Joelanta Is Over, Now What?
Joelanta is an annual toyshow with a long history where folks who like vintage action figures and especially, but not only GI Joe, get together and celebrate or toys. The 2025 show just ended, and I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly from this Joelanta, reminisce about previous Joelantas, and consider the future of the show. It’s a little bit Inside Baseball, and a little bit me trying to organize my own thoughts about the show and it’s future.
Things were slow enough at this year’s show that I had time to walk the entire floor, talk to every vendor, and shoot this recap video. It’s a neat artifact, and I’m glad I was able to produce it, but I shouldn’t have had time to.
A little background
Joelanta started in the early 00s, was renamed to Toylanta for a while, and then eventually spun back off into it’s own show separate from Toylanta, but run by the same team.
I’ve been attending both Joelanta and Toylanta for close to two decades. In the early days, it felt like a community celebration with a vendor area attached. My best memories are of the massive dioramas for the Cody Lane Foundation, the lobby parachute drops, and the Radio Cult concerts (all of which were absent from this event.)
George Washington fighting the Kraken in a diorama from Toylanta 2021
When the original organizers passed the torch a few years ago, a lot of that celebratory spirit seemed to leave with them. This year, the majority of the art and creativity was confined to a few tables in a hallway. There were no dioramas, no concerts, and barely an artists’ alley. Instead, the floor was filled with small manufacturers selling expensive new toys or advertising items not yet available for sale. The lighting was poor, and the mood among vendors was melancholy and bored.
Our booth at Joelanta 2025. Several vendors commented on how much better the lighting was in our booth compared to some of the others.
I had a good time, but that’s because things were slow enough that I was able to go around and talk to every vendor in the building and get photos and video in nearly every booth. You might notice in our recap video that our camera operators are not fighting to avoid people or being jostled around, that’s because there was very little crowd for the majority of the show.
Who are you, anyway?
For context, my dad and I are lifelong toy collectors and customizers who turned our passion into a business. We run Mountain Town Toys, operate booths in five antique malls, and attend an average of one toy show per month all year. In additional to all that, I own a bookstore, cafe, and toy shop called Hemlock Bazaar in Ellijay, Georgia. We’re deeply embedded in the local toy scene, involved in various non-toy businesses, and we even do high-touch manufactured injection molding.
A shot of our retail store, Hemlock Bazaar.
What I’m saying here is that I know toys pretty well, I know what the market is like outside of this show, I know a lot of the other folks involved in the scene, and I know what the broader economy beyond the vintage toy market looks like.
The Hard Numbers: Joelanta 2025 vs. The Past
Based on my experience and conversations with other vendors, this was one of the weakest toy shows I’ve ever attended. I can back that up with data.
Joelanta 2025 Summary
We made just over $4,000 across about 60 transactions. After expenses (a $325 table, ~$400 in labor, ~$100 in gas), we netted about $3,175. That’s only about $75 more than the worst three-day show I’d ever done… which was Joelanta 2024.
Joelanta 2024 Summary
Last year, we made just under $4,000 across 100+ transactions with similar expenses, netting around $3,100. I wrote that off as a fluke due to a hurricane and a chemical fire. that forced the show to end early.
I considered Joelanta 2024 a catastrophic failure driven entirely by external forces, and Joelanta 2025 has made me reconsider that assessment.
Some of our weird inventory - In this case Paco Dino Warriors.
An Aside About Inventory: It’s important to note that about 75% of our sales at both Joelantas were to other vendors. We specialize in weird and obscure toys, so we can often do well even with low customer turnout because vendors love our unique stock. The fact that we still struggled is a major red flag in my book. Many vendors I spoke with reported sales far worse than ours, with some barely covering their hotel costs.
Joelanta 2023 & The “Name” Problem
Some vendors I spoke with (8 different people over the course of the show) blamed the “Joelanta” name, saying it’s too niche and scares off non-G.I. Joe fans. But that argument doesn’t hold up against recent history. At Joelanta 2023 (the last run by the original organizer), we had over 200 sales totaling about $10,000 in revenue. It was a strong, healthy show.
Joelanta 2023 was so busy that this is the only photo I managed to grab! You can sort of make out our inventory behind the makeshift badge we were given.
Ruling Out Other Culprits
Was it the Venue? Or the Economy in general?
Joelanta 2024 and 2025 were held at the Gas South Center. Perhaps the location is the issue?
