BotCon 08 Panels - Collector Club and Magazine.
Saturday noon - Club Magazine Panel.
Saturday 3pm - Collector Club Panel.
Magazine Panel - Pete Sinclair, Lanny Latham, Benson Yee, Forest Lee, Trent Troop, Greg Sepelak.
Started with a rundown of the Newsletter's current features and sections.
Mentioned that their current year comic (Transcendent Storyline) in the Magazine is the Transtech Universe. For those who are new, Transtech was planned to be the series to follow Beast Machines, but it was doing so poorly and the toys were just getting too bizarre to entice kids and parents to want to buy something they don't even recognise on the shelf, so it was axed in the early developement stage, and Amada was developed to produce more recognisable alternate modes for the market (and Robots in Disguise was brought over from Japan to give Hasbro the time to start from scratch with a new toyline). Before Transtech was axed, quite a few design sheets were done up and there were even at least half a dozen pre-prototype models and one prototype figure that I am aware of.
Anyway, the Collector Club thought it would be a good opportunity to use the Transtech designs, and style for other characters, as a way to continue with their Magazine's story universe without interferring with anything previously existing that is official/canon.
Talked about the one-page intro comic in some/all issues of the magazine that will lead to their short stories on the club website.
Mentioned their online website (panel was a bit of a promo for joining the club).
THe convention comic this year is the third issue in their Timelines comic series, and will be available in two formats - Convention and Diamond (regular comic shop edition).
Due to the unexpected positive response to their April Fools Day comic pages, they will be looking at doing some minicomics or short stories from that universe. The first will be called 'Dungeons and Dinobots.
There will be a Nightbeat comic to go with the Nightbeat toy, when it is released middle of this year.
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Collector Club / Fun Publications Panel - Pete, Brian, Lanny, Rik, Karl, Benson.
THey prefer not to have Conventions around September (Fall) and prefer Spring/Summer (April-July). The New Orleans hurricane in 2005 pushed back their schedule by about 4 months (a GIJoe convention had to be moved just before it began) and has taken them about three years to catch up.
THey are trying to work towards a 12 month advance notice schedule, announcing dates and locations of next convention at the current convention (like a few BotCons did, around 1999-2003), but won't be happening this year. The registration details for next year will be out a lot earlier though.
Brian (head of Fun Pub) prefers not to have their Transformers and their GIJoe conventions on at the same time (due to excessive workload it would require), but would do it if Hasbro ever said to.
Currently there are about 2,500 members in the Transformers club.
Registrations to BotCOn will continue to be done as faxes/mail ins - they won't do online registrations due to the amount of errors fans have on their forms. THey would prefer to have a human process the registrations to pick up the errors, so that there are less angry fans who arrive at the convention and don't get what they were wanting.
THey then discussed the process they went through in creating the theme and colours for the convention toys this year. An idea by Brian relating to the Star Trek Mirror Universe concept, fleshed out by Pete, Rik, Karl and Benson. Then the colours done up by Lanny, with further back and forth with the creative team, and various adjustments to make sure there was variety in the colours of the set (started having too many black/dark AUtobots, so Jazz was kept white). THe colours of Optimus were done first, and every other figure that was worked on next had to then fit in with the colours of the ones that were already done. Most went through three or four colour schemes, including Optimus, with more paint decos than Hasbro or Takara would put on the regular toys.
Takara still don't like doing production runs below 5000, so the collector club will be aiming to eventually work up to that figure with their exclusive toys, if they know they can sell them.
