Wonder Festival Shangai 2026 - Individual Exhibitors Pt.1

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hey what's going on guys and welcome back for my continuing coverage here of Wonder Festival Shanghai 2026 on behalf of USA Gundam Store. This is going to be part one of two parts covering the individual exhibitors hall where there is just a ton of stuff to see. If you guys haven't seen the other videos that I've been posting over on the USA Gundam TV channel, those videos covered all of the larger companies exhibiting there like Motor Nuclear, Nuke Matrix, Snail Shell, all of those. So there's five parts of videos over there. Definitely go and check those out because there was a lot of really cool stuff to see from those larger companies. But here we've got all the independent artists and creators with a lot of variety of different stuff that we're going to be seeing in this video and the next one as well. But this is definitely going to be less structured as there's just such a variety here that you're going to see in these videos and I don't know a whole lot of information about every single individual exhibitor there and I'm not going to go into like super detail about that because then that would have just been so much more to try to cover in this video. Basically I just wanted to give you guys an idea of what were some of the things that were there on display. There was all sorts of resin kits, garage kits, Sofubi, action figure type stuff, all sorts of different things. Painted model kits that you could buy that were like not their original creations but just painted garage kits that were there for sale. But then there was a lot of original stuff like here for example you're seeing some armored core custom Legos some like SD style armor core designs but just custom builds made out of Legos. They had some like whole size ones here as well. So there's just such a variety and I'm going to be you know doing some commentary here throughout but if there's not I'll just kind of let you guys just kind of see what was there on display and I figure this is just a good opportunity to just kind of talk a little bit more about the kind of experience overall from the exhibitors hall. So yeah this being the independent creators hall aside from different products that were there for sale from some of these exhibitors like here for example these are like these miniature statues which you could buy just these as miniature kits or you could buy the painted ones as well. They were both for sale so there was just all sorts of stuff for sale but there was also a lot of stuff that was not necessarily for sale there were some tables where they just had like painted kits on display that were done by students so like the the advertisement there the booth was basically an advertisement for like a workshop where they teach classes about how to either design kits or how to paint kits and things like that so the booth was basically a way to display some of their students work as a way to show like hey you can come and learn at this studio you can learn how to make this on your own so there was some of that there was different booths later towards the end selling different like fossils and things like that so not necessarily things that people have created but all sorts of stuff on display there was some organization to the layout of the hall so as I talked about in the videos over on the other channel there was five halls in total and basically one hall which is where we're at now is dedicated strictly to the individual exhibitors hall and then there was another like half of a second hall which had more which I didn't even get to spend much time in at all unfortunately I basically spent an entire day the first day of only two days of the whole event the first day was basically spent only in this one single hall going through all the individual exhibitors just because there was so much to see and I still didn't even get to see everything I tried to cover as much as possible here for you guys but I mean as you'll see I'm definitely not going to be able to show you every single thing that was on display from this entire hall because it was just a ton of stuff but I mean definitely if there's certain things that you see throughout the video that you have questions about I mean I probably won't be able to answer much but I can at least maybe look into it if you see something you're like hey do you know the name of the creator that made such and such I can maybe try to figure it out for you guys if I have some like additional video of that or something but yeah basically there was a lot of stuff for sale I did end up buying a few things but you know that wasn't my main focus for being there I was there to just kind of document the whole experience so I was just really just kind of focused about trying to record as much as possible to bring that back and share with you guys in this video and the next video but I did buy a few things stopped at a couple points along the way to talk with some of the artists there like for example we'll get to you know here in a little bit one of the booths was DR works where they had the GBWC winner from 2026 the China winner there who was the champion for 2026 he was there with a few other guys they had their own booth and they had some really cool stuff that they were selling there was a few points throughout the day where we did stop and talk with some of the artists but there was obviously a language barrier there as well most everybody there was Chinese and so even though I was there together with the June of Simpro who was kind of like my guide and partner throughout the whole weekend there he definitely helped to just like