Stuff I Consider Bullshit : Power-Con Pandhandling

Within the last week, I've seen several blogs pleading for people to support Power-Con. I'm all for conventions and celebrations of Fandom but it seems like every time He-Man is attached to something in the realm of any media, someone is begging and pleading for something. I'm also all for drumming up support for a worthy cause but it seems like this may be the end of the line for He-Man. It's had a good run over the last decade or more with the 200X revival, the Four Horsemen Studios, NECA, the Classics line, and successful years of Power-Con. That's all stuff to be proud of especially those involved at the top, but as the image says "all toy lines must end".

I love supporting Fandoms, even when they are things that aren't my interest. I give away My Little Pony figures, give away tickets to conventions to people who'd enjoy it more than I would, and I cover a wide range of toys and collectibles on my website. I liked He-Man when I was growing up, I did like Thundercats better but everyone seems to have better memories of He-Man for some reason. In the passing years the fans have been wanting a new He-Man cartoon and figure line but when it comes time to support it, they get fickle about pulling out their wallets. But it's a great struggle, Mattel pulls support from their lines due to lack of support from the fans and fans pull their support due to lack of product released by Mattel. It's a vicious cycle but in the end it boils down to best business practices in favor of Mattel. Granted, Mattel has shown their ass on a couple of instances with the He-Man lines so maybe the fans wavering support is warranted.

(remember this bullshit?)

Those in charge of Power-Con have not wowed me over the last few years. There's been a lot of in-fighting between different groups, the openly trashing of Emiliano Santalucia, the main people in charge of the website heman.org treating the Fandom like their own personal sandbox (which is fine by my account but many people haven't felt like it's fair), and the constant asking for monetary support to keep things afloat. You're not good enough to be one of us but do you have some money to spare to help us keep this place up and running is a paradox worthy of a thousand face-palms. I've enjoyed my visits but after they trashed Emiliano, things took a turn for the worse. Power-Con has had the feeling of a private party you're begrudgingly invited to.

(but to be clear, this guy is still a dumb ass)

Conventions aren't that hard to put together, the hardest part is securing and paying celebrity talent to show up. I won't go into long details but even a complete moron can run a show and break even in the end, even if that means putting your own money into the show and paying yourself back from the receipts. If you're any good at what you do with conventions you can make a decent living off of them. With the poor planning by moving the convention across the country to New York from California and not opting for having TMNT be a part of the convention (in a movie year no less) are two of the many reason I'd point my finger to if the convention fails.

(I just like this photo, all credit to the artist.)

In the end, He-Man is a fringe interest. It's a strong fringe interest but still not strong enough to carry itself like Star Wars or one of the major comic book stories out there. I don't like seeing things fail that bring people happiness and generate a buzz for anything to do with toys or anything 80s or 90s. But in the end it won't be the fan's fault if Power-Con goes broke, it'll be those who made the bad decisions in the first place.