Quote Originally Posted by griffin View Post
Options and ideas area always being considered and thrown around from time to time, but when it comes down to funding, I seemed to be the only one willing to donate the bulk of the hundreds or thousands required for our past Cons & Booths at other Cons.
The last one I funded (in 2006) required me to sacrifice going to BotCon and max out my credit cards, which put me off for a while. Since then, we've seen an increase in conventions in this country, so perhaps the demand is growing.
What is needed is at least a group of about 5 determined investors willing to put in at least a few thousand dollars into it knowing that there may be no return. On top of that, we would also need a proper organizer and some promotional backing not necessarily from Hasbro but in the form of outlets such as Madman, JB-Hifi, EB or some other place where geeks go.

After that we would need proper promotion - This is the key to success. If there is no promotion, there are no people, it's that simple. To succeed you have to get the crowds who don't necessarily hang around in toy collecting or geek circles but the 'everyday' guy. Events like Sabretron were also lacking when it comes to promotion as you had to stumble into it or be within the local toy collecting community to know about it. I remember back then when I had not joined any toy collecting communities and was unable to find any information about local conventions despite it being on the following weekend. I only found out about it after I joined the board and somebody pointed me out to it but that was a week after it ended.

So basically what is needed is:

- Committed financial backing
- A circle of committed organizers
- Backing from major retailers (two or three should suffice) with kiosks similar to how they do it for Supanova.
- Private toy dealers (spread word to sellers at Parra fair).
- Some celebrity backing like a voice actor or at least some sort of professional display (Glass cabinets with labels, like a museum or Toy fair).
- Good events and activities (Can't be just trivia quizzes, you need something better and fun with decent prices).
- Someone to go up on stage and entertain crowds (Comedy, narrative of the history of TFs with slide shows, videos, etc, A live toy review, etc).
- Proper advertisement (newspapers, fliers, online, if possible radio, etc).

Exclusive toys and whatnot would just be icing on the cake, you want people to first know that the event exists and then make sure they have a good time while attending.

Personally, I would be willing to put thousands into this but I need to see some proper organization and determination which is something that I am yet to see. I know that I will not get a return on my money but at the very least I would like to see it used properly.