translate and just kind of chat with some of the artists and some of the sellers there but we just had a lot that we were trying to get covered in a very short amount of time so didn't really have as much time as I would have liked to be able to talk with people there it's definitely something to look forward to next time and just something to like consider next time with this being my first event in mainland China my first time attending like a wonder festival on this scale I had earlier in 2026 attended wonder festival US that was at momocon in Atlanta Georgia and that was really cool but on a totally different scale that was the first time they'd had a wonder festival in the US and it was kind of a new thing seemed like kind of very experimental and definitely looking forward to wonder festival returning to momocon in 2027 and I hope to attend and cover that event for you guys there as well but yeah this is just on a whole other scale as I said there's five massive halls full of stuff we didn't even get a chance to see everything let alone just document and film everything to try to share with you guys but tried to get as much as possible here and as well as I could just to try to share everything the nice thing about this hall I will say is that because so much of it was not in like display cases it was definitely easier to record here easier to film than a lot of the stuff that was in the other halls at like the exhibitor booths there where they had these big display cases and you have all these bright lights and reflections and everything just kind of made it hard but this was definitely easier so we got to see a lot of really cool stuff here and as you'll see here as you've already seen from the first few minutes just the wide variety of different things like this booth was really cool here they were advertising basically a custom modeling service so if you wanted like a custom model of a particular character you could commission them to make it so these were some of the examples that they had some characters you might recognize from some different game or anime or something so if you wanted basically they would use different model kits as the base then they customize it into a particular character so really cool stuff and yeah you'll just see a whole lot of variety there was some different like the resin models like this and again not all of this stuff was for sale some of it was just showing like prototypes that they're working on and they will be for sale in the future so you were able to pre-order some stuff there as well you were able to just kind of exchange info of course a lot of the independent artists there had cards and basically everything was electronic actually i saw very few cards actually everybody just had qr codes and seemed like kind of everything there is just electronic via qr codes on your phone and so but you could get in touch with the creators and contact them because obviously for anything that is like ip they had to acquire like a one day or two day license there to be able to sell anything that was like copywritten intellectual property characters from games or movies or anything else like that it's all a part of wonder festival they are able to get the licensing for that to sell those items at the events so some of those items are not able to be purchased you know later on outside of the event but there's all sorts of stuff that was available all the sofubi stuff was really incredible i'm always fascinated uh seeing sofubi stuff at these shows just because i love how bright and colorful they are not something that i've really ever like gotten into i'm not really into like collecting them or anything but i always enjoy seeing them at these type of events there was quite a lot actually at wonder festival us there at momocon actually but some really cool stuff there and we'll see some more of sofubi here in a little bit that's also pretty cool yeah with it being my first time attending one of the things that difficult was just kind of knowing ahead of time planning ahead of time what might be a good way to try to cover the event just because i didn't really know what to expect in terms of the scale in terms of the structure of the event how things would be laid out i kind of just had to go in and just start recording stuff because we only had two days we were able to get in a little bit early because we had media badges so i think we got in like around 30 minutes or so basically ahead of the general public there's not a whole lot but it did give us a little bit of a head start and we were also kind of moving through the event kind of in reverse actually this hall was kind of the last hall that you would go through if you were going through it as like the public but it was actually the first hall that we went to so we did have a little bit of a head start but there was still just a lot to try to see and i'm not sure if i would have known ahead of time a little bit more kind of about the structure and about the scale of it you know do i think that i could have planned it out in order to you know cover the event any better or any differently i'm not sure i don't think so i think there was just so much and i think we did a pretty good job actually of prioritizing the stuff that we needed to see so this was actually the first day and as i said we spent the entire day just in this one uh in independent or individual exhibitor hall here and the second day sunday is the day that we spent going around to seeing all of the other companies booths and stuff that you've seen if you've already seen those videos over on the us econom tv channel but yeah definitely like i said check those videos out if you haven't yet there was a