2015 Hobby Expo Report:
Our day started at 6:45. AM. Not early for some, but for a family on summer vacation, it was plenty early. Two boys, jumped (or maybe stumbled) out of bed, eager to get going to the 2015 Hobby Expo. It's a yearly event, and for the past 3 or 4 years, we've hosted the booth for Jake's Performance Hobbies. The boy's are Nathan and Oliver, dad is Jake, mom is Kat and this year the booth was truly a family affair.
The Hobby Expo had a new home for 2015. Moving from Petaluma to the Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa. The new venue has much more room, more parking, more room for demos and displays. We always look forward to the event and this year was no different.
The booth setup was pre planed, so the boys and I made quick work of it and then they were turned loose to explore. It seemed like there were more tables than ever, more displays, the event had a great "feel" to it, not nearly as crowded and packed in as the year before.
There's always plenty to see at the Hobby Expo. It's center piece is a static plastic model show featuring creations from all over Northern California. Everything from airplanes of all eras, to tanks, to space ships, to all kinds of automobiles.... 350 models were entered this year! The level of craftsmanship that goes into the models entered into the show is always quite impressive.
Many different Hobby related clubs have displays or demos at the Expo. The Scale Rock Crawler Crew hosted a very nice booth, with crawlers on display and a big screen tv playing RichDog51 crawler videos! The Ground Pounder club hosted an RC track and a few members ran cars in mock races. The Wine Country Flyers hosted airplane and quad flying and had many nice items on display. There were also several model train layouts, RC boat clubs, and more.
Vendors were heavy on the plastic model supplies, with everything from vintage and current kits, to decals, books, and supplies. But there were comic book and toys, Legos from The Brick Hutt, Robot fighting from Bot Bash, and of course, the best vendor booth (in my biased opinion) was the JPH booth!
Nathan liked the Lego building table, Lego booths and role playing combat (padded swords and shield, full contact). Oliver enjoyed donuts from the food booth, the Make-N-Take model building and donuts from the food booth (hey, we all have our hobby!). And, my favorite was the giant killer robot!
Overall, in my opinion, this was the biggest and best Hobby Expo to date. A big thank you goes out to the hard work of Chris Zanella and the Santa Rosa IPMS Club for their hard work. And to Steve and Jean at Fundemonium for their efforts bringing together all the clubs for the event. And, to everyone who attended the free event (guess work is at 3,000 people) THANK YOU for attending!
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