toys, science fiction, anime, etc.
The one thing I learned is that bigger isn’t necessarily better. The two buildings were about a five-minute walk from each other, which was a pain. Plus it was totally hot. There were times when my feet gave out but there were literally no places for the general public to sit. (There were chairs but they were for the vendors.) I ended up having to use the restrooms just so I could sit on the toilet, even if I didn’t need to perform any other kind of bodily function, because my feet were that tired.
There was even less variety than at the 2017 event. At that previous event some vendors sold other types of pop nostalgia, such as vintage posters and an 8-track player. There were a wide variety of toys, including some that went as far back as over 100 years earlier. For this year’s event, I found only two tables that had a few toys that were manufactured prior to 1930.
At this event I saw so many vendor tables that sold either Matchbox Cars, Funko Pops, and/or Squishmallows that it all became mind-numbing after a while.
Whenever I came across anything other than those three I would take a picture of it, which is why I have far fewer photos of those three toys than other types of toys. If I was a major fanatical collector of Matchbox Cars, Funko Pops, or Squishmallows, I would’ve felt like I had gone to heaven with that toy expo.
Unlike 2017 I didn’t find anything cheaply priced that interested me enough to take home, with one major exception. There was a woman who sold homemade fudge in a variety of flavors along with other types of sweets.
I purchased two packs of fudge. They were both incredibly good. I highly recommend The Chocolate Art Gallery, who you can contact on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or their website.
As for attending another Maryland Toy Expo in the future, I think I’m going to pass because going to such a large event without any place to sit down (other than the toilets) is way too physically taxing for me. If there’s ever a vintage toy that I decide that I absolutely positively must have in the future, I’ll just search on eBay because it’ll be less physically exhausting for me.
I was at a local Five Below store not too long ago. I saw plenty of stuff featuring bunnies for Easter but I also found something else that I wouldn’t expect: A plethora of dinosaur stuff. That’s right, I saw a bunch of dinosaurs arrive just in time for Easter next month.
I found a bubble making triceratop along with a unicorn (which is the only non-dinosaur product I shot on this trip).
There’s a dinosaur that shoots balls.
And a bunch of small dinosaur figurines.
There are party supplies based on the recent Jurassic World movie.
And a couple of t-shirts featuring Jurassic Park and Reptar.
Finally here is a giant plastic Jurassic World Easter egg full of dinosaur stuff.
I finally finished my latest animation on the day before Thanksgiving. For the past year-and-a-half I’ve been attending the animation meetups that are held on Sunday afternoons at the Greenbelt Makerspace and we decided to do some special short Christmas animations that would run in the monitors that were recently erected in the windows of the makerspace. Even though our animations aren’t due for another few weeks I decided to take advantage of this week’s enforced downtime due to Thanksgiving Day (it’s hard to find work because so many people are currently out of town) and get mine done early so I can focus on other things. So here is my latest animation, The Gift of the Dinosaur.
Here’s the story behind The Gift of the Dinosaur. I had participated in Inktober for the first time in 2017. On the day I was leaving for the Washington, DC chapter of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School I did a quick drawing featuring the event’s emcee, Reverend Valentine. She is a burlesque performer and she loves dinosaurs. Recently Build-A-Bear Workshop had started carrying dinosaurs that one could choose to have stuffed and take home instead of a teddy bear and it had a blue t-rex dinosaur. So I drew this scenario where Reverend Valentine gets the blue t-rex from Build-A-Bear Workshop while wearing her pasties and thong while adding a fantasy scenario of what if that stuffed dinosaur was real. (LOL!)
For my animation I loosely based the girl on what I imagine Reverend Valentine might have looked like as a child but I basically made a more generic child. Since the main human character is a young child I had to replace the pasties and thong with a nightgown since, like many children around the world, she would be opening her present on Christmas morning soon after waking up.
I’ll admit that I ripped off the original premise of the Jurassic Park movies (dinosaurs cloned from the blood drank by mosquitos that were preserved in amber for thousands of years). For the record, I saw the first Jurassic Park movie and I really enjoyed it. I saw the second movie and, while it had its moments, I felt it was just a retread of the first one. I haven’t seen any of the other Jurassic Park or Jurassic World movies since the first two were released mainly because going to the movies have become so expensive that I’m not willing to pay a lot of money to see the same storyline being rehashed over and over again. It would be cheaper to just buy the DVD of the first movie and watch that one over and over again.