lot of really awesome stuff to see all the current products and upcoming products from all those companies were really cool but yeah i think those were the main priorities that i wanted to see of the things that we didn't really get enough time to look at it was mostly kind of like the large scale like sculpture statues um that kind of stuff which i i got to be honest is really cool to see but definitely a lower priority for me like you know if the event was three days would have been perfect to be able to try to see like even more still probably would have been challenging to really see everything you still would have been having to move through the event at like a very uh fast pace in order to see everything even in three days so i just kind of wonder about you know even the other attendees you know the public attendees i'm sure that a lot of them probably do try to plan it out and try to schedule that out there is more information about kind of who which company is going to be where and which booths are going to be where and just kind of how it's structured there is some of the information online and i'll be honest i saw it a little bit but you know i didn't really just kind of have any way to to expect or plan it out any differently but i have a feeling that probably a lot of people would if you were there as an attendee you would try to make a plan as to okay i want to see this and this and this and then just kind of see other stuff along the way but i think the really cool thing about it was just seeing some of the stuff that you didn't expect and for me there was so much that i just didn't expect so every you know every turn everywhere i looked i was always seeing more stuff like oh that's really cool i gotta go check that out and oh i gotta go check that out and so there was just even though it was structured in a way so that like a lot more of like the mecca and character resin kits and stuff was kind of more towards the front and a lot more of like the animal stuff and like i said there was like fossils and stuffed animals and other just kind of all sorts of different random stuff it's kind of more to the back of the hall it was a little bit organized like that and probably certain areas would have been of more interest to me than others but there was still something interesting to see everywhere you looked so every every couple of steps i have to stop i wanted to get some video of this we'd find someone to talk to we'd go to the next booth they'd want to show us something okay so here is the dr booth and this is the first interesting thing they had they had this big bin full of scrap parts and this was the leftover parts from the gbwc build that i mentioned so here's the winner uh the winner from china from last year and just the grand champion from gbwc there you saw for a moment so yeah he had his bin of scrap parts left over from his gbwc winning builds that was pretty cool and some really cool resin stuff like this is a resin conversion kit that he was producing there which is for the grande skill go rye kit from kotobuki obviously and then they had a bunch of really awesome just original mecha designs here that they had prototypes for and some of these i believe they were selling as resin garage kits some of them were in the works to become actual like plastic model kits so i think we're working on getting some more information for that for you guys because i really really hope that we're able to get some of these out as plastic model kits that would just be awesome even if these are just only going to be remaining as resin model kits hopefully it's the kind of thing that we can get in and carry at usa gunnam store i know that resin kits is something that usa gunnam store has carried in the past but this kind of original stuff like this it's usually a little bit you know traditionally like harder to get especially in like large amounts but uh it's something that we're definitely working on just because they had a lot of really cool designs so we're looking into that i was able to get a couple of samples from these guys they gifted me a couple things and so i was very thankful for that they were very kind very generous to talk with us quite a bit they had a great booth they had the artist there who is one of the designers they had one of their mecca another one of the mecca designers there who works on some of these as well so i got to talk with basically the whole team there and they were really really nice very cool so i really appreciated the time there at their booth and yeah like i said hopefully some of this stuff is the type of stuff we'll be able to bring over to the market in the us to make more available for more people over here because i think that would be really awesome to see and you'll see some more of that as well that was another thing that was there aside from just like garage kits there was a couple of booths not only that one where they had kind of like prototypes for mecca models that are going into production and that are planned to go into production as plastic model kits this booth was really cool to see just because this artist is someone who i've been following on twitter before so i've seen these really awesome evangelion statues and it was really cool to see them in person just they're so well made just the design work of them and the painting and everything i really loved those so it was really awesome to see just a ton of really creative stuff like these different like uh fairy tale character themed like alligators these are the large sofa bee that i mentioned earlier that were particularly interesting just because they were so large and intricate like this but then also they showed me that they're