Our booth at Toylanta 2025. We were in the furthest room from the main event hall, upstairs, at the end of a long hallway. The booth was awkwardly shaped. In spite of that, it was a better show.
- Toylanta 2025: Was held at the same venue in March. We generated $9,000 in revenue. It wasn’t our best show, but it was solid. The venue itself isn’t the problem. (Toylanta 2025 had some issues of its own, but they were minor compared to the last two Joelantas.)
- Japanfest 2025: I was at the Gas South Center the weekend before Joelanta, vending for a friend at Bonsabi Tea. They had their best Japanfest ever in terms of sales and volume. In the same building, three doors down, one week prior.
- Other Locations: As I mentioned previously, we’ve got booths at a number of Antique Malls throughout the southeast and we’re involved in businesses beyond toys. I have years of historic sales data to pull from for these locations. August and September are, historically, our slowest months of the year across every location. This August was our best on record, and this September was within 5% of our best September. It’s not the economic climate.
Our booth at one of the several Antique Malls where we sell toys. This time it’s The Electric Crocodile in Chatanooga, TN.
Powder Springs Toy Swap
Every other month there’s a sidewalk sale at treasure hunt in Powder Springs. It’s fairly cheap to set up, draws a huge crowd, and is usually a great time. I’d be there right now, instead of writing this post, if I wasn’t doing Crocktober fest at the Electric Crocodile today.
Our table at a recent sidewalk swap at treasure hunt. We didn’t bring much inventory, but we still had a very good show.
We set up at the powder springs show at least 3 times a year and usually clear between $1,500 and 2,000 for our trouble. When you consider that in concert with the lower expenses ($20 for a table!) and the significantly closer venue, it becomes much more attractive to do the sidewalk swap than a big 3 day show.
Other Shows
Like I said earlier in this post, I do a lot of toy shows beyond Joe/Toylanta. In the last five years, I’ve had three multi-day shows where I averaged less than $1500 per day in revenue, two were Joelanta, and the third was the first Designer Art Toy Show in Philly, which I’ve written about extensively.
Our booth at the Designer Art Toy Show in Philly. We had a great time showcasing our handmade toys.
I had a blast at the Philly show, which is a showcase specifically for hand made toys, and I have every reason to believe it will only get bigger and better from here. In two days there, we cleared just under $3,000 in revenue across ~300 total attendees. That’s about 15% better sales per diem sales, at a show with significantly fewer attendees in a much more niche market.
Everyone I talked to was excited and enthusiastic. The lighting was great, the events and panels were very good, and the attendees were having a fun time. I will absolutely go back to the Designer Art Toy Show.
Joelanta was a different story. The lighting was abysmal, the event crew were stressed and overwhelmed, the other vendors were unhappy, and even the attendees seemed to want to be somewhere else. While I’m sure there were more people in attendance than at the Philly show and a much wider variety of toys on display, every vendor I spoke with reported lower than usual sales and, aside from some first time visitors, nearly every attendee I spoke to was disappointed with the show.
What happens now?
I don’t want to be overly negative. I was surrounded by a toy community I love, and I had priceless time to connect with old friends and new. But that’s the core issue: in past years, I was too busy selling toys to have those long conversations.
I always bring a camera to these shows, but most years we’re too busy for me to actually step out and get much footage. The last time I was able to get any real footage at a toy show was at Toylanta 2021, where I had enough time on Sunday morning before general access opened up to get about ten minutes of footage (on a camera built in 1971) that we cut down into a 3 minute recap video. In that footage, you can see some of the kinds of dioramas I was talking about earlier, and a hint of the creative community no longer present at this show.
Footage from Toylanta 2021 - I only had about 15 minutes free to capture it. It was shot on a camera from the 70s, I won’t appologize for that.
Compare that the Joelanta retrospective video at the top of this post which is cut down from over two hours of footage shot over more than 4 hours of just wandering around and talking to people.
Things change, so it goes. The new event organizers have a new vision for the show, which centers high end toy designers like Brutal Realms and Animal Warriors of the Kingdom. I wish them all the best and I want them to be successful, but I can’t help but wonder if there is a disconnect between the show they want to host and the show the community wants to attend.
In the meantime, I have a lot of unsold inventory from this year’s Joelanta, and frankly from last year’s, that I’m going to be sharing on Mastodon and Instagram. If you see something you want, reach out.
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