I was also inspired in a way from reading a series of graphic novel reprints of the comic book series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, which I checked out of the local public library. As you can tell from the title, it’s about a girl and her dinosaur. It’s a really well-written series and I enjoyed them. If I ever earn a decent income to the point where I can afford splurges, I will buy that series because it is that good. My animation focuses exclusively on the dark side of getting a pet dinosaur. (LOL!)
For the software I decided to try this free graphics program that I downloaded a few months ago. It’s from Autodesk and it’s called SketchBook. The free version has a lot of features including doing a rough flip book animation. I took a course on Lynda.com (which I’m able to access for free through my public library) on SketchBook Pro and I found that the main difference between the free and paid pro versions is that the latter has more brushes to choose from.
I did the vocalizations and sound effects using the free open source program Audacity. I basically pushed my voice into the upper ranges in order to have the girl say things like “ooooohhh” and “wow”. I decided to do my own sound effects instead of spending time doing Internet searches for the proper sounds. I did the unraveling of the ribbon by taking a roll of toilet paper and unraveling that. I ripped up a sheet of paper in order to simulate the sound of the girl ripping wrapping paper. I did the rattling box effect by dropping a box full of unbreakable stuff then putting that sound on a loop. I ripped velcro to simulate the dinosaur emerging from the box. For the falling Christmas tree I knocked over a padded guitar case with the guitar still inside. For the final scene I purchased a bag of pretzels and recorded myself eating them. I recorded my own burp after I ate a meal that’s heavy in gas then drank down a glass of water mixed with baking soda.
As for the music, it’s the song “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” from Tchaikovsky’s famous Christmas piece The Nutcracker Suite. I downloaded this version for free from YouTube’s collection of songs that creators can use for free in their videos.
I did most of the drawings but, to save time, I turned to OpenClipArt.org for the Christmas tree, the wallpaper, and the couch. All three were basically background elements so I didn’t feel the need to spend the time drawing them and it left me free to focus on what really mattered, the girl and the dinosaur.
For those of you who have been following my animations over the years, you’ll probably recognize a painting in the background hanging over the couch. It’s the final scene from my earlier animation The March of Liberty, which is the same animation that was shown outside on a giant screen at the 2017 Light City festival in Baltimore.
The animation wasn’t too bad except I found that animating the opening of the present to be a bit tedious and it drove me crazy at times. But it was worth it at the end when I saw the litter girl eagerly opening her present. If someone was paying me, I would have been more obsessive about accurately showing the girl opening her present to the point of doing a live action filming of myself unwrapping a box so I could use that as the basis of doing a very accurate gift opening. But I’m not being paid to do this. I really need to focus more on finding work that pays money so I could pay the bills so I had to simplify it to the best that I could. It was still tedious to animate the opening the gift part despite trying to simplify it as much as possible. The rest of the animation was less tedious and I was able to enjoy the process better.
I basically exported the animation and sound effects from the separate programs and assembled them with the music together in iMovie.
Thankfully I was instructed to make a short animation so I had no problem with doing this one by myself within a week. I decided to upload this animation online since not everyone will be able to go to the Greenbelt Makerspace and see it in the video windows.
I’m basically happy with the way the animation turned out. It’s a short animation that has a coherent story and I was able to make it run in just under one minute. I’m glad that I finished this animation so I can move on to other things.
It seems like this year the retailers are starting Black Friday earlier and earlier. For the past couple of weeks my various retailer apps (which I only have installed on my smartphone for the coupons) were going off announcing stuff like “Check out our Black Friday Preview sale!”
Black Friday Preview sale?!? I can’t believe that it’s actually a thing this year. I was at The Disney Store in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia a few days ago when I saw that this sign announcing that Black Friday sales were underway. (Granted, I went there on a Friday but it was on November 16—a full week before Black Friday itself.)
I have a few photos on my hard drive that I took not too long ago that will give you an idea of what to expect this holiday season. I found some cheap plastic ukuleles and a Jurassic World chocolate dinosaur at Five Below.
The Target in my area has just gotten a whole bunch of new stuff recently. Like Five Below, Target has a line of ukuleles but these ukuleles are made of wood (instead of plastic like Five Below) and they look like they are higher quality.
Target recently got a line of these dolls that are based on famous characters from older television shows and movies that are still beloved today. Here is Tootie Ramsey from the TV show The Facts of Life.
