Whilst at the Kaiju Days event last weekend, June 10-11, 2023, I got to briefly sit down with the two organizers of the pop up event. Nate Thomas and Anthony Koerber. Nate is known for being behind Half-Baked Fantasy, a vlog and store for all things geek culture featuring content from comics, video games, toys, sci-fi, and tokusatsu. Anthony is the founder of Otakumerica, an “Importer, Purveyor & Collector of Japanese Monsters and Robots!”
The two had come together to form KAIJU DAYS, which is “a boutique pop-up event celebrating Japanese Monsters and Robots. Our dealers offer collectible toys, apparel, posters and original artwork.“
KAIJU DAYS is hosted by @halfbakedfantasy & @otakumerica and will appear in random locations throughout Chicagoland and the Midwest.
Interview:
Jony Hernandez
So thank you, Nate, and Anthony for joining on this interview! I am super excited to represent Kaiju United in covering all things kaiju days. It’ll be on our site, as well as on audio streaming platforms in the near future. Let’s get started!
Nate Thomas
Sounds terrific!
Jony Hernandez
All right, so my first question. You guys have a clear and defined partnership. How long have you guys actually known each other? Has it always been partnership in the kaiju dealer sphere, or was it a friendship that evolved?
Nate Thomas
We’ve known each other since April 28 of 2019. That is an easy date to remember because it was the day after I got married. We finally tied the knot after so many years. My wife and I had got married at the Morton Arboretum because my wife and I are both big dorks and we’re both collectors. We’re like, you know what? Chicago Toy show is the next day. So we got up early, we went over there, and that’s how we celebrated the first day of being officially husband and wife.
Mr. Anthony of Otakumerica happened to be vending there. And that’s how we met. And he had a great set up. His lovely wife was there as well. And I was like, hey, you like all the same stuff I like, your presentation is great. Let’s connect!
A little while after that, I was vending at G-Fest, and he saw what I was doing and was like, oh, wow, you are legit as well. Yeah, let’s work together. And the first show that we ever vended at was a smaller toy show called Toy Con over in Bridgeview. We did well. The rest is history!
Jony Hernandez
Awesome, awesome. And I’m guessing that also leads into the next question with Kaijudays. So with Kaijudays, it’s a pop up store event that takes place in many locations, from what I understand?
Nate Thomas
It does. It first started here at Space Golf. The story of the first one is that we all missed G-Fest, two G-Fests in a row. But this would have been summer of 2020, and most of the businesses, especially in Illinois, were not permitted to open. And the ones that were, it was kind of like a county thing or a district thing. I don’t exactly remember all the details, but there were businesses that were allowed to open on a limited capacity, and with limited capacity does come like, is it worth putting on a big show? Obviously, for G-Fest it was not, and for virtually every other convention, it wasn’t. So we put our heads together and we’re like, you know, who cares if we do business per se? We miss just being around our own tribe.
Jony Hernandez
Exactly. Around not just the customers, but friends who are friends as well.
Nate Thomas
Correct. And we have vendors that are our friends. And initially, we reached out to G-Fest, and we’re like, hey, would you like to put on a little something just for the Chicago people? They had to pass, but they said, Go for it. Do your own thing. And so we did it right here in this prior room that we’re speaking in. Our first G-Fest I think we had, like, six vendors in here, and it was fantastic. We had a great time. I think everybody who attended had a good time. We made it work. People could reserve a time slot, and they came in in small waves. They trickled in bit by bit so that we still followed the guidelines of the state. And it was a success. We kept doing it. Then the next one was in Chicago at an art gallery. We did another one in downtown Crown Point, Indiana.
Jony Hernandez
Yup.
Nate Thomas
And we obviously tour the regular convention scene. But we’re looking to expand that into something more like a festival.
Jony Hernandez
Exactly.
Nate Thomas
So keep your ear to the ground about that. We’re working on it. We’re always looking.
