I am one exhausted mofo… Last week Sideshow launched Spooktacular 2008 and after hours and hours of chatting with Sideshow staff and other Sideshow freaks and a serious lack of sleep, the show came to an end Friday night with some INSANE prizes! I would now like to offer up some thanks to Sideshow for an AMAZING job, I genuinely had a blast!

If you’re asking yourself what IS Spooktacular, it is a 1 week long sales and prize winning extravaganza held by Sideshow Collectibles and the week features amazing new product launches and announcements, a 24 hour chat room with trivia and special guests and other prize giveaways, contests on the site itself, special guests, featurettes and much more! Personally I absolutely LOVE the chat and trivia, I always seem to be able to score some great prizes, much to the annoyance of my fellow chat folks. This year the chat was PACKED and I want to send a shout out to my fellow freaks Lettuce, Ozz, HB, Shropt, Weta, Ken, Beowulf and all the gang who shared laughs (and curses when we lost contests), you guys were so much fun to hang out with this year. I would also like to thank Chris, Dennis and Alex from Sideshow who was there the majority of the time making sure chat was running smooth and prizes were dished out. They did a GREAT job and I honestly can not wait until next year… I really enjoyed the SDCC chat earlier this year, but I think this event was even better. Part of Spooktacular is the anticipation of new product launches, and while we didn’t get any new Predator or Alien products up for Pre-Order, they did launch one piece that I freaked out over, it’s the Uruk-Hai Berserker from Lord of the Rings. This thing is GORGEOUS!

The Uruk-Kai Premium Format is easily my favorite product of Spook 08, and will look awesome with Lurtz and Moria Orc once they are all released. Here’s a list of the goodies that were launched: – Slave Leia Premium Format Statue Exclusive Edition (Sold Out) – Slave Leia Premium Format Statue – The Creature From The Black Lagoon Diorama – Tyrannosaurus Rex VS Triceratops Diorama Exclusive Edition – Tyrannosaurus Rex VS Triceratops Diorama – Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man SSE Edition (Sold Out) – Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Sold Out) – Uruk-hai Berserker Premium Format Statue Exclusive Edition (Sold Out) – Uruk-hai Berserker Premium Format Statue – Subject 805: Tactical Containment Unit Operator Spooktacular Edition – Classic Iron Man Comiquette Exclusive Edition (Sold Out) – Classic Iron Man Comiquette – Iron Man Mark I I also ordered the Mark I, I plan on displaying my Iron Man Full Size Bust along with all the Hot Toys Mark suit releases, which look insanely cool! You can bet I’ll fire off some pics of all these pieces as they arrive in the coming months, so stay tuned! And in addition to these goodies, let’s for forget about the prize hauls! I actually won 5 trivia contests (I was only allowed to win 1 prize per day not including Sideshow swag like key-chains and hats, so I won something every day and even answered just to annoy Chris from time to time lol! I’m the trivia masta! I ended up passing on a couple of prizes to other folks that were in the chat, but I did keep a couple of cool plushies that I thought were neat… here’s what I won: This is Sam, a spooky little guy from the upcoming movie Trick r’ Treat… I initially saw this during SDCC and although I didn’t buy one, I did think it was pretty cool, so I was REALLY happy when I won one. He’ll look cool on my work desk. You can check out this figure on the Sideshow site by clicking HERE.

Later on that night as the chat was closing up, I was talking with a few people about the vinyl and plushi dolls and I mentioned how it would be fun to win a Jigsaw Saw Puppet plushi to go with Sam… well, guess what I won the next morning! My very own Jigsaw!! You can check that guy out HERE.

I also won a couple other items that I gave out to friends in chat, but I did keep one little goodie I won to add to my collection of Sideshow swag, a Jason key-chain! They actually sell these as well, you can find them on the Sideshow site HERE.

Not a bad haul eh? And some chat members took away some HUGE prizes, including a HellBoy Premium Format Statue and other high end collectibles, it was great! So thanks again to everyone at Sideshow that puts this show together, it was just AWESOME and I think it is so cool to see a company do so much for their fans. I look forward to next year’s Spooktacular and all the other events in between! If you want to check out all the Spook news and events and features like the "It Collects from Beyond" series of mini films starring Sideshow staff, visit the main Spooktacular 2008 page by clicking HERE. Until next time! Dan