ToyPaLooza delivers!

by Bill Cable
on 2026-05-13, 09:50:13

Last Saturday I attended western Pennsylvania's premiere toy show, ToyPaLooza. With nearly 400 vendor tables, it's the biggest show west of NYC and east of Columbus. And it's entirely focused on toys, so it's not all arts-and-crafts BS like Steel City Con has become. There was only one single fudge booth, and only two vendors that were solely selling Funko POPs. As a meal, it's 99% red meat. A collector's dream!

Something particularly awesome set this ToyPaLooza apart. I came across a pair of tables that were exactly what I was looking for - rows and rows of loose, complete, minty Vintage. I was looking for the ones I need for my next customs, when a guy behind me says "We haven't met before. I'm Mike Vogt."

Mike is one of my longest-running Droids Customs supporters. He's extremely close to a complete run of them. And despite buying from me for more than a decade, living in Pennsylvania, and almost certainly attending all the same toy shows I've always attended, we'd never run into one another. It a meeting was worthy of a selfie!

While we were standing there we were also chatting with a couple of the vendors. The first of them recognized me and was kinda geeking out that a few of his figures would end up on my customs. He leaned over to the other, who I'd also purchased from, and excitedly showed him his phone saying "your figures are gonna be on one of these cool customs!" To which that vendor looked at me, extended his hand, and said "Well then you must be Bill Cable."

Talk about stroking my ego...

It was just awesome. Just a special, heart-warming, out-of-the-blue confluence of events all centered on my Droids artwork. I was glowing the rest of the show (which probably explains why I blew all my money).

And all of that money went towards Droids Customs!

This right here is why ToyPaLooza totally eclipses anything else around here. I went to Steel City Con back in April. Now don't get me wrong - SCC is awesome fun if you want to see all the celebrities. But they have over 600 vendor tables at the event, I searched all of them in April, and I came away with two beater Death Star Droids. There were only maybe three vendors with loose, Vintage Star Wars at all. And the quality was garbage. Almost all incomplete. It's just the dregs. The real toy vendors don't buy tables there anymore because nobody's spending on toys, they're all just buying autographs and photo ops.

So I can't recommend ToyPaLooza highly enough! One show into building my stockpile of figures for my 2027 customs, and I've already made a nice dent! It's impossible to do that anywhere else in the region.