"Wally Wingert – I Was Cosplay Before Cosplay Was Cool!" Today’s generation of cosplayers is unaware how difficult the craft of cosplay was before the arrival of the internet. Voice Actor (and self-proclaimed “Godfather of Cosplay”) Wally Wingert has been “dressing up” since he was a kid in the 60’s and 70’s. He got serious about it in 1980 after meeting Adam West in costume as Batman. (Wally is most likely the very first Adam West Batman cosplayer ever!) And he continued to cosplay as various characters through 2006! Though Wally’s cosplay creations occurred way before the proliferation of comic conventions (which earned him a fair amount of disdain and ridicule at the time) he nonetheless found a way to express his costumed endeavors through charitable functions and civic events. By the mid 80’s, Wally had created costumes of ’66 Batman, Superman, Darth Vader, Frank N. Furter, Michael Myers, Leatherface, Boy George, “Weird Al” Yankovic, and even 26 Muppet replicas! Complete with historical photos and funny anecdotes about the creation of these costumes before cosplay was a celebrated art form, Wally will enlighten the Vegas Toy Con crowd about being one of the early pioneers of cosplay. Moderated by Mark Fullerton with technical support provided by Boz Adams. *Wally is an energetic and engaging speaker and utilizes his voice over skills when telling his stories. Those attributes combined with photos of his personal cosplay journey from a kid in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to landing in Hollywood and becoming a successful voice actor will make for a fun, informative, and inspirational panel suitable for all ages! *For those not familiar with Wally's work (and this is just a snippet of his VO accomplishments), he was Jay Leno's announcer for the last four years of 'The Tonight Show", the voice of Renji on "Bleach", the voice of The Riddler in the Arkham video games, and he worked with his friends Frank Welker and Gregg Berger on 116 episodes of "The Garfield Show" as the voice of Jon Arbuckle.
