Megacon Live Birmingham 29-30th March 2025

This was my first event of the year, and it’s always good to get things started with a con,

Megacon Birmingham this year was a little bigger than last year, across 4 halls at the NEC rather than 3. It was located in halls 17-20, which was a much easier unload and parking than halls 2,3 & 4 I’m used to when visiting the NEC for other events. We were given plenty of parking passes and wristbands for everyone, I bought the “posh” exhibitor advantage parking to see if it was worth it, I wouldn’t bother again at this side of the NEC.

We had a nice sized space, I’m going to guess at 10×3 metres (I’m sure Darren can correct me if I’m way out) it was enough for good table display including a digital display with our information and a little about the club, and plenty of extra space for good array of droids.

Day 1 saw 9x full sized R series droids, 5x Choppers, 2x BBs, 2x B1 battle droids (1x Mr Bones), 4x pit droids, a buzz droid, 1.6x Mouse droids, 4x 39.1%ers, a few of the baby droids, a 60% R4, a pip droid and a bug droid (apologies if I’ve missed anyone). Day 2 was a little thinner on the ground but not by loads and was bolsters by the arrival of Loz so what we had lost in numbers we made up in sound volume.

The floors as always with the NEC are nice and easy to drive on for the full sized droids, there were a number of 39.1%ers that were using the immediate area as their very own drift track, being very ably “driven like they’d stole it” by Julian Bowen, Alex McCann and Shaun Keen & son.

They had us to the rear of the hall with the kids corner, but we were with the UKG, Project Dalek & Real Icons so that made for some nice banter and interaction. There were plenty of droid and builders around so there were always at least a couple of droids out and about bothering the public.

The Saturday was busy but not too silly, it was still an easy and stress free drive around, we were allowed outside on the concourse as well for this one which was good, this side of the centre does feel a little more relaxed. People were friendly as ever and always polite. Lots of cosplayers, heavy on the anime side but still plenty from all the other genres.

Darren found those that were staying locally a nice Indian for food that evening , some good food, good company and a good chat and then we were back to it for the Sunday after a brief (the clocks went forward) snooze. A little quieter on the Sunday, not helped, I imagine, by the fact that it was Mother’s day. Still a decent enough and appreciative crowd. It was my birthday and my arrival was greeted by a chorus of Happy Birthday from Oliver Steeples, Julian Bowen & James Haley, an experience no one should have to endure.

The event itself had a nice array of vendors, lots of self made stuff and not just selling commercially produced merchandise. There was a good area dedicated to video gaming, an area for board gaming, 3 stages. The sound from any but the main stage was a little lacking but its always hard to be heard in large open venues like this. There was a 3d scanning service for those desperate to print themselves.

Overall a very enjoyable event

(Just in case there wasn’t enough colour in your life)