2020 rolls on, continuing to take away the fun things we all loved to do every year, including the now-cancelled San Diego Comic-Con. As I did with my post on the history of J-List and Anime Expo, I thought it’d be fun to look back at some fun memories of J-List’s years at the SDCC event!
This year would have been the 50th anniversary of the San Diego Comic-Con Comic-Con International — they changed their official name so they can pretend they’re going to leave San Diego someday in order to force more concessions from the city every negotiation period, though no one calls it anything but the San Diego Comic-Con — but sadly it was not to be this year, thanks to the COVID-19 virus.
I moved to San Diego in 1980, and started attending SDCC from 1986. The show was a much smaller affair back then, being held in the San Diego Civic Center with a “mere” 6500 attendants that year.
I loved the convention culture immediately, browsing the dealer’s room for imported anime goods and spending hours in the anime viewing room. I even did my first and only cosplay, a huge wire-and-fur Totoro, which got me my picture in an issue of Animage. Unfortunately, this was 1989, just a year after Totoro came out, and almost no one knew who the character was.
The reason we love events like Anime Expo and the San Diego Comic-Con are that they’re so so darned much fun, yet we’re able to work and support the business of J-List while we meet hundreds of awesome fans each day. Here a J-List staffer horses around.
Conventions are great because they’re the only place where no one will judge you, no matter what.
They’re also awesome because you can see the most amazing cosplays walking around, and go grab pictures with them.
You can find creative cosplays, like this McThor, at the San Diego Comic-Con…
…or maybe you can find your princess!
There are always tons of sexy and creative cosplayers to meet and take pictures of, and everyone is so happy and full of energy.
San Diego Comic-Con is a great place to meet famous people, both at the event itself, or in the bars and restaurants downtown. Hunting for famous people while bar-hopping is a local pasttime of San Diegans. Here’s Leonard Nimoy, who I gave a hentai game I happened to have in my hand to. I wonder if he played it?
Sometimes random people will come by our booth. This is the voice actress who voiced the character in our Moero Downhill Night hentai Initial D parody game series.
For many years, “Anime Alley” (where the anime dealers are slotted) were in the 200-400 aisle in the north end of the hall, which was good for me as my condo in San Diego is located on Front Street, meaning that I was literally about three blocks from home. Then about six years ago the moved the anime dealers to the far (south) end of the Convention Center, so now we have to trek a huge distance with tens of thousands of fans around us after every day.
Of course, J-List is a business, so in addition to meeting our fans and having fun, we have to bring interesting products for everyone to buy. Like shimapan, hentai visual novels…
…and hentai manga, which is always a popular stop for some of our customers.
Not to brag, but we’re extremely experienced at running conventions, after having done it for so long. I should probably write some kind of how-to guide for other dealers so they can benefit from our experience, which includes things like buying large plexiglass panels that we put on top of our dealer’s tables, which allow us to display more merchandise for customers to browse, since customers will only buy what they can see. Or placing a large Iyapan butt mousepad on the table, which no customer can resist slapping as they pass our table. Once they come within range…
…we hand them a J-List tissue and tell them about our company and the products we sell.
Every loves con exclusives, and we often made San Diego Comic-Con exclusive pins, stickers and other cool items.
We love it when our products resonate with fans. Here’s a group of Touhou Project aficionados wearing our old Yukkuri T-shirt.
And these fans wearing the “J-List” horse-head masks. This was actually a product we kind of got credit for turning into a meme thanks to 4chan, though we actually just one of many shops selling the masks.
Read a post on 17 times J-List’s products changed the world.
One thing I love is when fandom brings families together, like the idea of mothers and daughters cosplaying as Sailor Moon together. Here’s a family of Domo-kun enthusiasts, coming to browse some of our products.
Another thing I love about the San Diego Comic-Con is how I can meet friends and catch up with them, like a customer and friend who comes from Idaho every year to chat, and the guy on the right, who ran a comic shop and turned Carl Macek onto this cool new thing called Macross back in the early 80s, making him an extremely important figure in the history of anime in the U.S.
(If you’re wondering about the varying photo quality, I’ve learned making this post that to delve into 10+ years of convention photos is to re-learn how bad the cameras on early smartphones were compared with today.)
Another reason I love the summer conventions is I get to spend the summer months in my home city of San Diego, the most beautiful city in the world, and refill my inner stores of Mexican food.
It’s also great for the hardworking J-List staff, who can relax a little and enjoy fun times in San Diego in between conventions.
One of the perks of being a dealer is being able to walk over to other booths and check them out when the fans are not in the room. Here’s me taking a selfie with one of the Walking Dead zombie props.
We’re so busy at the show, the only time we get to check out the other booths is after hours, as we’re walking out of the dealer’s room. Here the J18 Publishing twitter admin stops to check out the Luke Skywalker LEGO statue.
Thanks for reading this article reminiscing over happy memories from the J-List and San Diego Comic-Con in past years. We certainly hope and pray that the event will be back in 2021, and look forward to seeing you in the future!
Peter Payne
President/Owner of J-List
All J-List adult orders are shipped in a discrete and careful manner, with no indication of any adult contents. Also, we have a new, higher level of privacy for you too: an Onahole Box Removal Service (formerly called Anonymous Shipping Service, or A.S.S.), in which your order will be carefully repacked in generic packaging, with the outer box removed.
