New Jersey Collectors Con And Boss Fight Studio Launch Party

This past weekend, the New Jersey Collectors Con held their summer event at the Holiday Inn Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Along with local dealers, Boss Fight Studio, Marauder “Gun-Runners,” and NECA were in attendance showing off new and upcoming releases and selling some of their current merchandise.

Boss Fight Studio

Boss Fight Studio was selling, for the first time publicly, their Series 2 Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. fantasy figures along with an exclusive Blasted Land Orc. They had previews of series 2, wave 2 and 3 along with their new Bucky O’Hare figures. Boss Fight has also done the sculpting for a new line of figures called Zombie Lab. Zombie Lab is from the Locker Toys Group and is currently on Kickstarter (fully funded as of this writing, with 4 days to go). A selection of Series 1 H.A.C.K.S. figures were available for sale, including a large range of skeletons, armor, and unpainted, solid color blanks. We picked up the new Aiyana Elven Archer figure which comes with two sets of hands, bow, six individual arrows in a quiver, and two knives. All of the articulation works well and the accessories create a well rounded figure.

There was a very cool castle diorama set up and populated with the Boss Fight figures. It included several light-up features, multiples of the available figures battling it out and even a skeleton in the moat. The figures are all really well detailed and articulated and the diorama really highlighted both aspects. 

Marauder “Gun-Runners”

Marauder “Gun-Runners” had two exclusives, Engineer-Ops male and female (Valkyries) figures in a cool purple deco. They were showing off their upcoming 1:18 scale Series 8 weapons and a new 1:12 scale wave of four rifles and a pistol. Both of those wave will be out in late October or November. Marauder will also be launching a couple new Kickstarters in the next few weeks for their K-9 and Contract Ops Task Force figures as well as their Exo-Suit. We picked up one of the Engineer-Ops Valkyries figures which came with a huge amount of accessories for $30. Everything in the first picture below was included except the shirt hair head sculpt. We added that on along with the weapons in the second photo. Marauder John and his crew threw in the bat and tan hat in the second pic along with a patch and pin which were very appreciated. 

For a much more in depth look at both Boss Fight Studio and Marauder “Gun-Runners,” head over to GeneralsJoes.com where Justin gives a great rundown of the announcements and has comprehensive photo galleries of everything that was on display this weekend.

New Jersey Collectors Con

This was our first visit to the New Jersey Collectors Con and we believe the first 2-day event for NJCC. The show is held at the Holiday Inn Cherry Hill, New Jersey and was front and center when we walked in the door on Sunday. Boss Fight and Marauder were in the lobby with the registration desk and a couple of other local vendors. NECA had their own room down the hall and then the main show was in a conference room past the registration desk.

Although the show is relatively small, there was a great mix of vendors and all of the available space was filled with collectible toys. G.I. Joe and Transformers were very well represented along with superhero action figures from both Marvel and DC. Star Wars had a nice presence and several tables had Funko POP! figures from various lines. You could also find a selection of Lego sets, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, die-cast cars, statues, and video games.

There was a nice mix of modern and vintage toys from the lines mentioned and the prices ranged from inexpensive to quite expensive higher end statues and collectible sets. However, it seemed that most of the vendors had very reasonable prices on their items making it easy to find something no matter what your budget was. 

Even though the show is modest in size, the vendors had their tables full with many also having shelving behind their tables and boxes on the floor in front. It only took about half an hour to make a first pass through the room but after spending time talking to Marauder John and his crew, we spent over 2 more hours digging through all the boxes and bins of toys making sure not to miss any gems. And depending on what you collect, there were definitely some gems. We picked up a very nice vintage G.I. Joe Ferret ATV, complete with nice stickers, from one vendor and found a blueprint sheet at another booth to complete the set. 

The only thing we were looking out for that we didn’t find were vintage 12″ Hasbro G.I. Joe figures. It was surprising to see with all of the 3.75″ Joe figures that nobody had even a random Joe or Adventure Team figure. Although, it’s possible that there were some around and they sold on Saturday.

All of the vendors we spoke to were really nice and happy to answer questions or just chat with you about toys or comics or whatever topic might come up while browsing their offerings. That’s one of the benefits of shows this size and it was refreshing after only attending larger, mixed shows like New York Comic-Con and Star Wars Celebration over the past few years. Being a true toy show and not a “comic con” was also a nice change and reminded us how much fun we had two years ago at Steel City Con (which is billed as a comic con but with few exceptions leans more heavily towards toys). 

We live far enough away from Cherry Hill that attending New Jersey Collectors Con hasn’t been feasible before. We were in Philadelphia for another event on Saturday and stayed over to attend NJCC and it was worth it. We highly recommend it if you’re close. The venue is nice, there were a large number of vendors with a huge amount of toys and reasonable prices, and the laid back atmosphere made for a fun afternoon.