Brooklyn knick-knack aficionados will gather at the Navy Yard next month for New York ToyCon, celebrating toys and the community that appreciates them.
New York ToyCon will take place Sept. 4 and 5 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It is being organized by Pow Con, which puts on pop culture-oriented conventions in the New York metropolitan area. Its last Brooklyn event was Pow Comic Con at the Brooklyn Expo Center in Greenpoint, back in the Before Times of January 2020.
Sal Lomedico of Pow Con, who is organizing the event with his partner Anthony Valentine, told Brooklyn Paper that after the Greenpoint event, they resolved to hold a convention specifically catered to toys and toy collectors.
“When they go to comic conventions or conventions in general, I think there’s so much noise, whether it be t-shirt vendors, artists, or other kinds of things,” Lomedico said. “By doing just this, it allows those collectors or people with nostalgia in their heart to come in and enjoy a show that can be catered to their needs and their likes.”
The COVID-19 pandemic put a damper on their initial plans, but after hosting a successful Pow Con in New Jersey back in May, they decided once again to hold a ToyCon in Brooklyn.
The organizers have already sold 400 tickets to the event and are expecting around 1,500 people to show up. Special guests will include two of the original Power Rangers from the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers show: Austin St. John, who played the red Power Ranger, and Walter Emanuel Jones, who played the black Ranger.
The convention and expected attendance reflect the growing popularity of toy collecting among adults in New York and around the world.
“The toy community in New York is massive,” Lomedico said. “The community overall is very broad throughout the United States. People bought tickets from other parts of the country, from Baltimore, to people in Texas. The community is very large, if you look at stores nowadays, the toy section isn’t for kids anymore, now it’s for the toy collector.”
