If you’re wondering what the fuss was all about, let me try to explain why there were more grownups than children who flocked to Sticker Con MNL’s second run.
In the ’80s and ’90s, I had an analog childhood. Think of Netflix’s Stranger Things, Everything Sucks!, and Bandersnatch. The digital world? Practically unheard of! Our “apps” were bulky board games and Nintendo cartridges. I was addicted to my Gameboy and Tetris. We relied on outdoor pursuits and good ol’ imagination and creativity to keep ourselves entertained.
I looked forward to recess, lunch break, and those precious minutes after school. My friends and I brought our stationery and sticker collections to trade in class. We admired each other’s sticker albums of Snoopy and the Peanuts Gang, Rainbow Brite, Sanrio characters, Lisa Frank, Cabbage Patch Kids, and Garfield.
We sniffed strawberry-scented erasers and perfumed letter sets. My cousin Arden and I broke our piggy banks to buy packs of Panini stickers to complete our Tom and Jerry Panini album.
Enterprising kids would set up shop, laying out their merch on the their desks or the ground, and we’d scramble for loose change in our pockets to buy stickers, drawings, friendship bracelets, and other knickknacks per piece. If you had no money to buy anything, just browsing through someone’s colorful merchandize and artworks were enough to keep you entertained until your parents came to pick you up. Come recess or dismissal time the next day, it was back to business for the ’80s and ’90s kids.
Ah, those were the days.
Sticker Con MNL is an avenue for us grown-ups to relive our childhood, except that we now post our favorite stickers online and tag the artists on IG. We bring our little siblings, cousins, children, and nephews in hopes of sharing with them the thrill that digital apps can’t evoke.
The dynamics are reminiscent of our childhood: You browse through dozens of booths of sticker artists. The main merch is stickers, but you’ll also find rubber stamps, zines, key chains, pins, and other stationery. You buy the sticker per piece, per sheet, or per collection. Some stickers are die-cut, manually cut, or in sheets for those who prefer cutting the designs themselves. Oh what fun!
My cousin Arden brought his 7-year-old kid and family, but I’m 100% sure he and I enjoyed the most. We talked about our Tom and Jerry Panini albums. Mine was thrown in the trash, while Arden lost his when a flood wrecked his collection of memorabilia at home back in the early 2000s.
Now please admire my haul and personal favorites from the con:
Did you attend Sticker Con MNL 2019? Share links to your haul!
Sticker Con MNL 2019 was held on Saturday, March 16, 2019, at Bayanihan Center – Unilab, Pasig City. Subscribe to Sticker Con MNL’s Facebook page for updates.