Jony Hernandez
Yeah, because it’s always great to expand that because there’s people who want to continue doing this not just as a passion, but as something to be marked down in the history as well. It’s always a fun time. Just even if we’re sitting here watching movies, we’re talking how we are now. It’s such a great thing. It also just kind of releases a lot of that stress from personal lives as well.
Nate Thomas
Yes. Anthony and I think and agree on this one, that Tokusatsu is pure joy. I love that you have so many options depending on what mood you’re in. If you want something serious, there it is. If you want something for the kids to watch, there it is. If you want something somewhere in between, there it is. All the options, all the variety. And that also means that there’s a lot of different types of people that.
Jony Hernandez
*lol* Yup, yup.
Nate Thomas
It is really fun to see the different kinds of people that could converge all on this one genre that is just full of so many possibilities and so many options. And it’s great to see that there is new content coming out from big name studios and from Toho as well. They’ve got a Godzilla project coming up in November.
Jony Hernandez
Exactly, yeah. Or even, any content creators on like, YouTube. I believe his name was Stephen He. Basically, he started an indie tokasatsu show called Ginormo, which released its first episode. And that was a good episode!
Nate Thomas
Ginormo, let’s add that to my list of bedroom names.
Jony Hernandez
*lol* Yes, it’s ginormo. *lol* It’s so good. And now into my next question, because with both yourself and with Anthony, you have over 1500 followers off of Instagram.
Nate Thomas
That’s just me. He’s got way more.
Jony Hernandez
And Anthony has over 8000. Now, were you expecting for yourself and Anthony to expect himself to grow that popularity of what you are doing here with the pop up store or were you not expecting?
Nate Thomas
Followers are not the goal.
Jony Hernandez
Yep.
Nate Thomas
The followers are not the goal. There’s two goals. One is to expand this as our job. For Anthony, this is his full time job. For me, this is becoming my full time job. So if that brings a different level of commitment, it is work, but also different kind of joy. It’s like work doesn’t necessarily make me happy, but what does make me happy and what makes me satisfied is contributing to this culture and seeing the reaction on people’s faces. Like when they see all this cool stuff we bring, when they’re like, oh man, I didn’t even know that that existed. Often looking for that artist came from New Mexico.
Jony Hernandez
Exactly.
Nate Thomas
Shop here with you. I love that. I live for that. But the other goal, like I said, is to contribute to the culture, to give something new and to actively contribute. So make it a job, contribute to the culture as a byproduct of that. Yeah. The following grows. But the followers in and of themselves are not the goal. Followers come when you do good work.
Jony Hernandez
Exactly. Yeah. And that’s exactly what we’ve been seeing between you and Anthony. A lot of people are still coming back. This is my first one, my first pop up store being here.
Nate Thomas
Cheers!
Jony Hernandez
Cheers to that. As well as working with my good friend Agu aka Creacher Preature. Who also has his work here presented with you guys. So with the expansion of Kaijudays, I’m guessing you’re going to be looking. Towards getting different vendors to also promote their work?
Nate Thomas
Correct, yes. From inception, that has been the goal. Space has been a constraint because some of our options are just the options that have been made available to us are just small and we’re okay with that. But with that also, some people are like, I need more room so we can invite them. We are our next goal. What we’re trying we have two options before us that I’m not going to talk about yet. I don’t want to get people’s hopes up if it doesn’t work. This does require cooperation. I can’t just make a festival appear. It requires a lot of conversations and cooperation from other people. But with more space will come more variety. Just more more of everything.
Jony Hernandez
Of course, yep. Of course.
Nate Thomas
So that’s the goal. We want more. We would like to use this we’d like to use this as a springboard for other people to showcase the work that they do. Emerging artists, emerging creators. And it’s like Creacher Preature here is very skilled, but I think we would categorize him as an emerging artist and to welcome him here is a great honor. I think he’s been getting some good traffic too. He does great work. And when we see great work, we would like to be able to accommodate that in our exhibition in our pop up shop.