Here’s Bela Lugosi in his most famous movie role as Count Dracula in the early 1930’s horror film Dracula.
I used to watch Married With Children on a regular basis so I found it hilarious that someone had made a doll based on Peg Bundy.
I have to admit that the doll manufacturer was really creative with the Star Trek dolls. They didn’t just make doll versions of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock but they made versions based on the classic episode “Mirror, Mirror.”
Here’s the doll version of the main character from the TV show Action Jackson.
Here’s a deluxe package featuring Jeannie and her master, Captain Tony Nelson, from I Dream of Jeannie.
I also briefly browsed through the Funko Pops where I found this really cute tyrannosaurus rex based on Jurassic Park.
Here is the last of the Halloween posts for this blog. I meant to write this sooner but I got distracted by Inktober, the recent midterm elections, and a lot of other things that are currently going on in my life.
My local Unitarian Universalist congregation, Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church, decided to hold an all-ages Halloween celebration on the Sunday before Halloween. It started with an all-ages Sunday service. There were two choirs who performed. One was the children’s choir, which was all decked out in Halloween costumes.
The other was the adult choir, where everyone also wore Halloween costumes.
After the service ended there was the usual social hour. There were a few adults who also wore costumes, like this Jurassic Park-themed one, complete with a baby raptor dinosaur breaking out of an egg.
While the social hour was going on I was busy with decorating my car trunk for Trunk or Treat. Here is what it looked like this year.
Here are the photos I shot of other people’s decorated car trunks.
There were games for children to play and there was lunch served as well. There were people of all ages walking around in costumes.
I tried my hand at decorating a skull-shaped sugar cookie. I struggled with the icing because it was a bit on the hard side.
This was the best I could do for decorating my skull cookie.
I also shot a video of the day’s festivities including the costume parade, which went on during the Sunday service.
Not too long ago I went to Target where I saw that there is yet another addition to the Fingerlings line. In case you’ve forgotten, the Fingerlings are a line of robot animals that sits on your fingers (hence the name) and they cost around $15 each. I have the monkey and the unicorn but I have to admit that I’m kind of smitten by that baby dragon. (No, I didn’t buy it. I’m trying to conserve my money as much as possible these days.)
Target also had adult Halloween costumes on sale that are totally wacky to say the least. They actually have a costume where one can dress as a LEGO brick.
If LEGO bricks aren’t your thing, you could dress up as food. Seriously! You could dress up as a taco for Halloween.
Or you could dress up as a bowl of cereal with milk in it. It looks like a bowl of Fruit Loops. I guess if Lucky Charms or Captain Crunch is more your thing, you are out of luck. (LOL!)
You could also dress as a slice of pepperoni pizza. LOL!
Target had plenty of candy and snacks available for people to give away to trick or treaters, including this box of Jurassic Park candy lollipop dinosaur claw rings.
I had a pretty busy Sunday on July 15, 2018. I went carpooling with one friend to church where there was a Tye-Dye Sunday scheduled. By the time I got home from church I turned around and went carpooling with a different friend to this meetup that took place in Rockville.
CoderDojo is basically a global network that provides free computer programming clubs to young people. My friend thought it would be good for me to check this out, especially since I worked as an assistant facilitator with the Takoma Park chapter of Girls Who Code over the past year.
The Washington, DC chapter of CoderDojo meets at the Rockville Public Library in Rockville, Maryland. I had never stepped foot inside this building before but I have to admit that it’s very impressive.
There was an art show going on featuring art done by local youths. It brought back memories of the first time my elementary school art teacher had selected one of my art projects to be shown at the Anne Arundel County Art Show that was displayed at the since-demolished Harundale Mall.
The CoderDojo met in a room on the second floor of the library, which is a designated STEM center. That room had an array of all kinds of stuff that one would normally find in a makerspace (such as computers and robots) but there was some pretty cool STEM-themed art as well.
The meeting started off with a presentation about what computing was like back in the 1990s (when the Computer Internet revolution was just beginning). I enjoyed it because I remember those days like they happened yesterday. There was a mention of using modems attached to telephone wires in order to access the Internet at a blistering 9600 bps.
I enjoyed the presentation very much. Once that ended, the kids started to work on their own projects while parents and other adult volunteers went around helping the kids with their latest projects.
