51° and Partly cloudy
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Unlike EternalCon which requires fans to travel all the way to Hofstra’s campus, Long Island Tropic Con is held at the Hyatt Regency off Exit 58 on the Long Island Expressway. The venue is smaller, however the lack of space does not mean that the event is any less fun than its larger siblings.
While there are panels, a cosplay competition, and an appearance from The George Lucas Talk Show, a parody talk show that has been released online since 2022, this show has a major focus on vendors and other small businesses that sell all kinds of video game and comics paraphernalia, as well as artists. For example, there were booths like 10th Dimension Games which focuses on tabletop card games and All4Gamerz which sells old video games.
The panels span interesting topics from writing for video games, making a career out of writing or cosplay, a panel about the local 501st
Legion of Stormtrooper cosplayers, and how to draw cartoons. These topics are interesting, however smaller conventions like this should attempt to find more niche content, rather than generic content that makes an appearance at every convention on the planet. This is especially true with New York Comic Con, one of the largest events held annually, being held just under two months from now.
That’s not to say that a smaller convention like this is not fun, this convention just has yet to fully find its footing yet. To an extent, this is probably related to the demise of ICON, which ran from the 1980s through 2017 and both EternalCon and Long Island Tropic Con are attempting to fill the (maybe an overstatement) power vacuum left behind in the region. What needs to happen is that, if Tropic Con is going to survive long term, they need to find a market and focus on that. That may seem counter-intuitive, but look at Astronomicon in Rochester which caters to the science fiction market specifically since 1991. That said, for a small convention and at only $25 per day or $40 for the full weekend, it is a fun way to spend time.