made with a uv reactive kind of plastic in there as well so that was really cool i guess it's vinyl right but there's a uv reactive pigment in there i guess is maybe what it would be and so they brought out the uv light and they were showing in that to me as a demonstration so this stuff was really really cool to see some awesome designs i mean a lot of really awesome stuff and then just the fact that it's uv reactive just it was also really cool so i mean it's not the type of thing that i would be collecting for myself i'm not even sure the price i'm sure there's these were pretty pricey although i will say the prices on everything was pretty reasonable over there especially compared to i think what they would have been for this type of thing if this is at like wonder festival japan or at different events here in the us uh being there in china i felt like the the prices were were actually not too bad at all i'm not sure what they were on these though i would imagine that they're they're pretty high but some really cool stuff there and then you had stuff like this like these as i was mentioning some of them are for sale as like painted finished products some of them in other cases were as garage kits these here were examples of where they had both you had some painted kits that were for sale and then some garage kits i've i definitely bought a couple of these just because as you guys might imagine this is something right up my alley it's covered of machining krieger style uh resin model kits here like this so i got a couple of those i'll show those to you guys in the future all the stuff that i bought and everything that i was gifted from the event is still in transit that was all like boxed up and then it's shipped over just because there was so much of it so that's all uh still coming over here to the us and when i get that i will definitely share all that with you guys in a separate video later on but there was a lot of really cool stuff that i was able to get and a lot of great stuff that i was gifted as well i was very very lucky to have been gifted a lot of really good stuff from some just very creative and very generous modelers there not only the modelers but also the the companies that we visited on the second day or like mosho and motor nuclear and all them basically every booth that we visited it was kind of like a rinse and repeat process go in record everything we'd have a talk with whoever was there at the booth whether they'd be like some of the designers or artists or engineers or just some of the production staff there whoever was there at the booth and we would kind of not i would i want to say exchange gifts more so like they had gifts for me but a lot of the booths did also ask for my signature so it'd be like they wanted my signature on one of their products and in exchange they wanted to give me one of their products so it's just kind of like that so there was a lot of that and like i said i'll go over all that stuff when that arrives it's like four boxes full of stuff so there'll be a lot of things to show you guys and a lot of stuff to build and work on in the future but uh yeah this one was kind of interesting they had these very large kind of i think they were i don't know the scale half scale or something or uh anyway very large statues of those girls there that you saw those were also for sale i was told and they were all actually sold already even uh at the start of the first day so that was pretty interesting and i was told that even those large statues even if they were sold you had to kind of i guess like agree to that you couldn't like take it right away you had to wait until the exhibition was done so that they could keep it as a part of their exhibition and then you have to like i guess probably you have to you would have to arrange to have it shipped to you or something i don't know but yeah i definitely was not in the market for anything that large but that was another cool part of the experience for sure was just to be able to kind of see a little bit more kind of about how it works just because like i said i just didn't really know what to expect and so you know it would just the fact that kind of like everything was for sale even if it was a part of the exhibitors booth i mean just they were there to sell stuff right so i mean it can just kind of make sense uh here are some really cool custom stuff like these were uh different models that were just like custom models made but these were for sale so some familiar characters there you'll recognize but yeah the other thing that i was very happy to see here which you'll see a little bit more in just a bit was how much dinosaur stuff there was so that's obviously gamera there and these were some really really cool uh like original character statues here as well so those are pretty awesome but yeah there was a lot of dinosaur stuff a lot more dinosaur stuff than i would have imagined and so you'll see some of that a little bit more in this video and definitely a lot more in the next video as well just because again that was that stuff was a little bit more kind of focused towards the back kind of but i mentioned fossils there was also like a dinosaur sculpture works and things like that so being kind of a old school like long time dinosaur fan you know being a child of the 90s that was definitely something that had me excited so i was really very pleasantly surprised to see just the variety there i mean as you've seen there's just so much and just the incredible quality of everything was really impressive and it definitely kept me going throughout the day too i mean because as i said we started from you know early before the public was allowed in so i think we got