Thank you to everyone who came along to MCM Birmingham Comic Con at the NEC! The show was bigger than last time, with a hall for Memorabilia joined to a hall for Comic Con (also a considerably large area that the floorplan said was the UK Garrison changing area!).
Birmingham is a local con for me, so it was great to be able to drop everything off at the NEC on Friday evening and be home in 15 minutes. This also meant it was much less of a panic getting everything set up on Saturday morning before the show opened!
Stalls-wise, Birmingham is a smaller version of the London Comic Con, with anime, manga, plushies, games, martial arts weapons, Japanese sweets, kawaii merch and even a stall doing live tattoos. Cineworld were showing films and trailers inside a shipping container that they’d converted into a mini cinema, and there was a Moshi Monsters bus with a slide. This time the Comic Village was missing a lot of small press big names due to the date clash with Thought Bubble, which I would have gone to if they weren’t on the same day. Because of the Memorabilia section, there were so many special guests doing autographs, photos and panels, including actors from the Rocky Horror Show and Red Dwarf.
As always there were lots of cosplays – my favourite was a couple dressed as The Smiler characters from the Alton Towers ride. An unusual choice and really well-made, with lots of detail. The guy even had a really elaborate cane, and the woman was wearing an armband saying “Ministry of Fun”. There were also lots of Survey Corps from Attack on Titan, and a guy cosplaying as the colossal titan with a doll as the female titan! It was awesome to see some family cosplays, including a whole family dressed as superheroes, including the baby!
On the Cakes with Faces stall, the most popular t-shirt was Cakezilla (he’s unstoppable!), closely followed by Cuter with Cat Ears. A few of the charms and hair clips sold out. New designs will be hitting the online shop this week to replace them. The chopping boards also sold out, because they’re an unusual Christmas present.
I spotted a few people wearing Cakes with Faces t-shirts, and met a couple of regular customers – someone even brought me some Pocky, which was really sweet! I’ve started a Pinterest board of people wearing their Cakes with Faces t-shirts (if you have a photo to add, drop me an email!). Also Nerdgeist came along and filmed an interview with me for her blog – I’ll share the link when it’s uploaded.
It would be too easy to spend all the takings every time I go to comic cons, so I try not to buy too much, but I did pick up some CDs from our friends JPU Records – an upbeat, punky CD from Spyair that they were playing on their stall, and a compilation of j-rock covers of western pop songs called Pizza of Rock (how could it not be good with a name like that?!). I also got a back issue of the Gothic Lolita Bible from the Japan Centre – I love looking at all the pretty dresses, and trying to read the hiragana and katakana.
You can see the rest of my photos on Facebook…
So that’s it for shows this year, but you can still get everything online from the shop, delivered super-fast to your door, so please support Cakes with Faces when you’re doing your Christmas shopping and help spread the cake-y love!
