A Closer Look at the Models of G-FEST 2026!

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I now interrupt my G-FEST (Godzilla Festival) diaries for an interlude on the event’s model room. This has always been one of my favorite aspects of the weekend. There was one year when I actually participated in this contest and won “People’s Choice.” It was my first model and depicted Biollante. I used the wrong type of glue and the wrong paint (this was obviously pre-YouTube), and it looked terrible. Not wanting my kids to think I was a quitter, I ran to the Michaels craft store and bought a bunch of fake plants and Sculpey clay. I then proceeded to cover up and embellish the mess I made. How it won anything is still a mystery, but one thing is for certain – it could never compete with this year’s selections, which were absolutely unbelievable.

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MONSTER ISLAND TOYS – A Great Place To Visit!

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One of the highlights of the Daves Zoo Tour 2014 has been the little side trips we have been doing, exploring other interests outside of the animal kingdom. On my second day in the Chicago area we visited a store that is a dream come true, as it caters to Godzilla fans. The name of the store is Monster Island Toys and though it is kind of unassuming from the outside, the inside is chock full of eye candy for Godzilla fans and toy lovers!

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Pacific Rim: Big Godzilla-like Thrills for an even Bigger Screen!

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Since I was a kid I have been a fan of kaiju films. Every Saturday afternoon I would sit in front of the television set watching that week’s installment of the Creature Double Feature, as they showed such great films as Rodan, War Of The Gargantuas, Frankenstein Conquers The World and a whole variety of Godzilla and Gamera films. Yes they were cheesy but they were also a lot of fun and they are one of my fondest memories growing up.

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G-FEST and the Godzilla-sized Heart of Fandom!

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G-FEST, the quintessential Godzilla event, is known for bringing rare and wonderful stars of the Japanese Kaiju genre to the unlikely venue of my sweet home, Chicago. This year was no exception with the return of Akira Takarada & also the original Ultraman, Bin Furuya. Before I delve into that, I feel like I should mention that while I have illustrated in previous posts much of what G-FEST has to offer, there is no way that I can truly convey its essence. Yes, like other fan-based conventions, it offers celebrities, dealer rooms, and eager fans. These are incidental, however, to what really makes it unique. For lack of better words, G-FEST has heart!

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14 Genre Films Worth Watching Again and Again…

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So we all have our favorite movies and we all have our personal reasons as to why they are our favorites. We all also have movies that we can just watch over and over again, never tiring  of them. That is what this list is all about. What is interesting about this list, is that some of my all time favorite films do not even fall on it. Even though a movie may be a favorite of mine, it doesn’t mean that I can watch it repeatedly and still enjoy it as much as I did the first time I watched…this aspect is actually rare in a film for me. As much as I love DAWN OF THE DEAD (1979), THE FOG (1980), THE THING (1982) and HALLOWEEN (1978), I cannot watch these movies repeatedly and usually limit them to one viewing a year. This list comprises those movies that I watch multiple times a year, sometimes more than once a month…they are THAT good to me! I have listed them in alphabetical order since I do not necessarily prefer one over another.

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Mad about Mothra!

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It’s very rare these days to have a horror host present a Japanese giant monster movie.  How ironic considering that many of us were introduced to the these films via weekend Creature Features and late night hosts. For the past ten years, however, the opportunity to see these films on commercial television has become few and far between. TOHO (the Japanese studio that owns Godzilla) has made the films less accessible – their legal team hungry and eager to feed.  To me this is a terrible error on the studio’s part. By making them harder to acquire,  they are blocking many potential new fans from the genre.

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