Raving Toy Maniac

What is CustomCon, you ask? CustomCon is a special semi-annual presentation of new custom toy creations by customizers around the globe. More than a decade in the running, it's still going strong. Inspired by the presentations of new product by legitimate manufacturers at Toy Fair and other trade shows, CustomCon is a "fake" convention, whereby customizers present their latest creations and recipes as if unveiling a new line of real toys to retailers. It's always a lot of fun, for both the viewers and the participants.

If this is your first exposure to a CustomCon, click here to see what's been offered over the past 33 CustomCons.

EVENT DATES: CustomCon 34 will run from April 22 to 26, 2013.

ENTRY DEADLINE: The deadline will be Monday, April 1, 2013. (Seriously. Not an April Fool's joke.) No entries will be accepted after this date.

February 13, 2013 - We made exactly zero stops at fast food in January, but we did do a bit of cleaning in the kitchen, and found this gem stashed in one of the drawers. From 2008, it is a Burger King toy from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I was momentarily excited until I turned it over and saw that it was Mutt Williams. The boy didn't care either, so we'll leave it in the drawer until nicer weather arrives and we can play with outside on the sidewalk.

Let's see what's out there in restaurants this month! It looks like we'll be getting several of these toys.

A quick check of the web sites for the more popular fast food restaurants reveals the following:

- McDonald's has Transformers Prime and Hello Kitty toys in their Happy Meals, with Hexbug and Barbie shown as the next promotions.

February 2013 - CustomCon 34 (Spring 2013) is coming soon! The event itself will be held from April 22 to 26, but the entry deadline is April 1. (No joke, it just happened that the Monday of the week we were aiming for was April 1st.)

We will post the entry guidelines soon, but there are no major changes from years past, so mark your calendars now to be able to include your custom action figures in this online event.

Once upon a time on a server far far away, we had an email newsletter. Things happened and it stopped. I've finally found a format that is simple and straightforward at delivering our latest updates directly to your inbox, so here it is again, RTMemo!

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January 12, 2013 - The boy's sole fast food foray in December was to Wendy's, where he scored an R-Bot Design Kit and we scored a Toys'R'Us coupon. Disclaimer: we let the coupon expire without using it and the boy hasn't played with the robot very often after it came home. At least the food was good.

It wasn't until I had been doing these round-ups for a few months that I realized how seldom we take the boy to fast food restaurants. It felt more often, but I guess it was not. That's not as eye-opening as keeping track of all your toy spending for a year, but still interesting to me.

Let's see what's out there in restaurants this month!

A quick check of the web sites for the more popular fast food restaurants reveals the following:

- McDonald's has Moshi Monsters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys in their Happy Meals, with Transformers Prime and Hello Kitty shown as the next promotions, arriving on January 25th.

(RTM note: we are over the moon for Adrian, and couldn't be more proud of him if we had sat in the room with him while he was writing!)

December 2012 - In 2009, Adrian Faulkner took an important decision and stepped down from Action-Figure. Every day for over a decade, he'd been bringing news and reviews to the toy collecting community.

"My passion had always been fiction," Adrian explains, "and the plan was that one day I would go back to that. I'd spend all day talking about other people's creations and then never get any time to spent creating my own. The day I stepped down, I felt I'd made the worst mistake of my life. I felt literally sick. Then out the blue, I got a phone call and the most amazing pep talk from Hugo Stevenson of Stevenson Toys telling me why I was going to succeed. It was just what I needed."

December 10, 2012 - We didn't eat out much in November, so the boy ended up with just two fast food toys. Both were from the same visit to Taco Bell - their "Banana Cabana" toys from the "Almost Naked Animals" cartoon. The sticker playscene is on the left, the Dirk Danger Stunt Bike is on the right.

Let's see what's out there in restaurants this month!

A quick check of the web sites for the more popular fast food restaurants reveals the following:

- McDonald's has Rise of the Guardians toys in their Happy Meals, with Moshi Monsters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as the next promotions starting December 14th.

- Burger King has Kidz Bop CDs in their Kids Meals, with Discovery Kids Space coming soon.

November 6, 2012 - The boy collected just one fast food toy this past month, but it's a nice one - a Mario figure from Burger King. The paint job is pretty nice for the size. It has more articulation than I was expecting: simple twists at both shoulders and hips.

Let's see what's out there in restaurants this month!

A quick check of the web sites for the more popular fast food restaurants reveals the following:

- McDonald's has Young Justice and Littlest Pet Shop toys in their Happy Meals, with Rise of the Guardians shown as the next promotion.

- Sonic has Farm Tot Buddies listed.

- Carl's Jr. and Hardee's have Scribblenauts Unlimited toys, with Hotel Transylvania toys coming in late December.

Just an FYI to everyone. The data center that houses the RTM server is located in the Maryland/DC/ Northern Virginia area of the United States. With that in mind and the extreme weather that is hitting the eastern part of the US it is possible the data center may go down and the site might be unavailable until power has been restored.

We will hope for the best for anyone in the area that they will weather the storm safely.

-Rob

October 11, 2012 - The boy collected only a single fast food toy this past month, a Where's Waldo toy from Wendy's.

With that painfully uninteresting narrative out of the way, let's see what's out there in restaurants this month!

A quick check of the web sites for the more popular fast food restaurants reveals the following:

- Wendy's Kids Meals have Animal Planet toys, with a "Toys'R'Us Holiday Surprize" coming soon.

- McDonald's has Hotel Transylvania in their Happy Meals, with Scooby-Doo Halloween Pails shown as the next promotion.

- Sonic is oddly devoid of details, listing only "Wacky Pack Toys" when you click on the "Wacky Pack Toys" link to see what the toys are this time.