San Francisco’s Minimates and the Cartoon Art Museum

This past weekend my wife and I went to romantic San Francisco. We met there so we return regularly to visit our favorite places. I was able to talk my wife into going to the Cartoon Art Museum on Saturday, and I snuck into some stores selling Minimates along the way.

Cartoon Art Museum – I thought this was much better than the MOCA Comic Art exhibition in Los Angeles. The cartoons at the Cartoon Art Museum ranged from comic art to political cartoons to animated movie cells. The art was framed and lined the white walls of square rooms in the same manner museums typically exhibit paintings. In two rooms, groups of cartoon and comic-based toys were featured under glass. No minimates were there (but I say give it 40 years. Minimates will be in museum some day.)

The biggest disappointment of the museum was the gift shop. Usually these are filled with interesting goodies about the types of art being displayed. And while there were some comic graphic novels for sale, about half of the small store was filled with edgey, weird art and photography books. The topics had nothing to do with cartoon art and most of the themes revolved around sex. I’m not a prude and I’m not offended by other people’s unusual sexual practices (remember I lived in SF), but I draw the line at mixing G rated and XXX rated material. At least put up a sign! I kept thinking about the gift shop, “Gee wiz, what if a family brought their little kids to see some original Disney art, and afterwards went into the gift shop for a little toy?” The toys displayed in those big photography books wouldn’t be what they expected! If you go to the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, which I recommend, keep in mind the gift shop will disappoint.

Metreon Minimates – Near the Cartoon Museum is the Sony Metreon. The Metreon is a geek paradise housing a huge movie theatre, IMAX, arcade, bookstore, restaurants, video game Walk of Fame, a huge Sony Store, a Games Workshop, and a store with Minimates called Things From Another World. Actually, the store had only three 2-packs of Unmasked Spiderman/Doc Ock, but only because they were mostly sold out. The store had tons of cool goodies and toy collectibles but I can only torture my wife so much. I grabbed a Juggernaught Kubrick for a Headquarters review and we left. (Incidentally, the biggest attraction this weekend for the geeks at the Metreon was not found in any of the stores. A large group of young women were camped out on the second floor awaiting entrance to auditions for the next season of America’s Next Top Model.)

JapanTown – We walked up and down Filmore and then headed over to the shops in The Japan Center. An action figure toy store there carried some Minimates, but they were mostly sold out. They had a Daredevil/Bullseye two pack that I haven’t seen in awhile.

Genki Crepes – On Clement street in the Richmond neighborhood is our favorite Crepe shop called Genki Crepes. As we enjoyed some delicious crepes I noticed two shelf end-caps filled with small Japanese toys. This was new. The store had always had Japanese food products (shrimp flavored rice chips anyone?) but never any toys.

The toys were the size of Minimate boxes and they were all blind-packed. One end-cap had toys for boys, the other end-cap for girls. I wasn’t interested in the toys for boys – they were mostly Robotech type miniatures or figures for fighting video games. But the girls’ toys – Wow! They had dozens of different types of small Minimate sized accessories. The various tiny items fit Minimates perfectly. I bought some boxes and I’ll feature some of the items in the web comics. I don’t want to spoil the surprise but I’ll cover these in more detail later. They are simply awesome. And they each came with a piece of pear-flavored gum!