The Coolest Things We Saw at the 2024 Toy and Doll Supershow

The 2024 Toy and Doll Supershow was so big it had to move to a new location. More than 450 vendors filled the Crowne Plaza DIA Convention Center on Sunday, March 24, and fans of toys, dolls, collectibles and comics stood in lines reminiscent of the early years of Denver Comic Con (RIP). Partnering with the Vintage Voltage Expo and the Colorado Guitar Expo certainly added to the audience, but if the crowds in the aisles were any indication, the toys were the main draw. 

That's not to say that it was all fun and games at the annual event. It was a new venue for the Supershow, so parking was tougher than many patrons expected. The conference space had clearly set a temperature meant to offset a cold and rainy day that didn't happen, so lots of buyers were sweating through their purchases. But despite the challenges, fans were having a ball. One fiftyish-looking gentleman was buying a whole moving box full of Star Wars toys, both vintage and from the re-releases in the 1990s. "I love this shit," he said. And based on all the money changing hands at most booths, that seemed to be a shared sentiment.

There was almost too much to see: toys from any era you can think of, from any property or company you can think of. Barbies, obviously. G.I. Joes from the ’60s and the ’80s and the ’00s. American Girl dolls. Transformers. Fisher-Price. Star Wars, of course, and Star Trek, too. The only thing we didn't see: Weebles. Those ubiquitous "won't fall down" egg-shaped toys so prevalent in the 1970s were nowhere to be found. There were comics, too, and collectible ephemera from the 1940s and 1950s of the sort that you rarely see. At one point, we heard two different sets of parents explaining the difference between "want" and "need" to their kids. (One of those kids was nine. The other was at least of voting age.)

What were the best parts of the show? Tough to decide, but we'll give it a shot. Here's a list of the coolest things we saw (and wanted, for no particular reason) at the Toy and Doll Supershow:
Most Expensive Item
This one comes courtesy of Wayne Winsett at Time Warp Comics in Boulder. Winsett purchased a huge run of very early Amazing Spider-Man comics late last year, and while he's sold a lot of it already, several early issues are still available at his store — including this beautiful copy of Amazing Spiderman 1, which at $10,000 is a bargain (we mean that seriously: Look it up!). It's easily the priciest thing we encountered at the show — and damned if it's not worth every penny.
Weirdest Barbie Item
With the success of the Barbie movie last year, it makes sense that the undisputed queen of plastic playthings would make a strong showing at the Supershow. There were old Barbies and new Barbies; there were sports cars and Winnebagos, hot tub spas and horse stables and dream houses, too. But this townhouse, released in 2002, really got us thinking: Why is her townhouse talking? Isn't that sort of...spooky? Maybe something out of some dystopian sci-fi thing? And the box art is equally weird. So the house says "Welcome Home, Barbie," but does it also thank itself? Or should that have been a speech balloon? Why is the water cold? Is Barbie allowed to eat anything other than pizza? Has anyone ever wished their shower could talk to them? These are the questions the movie didn't address.
Coolest Memory Unlock
We didn't run across a lot of young-kid playsets at the show, but maybe that's a sign that these old ’60s and ’70s toys are getting harder and harder to find. But this one made seven different people stop and say, "Wow, I had that as a kid," just while I was standing there talking to the vendor. It's the simple things. Like little smiling armless wooden people with a one-car garage and monochromatic furniture (when it's not just a sticker on the wall).
Strongest in the Force
There was a decent amount of Star Wars merch all over the show, but not much of it was vintage. This vendor was the exception, with not only original ships and sets and figs, but some still in their original boxes. Sixty bucks for an original X-Wing seems totally reasonable, as does $200 for an original 1980s Millennium Falcon. The Death Star box has seen better days, but it looks like it's all there, right down to the "complete original trash" from the compactor — little orange and blue pieces of foam that in most sets have withered to dust by now. And bonus: original Indiana Jones dolls? Sure, they look a little bedraggled, but like Indy says: "It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage."
Best Vendor to Remember Year-Round
The Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls and Toys is a private, nonprofit museum located at 830 Kipling Street in Lakewood. Since its founding in 1981, it's been doing the same job as the Supershow itself: celebrating and preserving the playtime heritage of America. It's open Fridays and Saturdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. The museum is working hard to raise enough funds to expand, so anyone who enjoyed the Supershow should head out to Lakewood one of these weekends and help their fellow toy enthusiasts out.
Most Macho Toys
While there weren't many Tonka trucks at the show, one booth did have these tractor models. I'm not sure these are toys so much as models for farmers and men who like to pretend they're farmers to put on their shelves. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Coolest Games We'd Love to Play...Again
Over on the left we have old standbys like Battleship and Sorry along with games we've never heard of but would love to try: Captain Kangaroo? Battlestar Galactica? The Kennedys? And that's all crowned with a G.I. Joe Kung-Fu version of Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots. And next to the late, great Pee-wee Herman, two very cool (and probably very different) vampire games — one from 1969, and the other from a decade later. Hours upon hours of fun right there. (And Pee-wee can watch.)
Widest Assortment of Dolls
We don't know enough about dolls to even comprehend how many different toy lines are represented in this photo, but from the differences between them, it's a lot. The doctor doll in the center left is fascinating, though — he's arguably the only male doll in this panorama, and he's holding a baby like a Christmas goose that's perhaps turned, given that he's also scowling. The nurse beside him seems to be judging him as much as we are.
Blast From the Arcade Past
We couldn't pass up checking out this bin of Atari cartridges, most of them circa the early ’80s. Combat was the one packed with the console, so everyone had that one. Super Breakout was super popular, and versions of it are still in the App Store. Asteroids was a must-have, as was Galaxian. (Really, to make this a top-notch cartridge collection, it would require Night Driver, Pitfall and River Raid, at least.) But Pac-Man is the biggest — and most notorious — player in this group. Its release in 1982 was heralded as a huge event for the industry...until word got around that its conversion from the oh-so-smooth gameplay in the arcades was terrible. Still, it's the best-selling Atari cartridge ever, selling over 8 million units in its time.
Most Old-School Vintage — in the Most Awesome Way
Local collector Jim Vacca's booth was crowned by this Atomic-era Philco Predicta television set, which is so pretty that we don't think it matters if it still works or not. But this was only the most noticeable item on a very cool set of tables: joining it were comics older than most of the buyers present, old comic and cartoon original art, and random and wonderful ephemera ranging from a ’60s-era Batman school writing pad to an old embossed-leather pencil case featuring a flying Superman to...well, too many awesome things to list. Suffice it to say that we hope there are more tables like this one in the years to come.