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nope and nope
Jun. 11th, 2013 12:29 pmSo this is what was being sold at Anime Next - a vendor had acquired photography of cosplayers, had the photos printed onto body-pillows, and was selling them. The actual costumers were not amused.
So there's this whole ethical and moral collapse on the part of the vendor. But this is nothing new. Vendors are always out for however they can make the fastest dollar out of the faddiest fad without any of the messy business of copyrights or permission. Fan convention vendors operate in a twilight world, halfway between the guy who sells balloons and glowsticks outside the baseball game and the flea market booth that sells puppies, knockoff handbags, and expired canned goods.
The freewheeling nature of convention dealers rooms is attractive; ideally it means a wide variety of merchandise both new and used, guaranteeing you'll find one-of-a-kind items and rare collectibles. It also means that people without ethics or responsibility will abuse the system at every opportunity.
We've dealt with bootleg anime videos for decades; before there were anime cons, there were comic-con dealers with tables full of VHS they'd copied at home and were now selling for $20 each. Their attitude was a fascinating combination of racism ("We're only ripping off the Japanese!") and a hard-scrabble, very American desire to take what's around you and monetize it, whether it's breeding puppies in the back yard or making folk art out of beer cans or making VHS bootlegs of "Iczer One".
When technology improved so did the bootleg vendors - from bootleg VHS straight to bootleg DVDs and bootleg CDs. You remember Son May CDs, that gray-market 'only in Taiwan' CD label that somehow found its way to the dealers room tables of every anime con? The acres of bootleg wall scrolls? Plenty of vendors were willing to put their ethics on hold for a chance to make money, and plenty of ignorant (or uncaring) anime fans were willing to shell out.
The internet and file-sharing has largely dealt a death blow to the bootleg video industry, but unethical fandom vendors continue to try to squeeze a dollar out of somebody else's work. The Artist Alleys are constantly dealing with plagiarism, with organized attempts to game the system and with fellows like the now-vanished "Shojo Jojo", whose artistic ability was to download other people's artwork, print it onto T-shirts, and sell it.
What this Anime Next vendor is doing with hug-pillows is I guess just an exciting new vision of unethical behavior. They claim their hug-pillows will no longer be available to the general public, and I invite fandom to keep an eye on these people. We've heard those kinds of claims before.
The other problem is that we have a convention that's ostensibly an anime convention, yet here in the vendor's room somebody is selling hug pillows with pictures of Superman on 'em. What's the matter, anime con vendor world, you can't make money off of Japanese animation merchandise any more? And yeah, that's what vendors are telling me, that they can't make money off Japanese animation merchandise.
Here's a news flash. Are you a Japanese toy company or are you licensing Japanese animation characters to toy companies? Then you probably aren't making any money off of Japanese animation. The days of unloading a panel truck full of plushies and wall scrolls onto your exhibit hall table and walking away with a fistful of cash are over. We had a recession. We have a fandom with bedrooms full of wallscrolls and plushies. We have an anime industry that has saturated the market with all the characters that can possibly inspire wallscrolls and plushies.
Does this mean that anime con dealers need to quit selling anime stuff? Enough with the DVDs, with the manga, with the cels, with the model kits, with the diecast toys, with the doujinshi, with the Revoltech figures, with the art books and the Roman Albums? Anime con dealers can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans? That's the world we're in? I don't buy it. I don't believe anime con dealers rooms need to be filled with internet memes, funny pop-culture t-shirts, hilarious fandom joke buttons, or whatever else the slack-jawed, dead-eyed masses waste their money on, and I wish all that junk would go back to the State Fair midway it came from.
I don't believe anime cons need to sell tables to cosplay photography vendors who are unethical enough to sell body pillows featuring unauthorized American super-hero costumers. We can buy Superman junk anywhere; at the mall, at the thrift store, at the dollar store, at the Sears outlet. There's no shortage of superhero merchandise. That's not why people pay $60 to get in to your con, to buy Superman junk.
So we're dealing with unethical vendors, and we're dealing with an anime con that let them into the dealers room in the first place. Why not get some anime merchandise dealers at your anime con instead? Why are we pandering to the lowest common denominator? Why not at least make a token effort to distinguish our Japanese cartoon conventions from the Dragoncons, the Comic-Con Internationals, the Fan Expos of the world?
(and if anime con vendors can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans, then by golly, I guess we won't have vendors rooms. We'll have a swap meet on Saturday afternoon instead, and all of us fans can sell each other the junk we bought from you in the first place, and we can spend the rest of the convention having fun instead of shopping. Fine with me.)
