Botcon to make a return?

An article here

says that FunPub have renewed the Botcon Trademark. A most interesting development.

Are they just renewing it in the hopes that Hasbro buy it off them?
Are they planning on Hosting unofficial conventions?
Did Hasbro take feedback from the First Hascon on board and decide that Transformers still needs it's own standalone convention and are giving the convention rights back to Fun Pub?

Based on what was reported of Hascon, I think there's room for a dedicated Transformers Convention, and probably a dedicated Magic convention as well.

Fun pub always received lots of criticism, and most of it, probably rightly so. But, they did run a pretty good Convention even taking all the negativity into account and I think the Transformers community can get lot of value out of a professionally run official transformers convention.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

If Pete Sinclair or the Hartmann are involved, I'd have more hope than if it's funpub.

I was reading about that earlier today.
If FunPub were going to be doing official conventions for Hasbro again, they would have had an idea about it last year and wouldn't have sold off all their excess stock, much of it at a loss.
I think they are probably just holding onto the name while it is still a recent concept in the fandom, to prevent it falling into the hands of someone who may not respect the name enough to use it properly.

Possibly, but that all happened prior to Hascon happening. perhaps Hasbro have changed their mind since then

I tend to think it is probably just a protectionist move 'just in case'. Lawyers probably advised them it was about to lapse and for the small cost why not renew it.

I do hope there is a dedicated convention in the future. I only really got into the fandom as an adult collector in recent years and never had the chance to attend but would love to with my boys one day

Quote:

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Originally Posted by griffin

I was reading about that earlier today.
If FunPub were going to be doing official conventions for Hasbro again, they would have had an idea about it last year and wouldn't have sold off all their excess stock, much of it at a loss.
I think they are probably just holding onto the name while it is still a recent concept in the fandom, to prevent it falling into the hands of someone who may not respect the name enough to use it properly.

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Yep, there were a lot of FunPub haters / whingers / nay sayers / critics / crazies in the TF community who had nothing better to do. And when their wish came true it was time to move on to another TF whipping boy *cough* Hasbro for their HasCon *cough*

Can't remember where I've seen or heard it but it appears footage has been released of previous BotCons. Must be nostalgia factor for those who had a connection via attending or other means.

TFW2005 posted about it, the botcon video archive youtube channel

posted right before SDCC so got buried by the news

That's cool, I hope they post up a lot more material. I remember the two conventions I went to, they had a camera running for every panel. I realise it was primarily to get the image on the big screen for people but surely they were recording at the same time, to not record seems like a massive missed opportunity. especially things like the script reading panels and the panels with now passed actors.

Hopefully they flesh it out a bit, not really sure they have the motivation but it would be good to see.