• NYCC Coverage - Day 3

    Hello everyone! 

    As you can see from the above header I spent most of today in the Autographing & Photo Ops hall! There is a direct consequence to that which I will explain.

    Also, sorry this one is a little late. I'll explain why after I go over the events of NYCC Day 3.

    Though before we get too far, remember those Gen 5 My Little Pony Mystery Boxes Chocopony mentioned on Day 1?

    I found them.  You can find out what they are after the break!

    There's a very good reason why I spent pretty much all of Saturday in the Autograph and Photo Ops Hall. 

    This is essentially Line-Con on steroids. 

    Let me give you an example. My first one was started at 11, and it was an autograph session with Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway, Star Trek Voyager). I didn't get to get her autograph until about noon.

    The autograph time with Kate Mulgrew lasted 5 minutes at most.

    I had to be in the area for the my next appointment, which was a Photo Ops with Jack Quaid (Ensign Boimler, Star Trek Lower Decks), ~35 minutes prior to the session or my place in line (not to mention the ticket I had purchased) would have been forfeit. 

    So I had 20 minutes to get lunch before I was waiting in line again.

    I had four appointments spread out over the course of about 6 hours in the this hall. While meeting your favorite actors is one of the joys of any convention, I'm sure everyone who has ever been to a pony convention can agree with that sentiment, I had almost no time to do anything else today. 

    Furthermore, personal photography (ie everything not being shot by Reed Pop's photography company) is strictly prohibited in this area. So there really wasn't much for me to show from this hall.

    That said, when I did finally get up to eth show floor, I actually stumbled upon the one piece of My Little Pony new I had been searching for since ChocoPony told me on Thursday quite literally by accident.


    No, your eyes are not deceiving you! Those are Blind Bags for My Little Pony Generation 5!

    They are from Monogram International, and not Hasbro, and these debuted at the convention!

    So of course I went out and bought two.


    Please note these are not your standard blind bag toys. These are molded pony bag clips.


    Judging by the character models alone, these designs are super cute. 


    The back shows there are 11 designs in total. Two of every pony (except for Hitch for some reason) and two exclusive designs.

    Just spit balling here because the only reason I can think of there being two exclusive designs is because these bag clips could be sold via other means (like a collection of some sort) and these two chase variants are exclusive to the blind bag format.

    If that is the case, that's cool.

    Now let's go find out which ponies I got in these bags!


    Getting Pip first let me know right away exact what I thought of her.

    I do not like this pony. Getting this pony as a blind bag figure made me feel like I had wasted my money.

    Though the actual model itself is fantastic.


    Seriously, it's completely molded on the back with different colored plastics. That's a detail that really could have been skipped. The fact that it wasn't shows just how high quality these figures are.

    Also, do you notice the barcode that this on the toy?


    It's an exact match to the barcode on the blind bags themselves. I can only thing of one reason this is done, and I support this practice wholeheartedly.

    Remember how I said I felt like I had wasted my money with getting Zip?

    Depending on where you bought this toy (like for instance a comic book shop) they may have a policy in place where you can swap the toy you just bought for another toy from that same line (or from a different line that is priced the same) so that you can leave the story happy and the store has a product to sell.

    By putting in an additional barcode on the blind bag clips themselves, this allows stores that engage in this practice to also have the option to outright sell the already opened figures without having inventory/price issues.

    This makes me happy. I hope to see this practice adopted more in the future.

    Now... let's go see what's in bag number two. 


    …I have no idea how the heck I am this lucky.

    This is what Exclusive B looks like and it is freaking awesome! Getting two blind bag figures for the price of one is a nice surprise, and having the My Little Pony logo is icing on the cake. 


    It's still high quality on the pony mold, and back of the MLP logo is one plastic color.

    Which is fine since it would be weird to see the MLP logo inverted. 


    Naturally this was an instant slap on my backpack. 

    And it really does look go on it.

    After that little merchandise review surprise, I ended up departing NYCC for the day to meet up with My Little Ties, Sky Railroad, and Kefkafloyd for dinner in Manhattan.


    We had jelly donuts.

    Unfortunately this is also where my coverage for this year's NYCC ends. One Sunday I ended up going just as an attendee, and I did that for one very simple reason:


     I was going to the world premiere of Star Trek: Prodigy. And I can't tell you what was in the episode. You'll have to find out for yourself on October 28th.

    This has been The Illustrious Q. See you next time.