So there's this whole ethical and moral collapse on the part of the vendor. But this is nothing new. Vendors are always out for however they can make the fastest dollar out of the faddiest fad without any of the messy business of copyrights or permission. Fan convention vendors operate in a twilight world, halfway between the guy who sells balloons and glowsticks outside the baseball game and the flea market booth that sells puppies, knockoff handbags, and expired canned goods.
The freewheeling nature of convention dealers rooms is attractive; ideally it means a wide variety of merchandise both new and used, guaranteeing you'll find one-of-a-kind items and rare collectibles. It also means that people without ethics or responsibility will abuse the system at every opportunity.
We've dealt with bootleg anime videos for decades; before there were anime cons, there were comic-con dealers with tables full of VHS they'd copied at home and were now selling for $20 each. Their attitude was a fascinating combination of racism ("We're only ripping off the Japanese!") and a hard-scrabble, very American desire to take what's around you and monetize it, whether it's breeding puppies in the back yard or making folk art out of beer cans or making VHS bootlegs of "Iczer One".
When technology improved so did the bootleg vendors - from bootleg VHS straight to bootleg DVDs and bootleg CDs. You remember Son May CDs, that gray-market 'only in Taiwan' CD label that somehow found its way to the dealers room tables of every anime con? The acres of bootleg wall scrolls? Plenty of vendors were willing to put their ethics on hold for a chance to make money, and plenty of ignorant (or uncaring) anime fans were willing to shell out.
The internet and file-sharing has largely dealt a death blow to the bootleg video industry, but unethical fandom vendors continue to try to squeeze a dollar out of somebody else's work. The Artist Alleys are constantly dealing with plagiarism, with organized attempts to game the system and with fellows like the now-vanished "Shojo Jojo", whose artistic ability was to download other people's artwork, print it onto T-shirts, and sell it.
What this Anime Next vendor is doing with hug-pillows is I guess just an exciting new vision of unethical behavior. They claim their hug-pillows will no longer be available to the general public, and I invite fandom to keep an eye on these people. We've heard those kinds of claims before.
The other problem is that we have a convention that's ostensibly an anime convention, yet here in the vendor's room somebody is selling hug pillows with pictures of Superman on 'em. What's the matter, anime con vendor world, you can't make money off of Japanese animation merchandise any more? And yeah, that's what vendors are telling me, that they can't make money off Japanese animation merchandise.
Here's a news flash. Are you a Japanese toy company or are you licensing Japanese animation characters to toy companies? Then you probably aren't making any money off of Japanese animation. The days of unloading a panel truck full of plushies and wall scrolls onto your exhibit hall table and walking away with a fistful of cash are over. We had a recession. We have a fandom with bedrooms full of wallscrolls and plushies. We have an anime industry that has saturated the market with all the characters that can possibly inspire wallscrolls and plushies.
Does this mean that anime con dealers need to quit selling anime stuff? Enough with the DVDs, with the manga, with the cels, with the model kits, with the diecast toys, with the doujinshi, with the Revoltech figures, with the art books and the Roman Albums? Anime con dealers can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans? That's the world we're in? I don't buy it. I don't believe anime con dealers rooms need to be filled with internet memes, funny pop-culture t-shirts, hilarious fandom joke buttons, or whatever else the slack-jawed, dead-eyed masses waste their money on, and I wish all that junk would go back to the State Fair midway it came from.
I don't believe anime cons need to sell tables to cosplay photography vendors who are unethical enough to sell body pillows featuring unauthorized American super-hero costumers. We can buy Superman junk anywhere; at the mall, at the thrift store, at the dollar store, at the Sears outlet. There's no shortage of superhero merchandise. That's not why people pay $60 to get in to your con, to buy Superman junk.
So we're dealing with unethical vendors, and we're dealing with an anime con that let them into the dealers room in the first place. Why not get some anime merchandise dealers at your anime con instead? Why are we pandering to the lowest common denominator? Why not at least make a token effort to distinguish our Japanese cartoon conventions from the Dragoncons, the Comic-Con Internationals, the Fan Expos of the world?
(and if anime con vendors can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans, then by golly, I guess we won't have vendors rooms. We'll have a swap meet on Saturday afternoon instead, and all of us fans can sell each other the junk we bought from you in the first place, and we can spend the rest of the convention having fun instead of shopping. Fine with me.)
