Welcome to Celebration Europe News Issue 2 - the source for official news and inside scoops!

Toyfair Tastic

Celebration Europe was at ExCeL last week for the British Toy Fair with a special guest … none other than the galaxy’s favourite Mandalorian bounty hunter, Jeremy Bulloch.

Jeremy was on hand to help promote Celebration Europe to the assembled toy trade, and was escorted by three of the 501st UK Garrison’s finest stormtroopers, who ordered crowds to ‘move along’ as they went. Celebration Europe received some great media attention and Jeremy was swamped for photo-calls and by journalists wanting to know more about the man behind the mask and Celebration Europe. Press coverage of Celebration Europe included an article on the BBC’s website declaring it as ‘a massive event’ for all Star Wars fans in Europe.

We distributed 3 ultra-rare special edition post cards at the London Toy Fair, These postcards will also be available at Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair in Nuremberg Germany, and at the New York Toy Fair. We intend to continue producing new cards over the coming months. Keep an eye out for them! Remember we are only producing a very limited number of each card and each card is immediately retired as soon as it is distributed so if you see one grab it!

Our thanks to Jeremy and to the UK Garrison. The advanced scouting party of 3 stormtroopers looked impressive in the venue, but we could not help but get a warm fuzzy feeling thinking how much more impressive things will be when they are joined by the full invasion force of their brothers and sisters in armour from across Europe in 6 months’ time!

Excellent ExCeL
It was our privilege to welcome Steve Sansweet and Mary Franklin from Lucasfilm, who were in London for a site visit to check out the ExCeL venue and make sure that plans were progressing for July.  Steve and Mary were very impressed with the venue and we all wore out plenty of shoe leather scouring every inch of the facilities with floor plans in hand trying to visualize how the Star Wars galaxy will fit in when it takes over next July.

“We are more excited than ever about the prospects for Celebration Europe,” Sansweet said. “We’ve been wanting to bring our kind of show to the U.K. for years, and this is the right time and the right place. Mary and I hope to meet thousands of European fans in July.”

A few stunning new ideas for Celebration Europe were also hatched that are sure to create great excitement… more info on that soon!

AFA International First
We are delighted to announce that the popular grading authority the AFA will be present at Celebration Europe. The AFA is the largest toy grading company in the world and this will be the first time that they have attended an event outside the USA.  The AFA was established to help promote the hobby and to give toy collectors the peace of mind of knowing the exact condition and authenticity of a figure.  Once a figure is graded, AFA encases it in museum quality acrylic to preserve the condition and improve the display quality.  AFA will be accepting all submissions at Celebration Europe and we encourage our European customers to visit their stand as they will be offering Celebration Europe discounts.

For more information visit www.toygrader.com

Group Bookings
Is your club or group planning to attend Celebration Europe en-mass? Are you planning a full scale invasion from your local area? If so you will be pleased to learn that we have set up a dedicated box office number with special pricing for group bookings of more than 10 people.

Please call +44 (0) 870 899 3342 for details