in around 8 30 and then the event closes at 5 so for that whole time we were just there going through the event we didn't stop to take a break we didn't stop to eat anything so all day we were just going going going going i mean and it's not like it flew by in a flash i mean it was a very long day for sure but i never really felt along the way that like i'm exhausted because because there was just so much to see i was just like constantly met with all this really cool stuff that i wanted to look at and record and share with you guys so there was not at any point where i felt like i need to take a break and so it's kind of one of those things that i just kind of find that that happens at events like this you just kind of i don't know maybe it's just me but i feel that i just kind of like forget about getting hungry and eating typically and just get like completely in this zone where i'm just you know checking out everything and just really excited to to see everything that there is to see and so i definitely found that to be the case here as well and for both days so not only just this first day here at the independent exhibitors hall but definitely on on the second day as well just because there was even more interaction this first day you know we were going around and seeing everything and we had little interactions here and there but on the second day we had even more time where we were talking with some of the different companies representatives and things like that so there was definitely a lot to do along the way so here you're just kind of seeing some more of the different things that were there on display they had even some stuff like this here there was a fair amount of genshin impact stuff and you'll see a little bit of that here in this booth as a genshin impact player i was definitely excited to see some of the genshin merch but i will say that was definitely one of the things that does make it hard you know when you're a fan of this stuff you want to stop and look and take more time to appreciate stuff i mean there's a lot of stuff like this i mean like different characters and it's original characters that i obviously i don't know just because they're original characters or they're characters from different games and anime and other things that i'm just not as much you know in tune with but as a fan of a lot of this stuff you want to spend more time with it and that's definitely one of the things that makes it challenging you know attending an event like this uh with the purpose of you know documenting it to record it just because there's a lot to see and i want to try to record as much as possible and i'm trying to move quickly through everything and just get a bunch of video then i'm also trying to as a fan you know stop and enjoy some of the artistry that's there on display some of the different mecha designs in particular the ones that i really wanted to stop and look at and you know just kind of take pictures of and talk with the creators and do all this so it would really be nice to be able to attend uh this event you know it really would have been nice if the event is just longer if it's three or four days then i kind of feel more at ease to kind of spend a lot of the time both as a fan and there to kind of do a job uh you know documenting the event but with such a limited time there was so much to see in just the two days time for this there really wasn't as much time available to just kind of enjoy the event as a fan of modeling there and that is definitely one thing that i really like about wonder festival in general compared to different like just kind of general trade shows and i felt the same at the shizuokabi show was a very similar experience when i attended in 2019 it's a little while back now but i'm definitely looking forward to hopefully attending again in the near future but one thing that i find that makes it kind of different from just strictly a trade show which that is more so basically kind of what we did on the second day so going around seeing all these different companies and the new products that they're showing and all of that is great and it's really cool to see all the new products and again like talk with the staff and everything that i've been saying is what's great about that but this part of it is something that i feel like it is definitely something that's kind of a little bit more unique to wonder festival and sort of like what makes wonder festival what it is is that there's such a big focus on just the independent creators like these indie artists you know and making different things that they're passionate about and it gives them an opportunity to share that being able to attain the licensing to sell different products that are of like licensed characters and stuff all this was really cool uh denis villeneux signed uh imax dune part 2 poster a little bit out of my price range but definitely would have liked to pick that up anyway yeah all the independent artists really are like the lifeblood of the event and you know really kind of make it as exciting as it is just to go around and see what's being created by these artists and you know some of these artists you know as i mentioned some of like the mecha designs in particular i know are just like prototypes that are in the works to become actual plastic model kits some of these you know very small companies or groups now may grow up to be in kind of the larger event exhibitor halls in the future that's absolutely a possibility and something that i'm sure you know is kind of like the goal for some of these artists here for sure but for now just being able to exhibit their artwork there and you know sell some stuff i think is a great opportunity