Collected Con Los Angeles 2026

Collected Con is coming to the West Coast. They've been in Chicago since they started back in 2024. If you don't know by now, the show takes place next month, April 25-26 at Magic Box in Los Angeles, CA. Get your tickets now HERE. They have limited VIP tickets still available as well as a weekend pass and single day passes. They also have an after party on Saturday which is a separate ticketed event at Lucky Strike LA from 7pm-11pm. So Cal has been missing a dedicated designer art show for a couple of years now since DesignerCon moved to Vegas. There's a lot of great artists and small companies that will be exhibiting at Collected Con such as Refreshment Toy who will be coming from Japan, 100 Soft and so many indie artists that you're just going to have to come to Collected Con yourself and see who else will be there. Stay Tuned for our coverage of Collected Con next month.

LA Comic Con 2025 Recap

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LA Comic Con was held September 26-28, 2025 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. We haven't been back in quite a few years. The show really has expanded using different halls for the artist alley, Horror Zone, Akiba Station and the main hall with a variety of exhibitors such as Refreshment Toy, Saturday Morning Cards, Dave & Busters and many more. One bit of advice is that if you need to park your car in one of the convention center parking lots, you really need to arrive early. Finding a parking lot with available space can be very hard. There are third party parking lots but note that they charge more than the convention center parking and even raise the price throughout the morning when they know people are desperate for parking. 

This show has really grown over the years and have a lot of different exhibitors compared to other shows such as Door Dash with their Giant Door Dash Bag giving out surprise gifts. You don't know what they will give you. Some people won iPads, Funko pops, external hard drive, gaming controllers, gift cards etc...or you can get a dud like a twinkie which someone did get and was not happy after having to wait in line. The wait in line did take a long time. Maruchan was also exhibiting at LACC and they had free sample flights of their noodles. The line for that was super long too. Yakult and Kopiko were there giving out free samples. If you live in the LA or So Cal area and haven't experienced LACC, you should. If you are local, rideshare would be your best bet to avoid parking headaches. Thank you LACC for inviting us. As of this posting, the dates for next year's LA Comic Con has not been announced yet. Check out our photo coverage above to see what you missed out on this year. 

CurioCon Tickets On Sale Now!

Curio Con is a brand new show by Ayleen from Toy Break etc... This show is similar to Designer Con but is in the Spring instead of Winter. Curio Con is May 13-14th at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, CA. Purchase your tickets now to save you time from buying your ticket at the show. Tickets for Saturday & Sunday is $10 per day or you can buy a 2-day pass for $15. The show will feature toys, art and more... For those who collect Japanese Vinyl Toys (sofubi), Refreshment Toy will have a booth there. They will also have a Bricks LA Zone. Go HERE for more info on the show and to purchase your tickets.

Refreshment x Popsoda Release at Designer Con

Here's some of what Refreshment Toy and Popsoda will have their booth for Designer Con this weekend. Stop by booth #713.

Refreshment Toy at Designer Con

Refreshment Toy has been showing a lot of what they will have at Designer Con this weekend. The above pic shows a sample of what will be there. Follow Refreshment Toy on Instagram for more previews of what they will have!

Woot Bear x Uamou's Toys Things & Art Exhibition

Woot Bear x Uamou presents the Toys Things & Art Exhibition featuring a group of renowned artists from Japan such as Uamou, Refreshment Toy, Konatsu, Dehara, Hariken, Mographixx & Mai Nagamoto at Woot Bear Gallery starting tomorrow, Friday, April 10th - May 10th. The opening reception is at 6pm.

Designer Con 2014 Recap

Designer Con is definitely the best show to attend if you collect designer toys etc... Admission to this show is $5 a day if purchased online or $7 at the door. This year the exhibit hall space grew and they added on a smaller room. The smaller room didn't have the lighting like the bigger area where it's nice and bright but they did get a lot of foot traffic since that is where everyone entered/exited. We've been attending Designer Con since they started and through it's different transformations when the show started as Qeeology then Vinyl Toy Network. We've seen this show grow a lot over the years and this year was by far the biggest it has ever been. This year they also added a Pajama party and anyone with a weekend pass could attend. Unfortunatly, we were not able to attend the party.

This year was extra awesome! There were so many artists there with their own booths such as MAD, Jesse Hernandez, Bigfoot, Bwana Spoons, Le Merde, Martin Ontiveros, Paul Kaiju & Mutant Vinyl Hardcore. We also have to mention that there were quite a few artists/companies that came out from Japan which made this year so much special such as Refreshment Toy / Popsoda, Cometdebris, Goccodo, RealxHead, Skull Toys / 9 Works, Uamou, Touma, Kenth Toy Works, Ukydaydreamer, Punk Drunkers & Blackbook Toy. (sorry if we missed anyone...) We hope that all of the artists/companies from Japan will return next year.

This year we saw quite a few toy prototypes that were being shown from Critical Hit (Skinner), MVH, Paul Kaiju and Toy Art Gallery (TAG). Of course we took pictures!

Finally, out of all the shows that we've attended this year, Designer Con was the best one that we've attended. A huge thank you to Ayleen & Ben who runs and organizes this show.

Below are some of the stuff given out at the show. 

Prints On Wood gave out 100 Jeff Soto Prints per day.

Designed by Chris Lee and Made by Button Lab. Pick up each one design at 4 diffferent booths.

ESC Toys Plush given out to the first 200 attendees each day.

We have tons of pictures to share with all of you from DCon. There were a few of us that took pictures throughout both days of the show and took pictures of a lot of the exhibitors that were there. Basically we have slideshows from 2 of our main cameras with a select number of photos from a 3rd camera. In total there are probably 1000 pics or more which is why it has taken us so long to get our pics up. We had to edit the pics etc... and upload them so you can see them on a slideshow instead of us trying to put each picture one by one here which will take quite a while to view this. There are going to be quite a few slideshows so you can choose what you want to see.