By the time that meetup ended it was closing time for the library. My friend and I were heading back towards the parking garage by cutting through Rockville Town Square when I shot this photo of some kids playing in the fountain.
I also discovered that there was an It’s Sugar store located in Rockville. I had previously visited It’s Sugar in Baltimore and Chinatown in Washington, DC and I managed to convince my friend to stop in the Rockville store for a brief visit, where I shot these photos.
The release of the movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has unleashed a plethora of dinosaur-related stuff in the stores. Some of them are movie tie-ins while others are just generic dinosaurs that are released to take advantage of the film. For the past few years I’ve posted the occasional dinosaur photo on social media while tagging a friend of mine who’s a total dinosaur freak. Generally I’ve sent those photos once in a while. However, thanks to that movie, I found myself constantly taking new photos, uploading them, and tagging my friend more frequently. Here are photos of just a few of the dinosaur stuff I’ve seen in the stores this summer.
I had a pretty busy day. In the morning I went to one of the trainings and town hall meeting for the Poor People’s Campaign in the morning. In the afternoon I decided to go to Third Eye Comics in Annapolis, since that day was also Free Comic Book Day nationwide. (If all that weren’t enough, it was also Cinco de Mayo. I ended up eating tacos at home that I made myself using ingredients that I purchased from Aldi. I learned a long time ago that it’s total folly to attempt to eat in any kind of Mexican/Hispanic/Latino restaurant on Cinco de Mayo.)
So after checking out the Poor People’s Campaign, I drove to Annapolis. I arrived at Third Eye Comics only to find that parking was harder to find than usual. I ended up parking a few blocks away in an office park, which had some nice wall murals.
The next photo shows how crowded that store was. The next photo shows the line to the checkout counter.
I saw these vintage Atari video game cartridges on sale. I remember when Atari originally came out but I never owned one mainly because I was in college at the time and money was a bit tight at the time. It never bothered me that I never owed an Atari because my college (the University of Maryland) had plenty of arcade games on campus and some of the local off-campus fast food places also had arcade games.
I saw a few other interesting things on sale at Third Eye Comics.
I came across a whole aisle full of the ever-popular Funko Pop! statues. I found one new trend: Funko Pops based on real dead rock stars like Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead and Joey Ramone of The Ramones.
There were plenty of Funko Pops based on comic book and video game characters such as Rocket Raccoon, Mega Man, Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent, Wonder Woman, Batman, Batwoman, and Batgirl.
I also found an actual WTF t-shirt and a special edition of the Monopoly game board based on the latest Jurassic Park movie called Jurassic World.
Last month I was browsing through Target where I took these pictures. Later this month the latest installment in the ever-popular Jurassic Park movies, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, will be released. I saw so many LEGO and Duplo sets that one could easily create his/her own Jurassic Park in the privacy of his/her home. I have a friend on Facebook who is mad about dinosaurs so I took a whole slew for her benefit. Knowing her, she has probably purchased at least one or two of these sets by now. (LOL!)
The Jurassic Park/Jurassic World hype isn’t limited to just LEGO and Duplo. I saw this poster book on sale that includes tearaway poster pages that one can hang on a wall.
Soon after our wedding my new husband and I took a trip to the Orlando area where we spent the bulk of our time at Walt Disney World. Throughout our marriage we kept up with Disney and Mickey Mouse and we made a few return trips to Disney World while making a few trips to the original Disneyland theme park in California. I used to be well-versed on when a Disney anniversary was coming. Ever since my husband left and my marriage ended in divorce, I had let my Mickey Mouse fixation slide big time. (The majority of Mickey clothes I still own were ones that I either bought or were given to me while I was still married.) If it weren’t for seeing these special Mickey Mouse edition of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Crackers on sale at Target, I would have totally missed the fact (which is printed on the back of these packages) that this year is the 90th anniversary of the release of Steamboat Willie, which unleashed both Mickey and his girlfriend, Minnie Mouse, on the world.
Nintendo’s latest video game system is the Switch. (I still have the original Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 2, which should give you an idea as to how far behind I am on the latest video games. LOL!) One interesting thing is that Nintedo has come out with the Nintendo Labo, which definitely taps into the current STEM/STEAM/Maker movement.
I also saw another STEM/STEAM/Maker focused product on sale at Target. Google has a line of AIY, which are described as “Do-it-yourself artificial intelligence.” The products I saw on sale that day were an intelligent speaker and an intelligent camera.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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