for the artists and definitely something that just makes it really interesting to as an attendee to go around and just kind of see everything to be able to buy stuff and even for stuff that was not for sale like for example at this booth they had those machining krieger and rla crossover kits there i would have loved to have bought but those weren't available yet so they were available for pre-order though so hopefully maybe in the future i'll be able to get my hands on those here is another one of the prototypes there that was on display so this is a prototype for a mecha design that is supposed to be going into production in the future as an actual plastic model kit so we'll definitely have some more information for you guys about these in the future you'll see there's kind of a lineup of a number of different prototypes here on display so yeah i believe that these are meant to go into production as a line of model kits and i'm really looking forward to them really cool designs sort of like along the lines of armored core in terms of like some of the design language but definitely really cool and i like the designs on these they had some very interesting stuff going on so i'm really looking forward to seeing some more about those in the future for sure i love those designs and some really cool kind of variations and themes to those so looking forward to that this one as well is another one that you could see and they actually had this in a number of different stages so this is a transforming sort of macros style machine here you can see it in the jet and the fighter mode and they also had like the full prototype here of the inner frame here you've got it in what would be akin to like the bateroid form or just the robot form of that and then had it in what would be similar to like a gerwok form so if you're a macros fan definitely one to look out for this one as well was one that is planned to be coming out as a model kit and even had here it was putting together another one of the example like a prototype sample build there i didn't end up going back to see what that looked like when it was all put together but that one definitely looked pretty cool so this is another booth that we were able to stop and talk with them to get a little bit more information about that coming out as a future model kit so definitely looking forward to that one coming out as well in the future and if i remember correctly this one and this next one here that you're seeing were also prototypes for what could be upcoming model kits i believe so we kind of hit a little bit of a groove here where there was a number of booths kind of all right around in the same area this one here included where they had prototypes for different mecha models that were planned to go into production as model kits not just resin garage kits and not just as the prototypes here on display so these are definitely the kind of things where like i was saying you might see these first couple of kits coming out and once the company gets established they might be moving on into the larger you know uh company exhibitor halls so he had stuff like this too these small scale resin model kits here of some different ships so again just kind of going back to what i've been saying the whole time just the amount of variety and stuff like this just stuff that i would never have imagined different like aquatic animal themed lights and lamps and things like that you had some other different skulls and all sorts of random stuff i think that was one of the things that just kind of made it the most interesting of course it was awesome to see stuff like this too you know being from illinois originally and having you know the sue the t-rex been kind of like a big part of you know growing up again in the 90s as a dinosaur kid that was a big deal and you know i visited the field museum in chicago many many times seeing the sue skeleton there this model of not this one the larger one of the sue there that one i've seen a number of times online it was my first time to ever see it in person and that was a very very large sample of that so that was really cool to see as a fan of sue the t-rex to see that giant very large and really nicely painted model of sue the t-rex that was cool it has some other different prehistoric life here this is smaller scale i wasn't sure the dinosaur on that's not a citicosaurus but something similar there's a smaller one that was kind of painted that looked like a bronze statue and then this much larger one here as well which was really cool so again like i said i was really excited to see all the dinosaur stuff they had all sorts of other different animals uh there as well these beautifully painted this is just a small fraction of them you'll see a lot more i think probably in the next video but just these really beautifully painted uh animal sculptures there that were for sale of all types of different animals here's some owls there's some birds this is uh archaeopteryx that one was also really really cool uh and then they had like all sorts of snakes and lizards and all sorts of stuff there uh that you'll see yeah you'll see some more of that in the next video but that's going to be it here for part one thank you guys so much for watching hope you enjoyed it of course here at the end i had to get some alligators in just for everyone here in florida but like i said at the start i wanted this coverage of this haul to be less structured and just kind of an opportunity for me to just kind of talk a little bit more about the experience make sure you guys go check out the other videos though over on the us second mtv channel for more i'll see you guys in the next one [00:30:40] Speaker ?: you