Anthony Koerber
Yeah, I’ll chime in here for just a second.
Jony Hernandez
Yeah, of course.
Anthony Koerber
So, original art was part of the founding of this in general, because we worked with Don Picton, who is also known as FriendPrices. He does a lot of Universal Monsters themed artwork, but he also does a lot of really cool Kaiju stuff. And he was one of the first kind of art vendors that we worked with, as well as my friend Charlie, aka Wolfman138. He does a lot of genre themed sculpture and resin casting. These guys have a unique product offering that isn’t a commercially available mass producer.
Jony Hernandez
Exactly.
Anthony Koerber
And it’s really fun to put original art alongside some mass produced work, and then some more art toy related products, which just makes the it elevates all of the offerings to the art status that they deserve.
Jony Hernandez
Yep.
Anthony Koerber
These items are deserving of, like I would consider it a high art status.
Nate Thomas
I would like to chime in next and say that yes. But to go back on the one word of more when you walk in here, you may have a goal of, like, I’m looking for the latest bandai, but then over here, you’re going to see it’s like, what the heck is that thing over there? What is this amazing thing that I’ve never seen before?
Anthony Koerber
What’s this brightly colored, bizarrely sculpted thing?
Nate Thomas
Yes. We want to capture some of that cross pollination and to introduce people to the untapped potential, the thing that they enjoy, to realize that you’ve just scratched the surface. Yeah. The new bandai here is here for you. But look at all this other great stuff, too. Exactly. Look at the more potential to enjoy your hobby.
Anthony Koerber
And I don’t want to exclude anyone when I say high art, because I love really small, inexpensive figures as well. So we’ve got everything from the really small, inexpensive Kashigomu figures up to big stuff.
Anthony Koerber
Yeah. Of course.
Jony Hernandez
Could Kaiju Days potentially be the next thing to become another big convention that is going on? Like, another G-FEST or All Monsters Attack?
Anthony Koerber
I don’t think we have our eyes on being a big convention. I think we would rather join forces with big conventions. What I can see in the future is similar to something like Creature Bazaar. We could have a Kaiju Days pop up inside of a much larger convention. C2E2 or a Motor City Comic Con where it’s actually we have a number of stalls and then a number of different artists just to our genre.
Jony Hernandez
Of course.
Nate Thomas
Yes. We kind of like the idea of we do want to make things bigger and we do want more, but like, you know, being on par with, like, let’s say, like, you know, powermorphicon or or Wonderfest.
Anthony Koerber
We we don’t have a desire to be any of those types of shows.
Nate Thomas
Come what may. If the opportunity is there and if it makes sense, sure. But that’s not the goal. That’s not what we’re shooting for with this. We just want to have more. We want more space. We want more variety.
Anthony Koerber
Maybe original toys? Not really a huge con though.
Nate Thomas
We want to take that in stages. It’s like, we could definitely go and rent out a giant ballroom, but that comes with its own challenges. You may not be ready for it. We’re currently trying to refine and evolve our brand and evolve this experience as it comes at this current time.
Jony Hernandez
For everyone to enjoy and do.
Nate Thomas
As many people as many people as possible. Yes. And maybe even traveling a bit further. Anyone listening, let us know. If you’ve got a venue and you want us to feel it out, we’ll gladly have a conversation.
Anthony Koerber
Yeah, Midwest adjacent.
Jony Hernandez
Alright guys, I think that’s a wrap. I really do appreciate you guys for not just doing this interview with me, but as well as having me come out here to enjoy this awesome pop up store that you guys have.
Anthony Koerber
Of course! Glad you enjoyed it.
Jony Hernandez
This will be one for the books!
Nate Thomas
Well, thank you so much for staying down and speaking with us. All of you Kaiju fans, keep the Kaiju faith, peace, and hair grease.
Jony Hernandez
All right, sayonara.
Nate Thomas
Sayonara.
Thank you again, Kaiju Days, Nate, and Anthony, for a great weekend!
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