Griffin's BotCon Adventure (non-news bits).

[MV75]

I remember having one of those in (I think) New York. It was like a cold kebab!

BTW if you cross the Ohio river, all the music stores will only stock bluegrass music

"If you don't buy my albummmmmmm.....
.....then the terrorists win".
________
ECOTEC

[griffin]

Just a bit of a catch up of non-news stuff.

Wednesday I woke up fairly early to get packed and checked out so that I could drop off my bags at the other hotel and be back at the first hotel for the first pre-con tour.
About 30 of us (about 12 were BC staff) were on the 'Fun Tour', and as soon as we got on the bus, we drove off on a short tour of the inner city area with one of the BotCon staff giving a bit of commentary (used to live here). ONe of the things we drove past was the site of where Kenner (produced Beast Wars) used to be located before Hasbro bought them out in the 90s and transfered everything over to their Rhode Island HQ about 5 years ago.
First stop was Lazer Kraze, a laser tag gaming place. THe BC staff were one team, the rest of us were the other. OUt of three games (about 10minutes each) the STaff one two, and the fans one one.
Next stop was lunch at Rib City, which was covered by the tour fee, so I ordered a big Rib Combo. Was very nice. Also had some beer tasting, but not as extensive as I expected, with just three beers being offered for us to consume (quite a few bottles were given out, so each of us ended up having at least a bottle or more).
THe Food tour was also not as interesting as I expected, as it was just a guided tour of a very large food supermarket, with the occasional sampling (about a dozen food items).
On the way to the Toy collectable and comic stores, we stopped by a couple of TRU and Walmarts, to find some ANimated toys. We found a TRU that had been cleaned out of an entire endcap, with only BUlkheads left. I bought one though, to at least come back with one Animated toy.
At the Toy collectable store I picked up a couple of SCFs, but later found bits missing or broken that I didn't notice at the time I bought them. I got a few comics as well.
On the way home, the BC staff were able to organise with a toy dealer at the convention to buy Animated toys from another TRU for those of us on the tour who wanted some. So when we got back to the hotel, we were able to buy the rest of the Animated toys (a total of nine for me for the day).
Later was the pre-reg pickup for the box set, and then I went back to the room and got to sleep as early as I could, as it was a really early start for the Thursday pre-con tour to the Airforce Museum.
But that will be in the next posting, which will be later - I have to head off now to the next lot of convention panels.

[Pulse]

Hopefully you found some of the other TFs you were looking for at the Dealer Tables. You were looking for later Japanese G1, right?

[griffin]

I was able to get quite a few toys this year, but could have been a lot more (this trip seems to have been plagued with problems). The refund from the first hotel didn't go through before the weekend, so the US$800 from there won't be accessable to spend at the convention. I also managed to transfer AU$500 to the wrong account of mine (meant to go to my credit card, but went to my loan account, so now I can't get it back to use). And, because we were allowed to get more convention toys this year, I ended up buying some extras for others, for about US$400, which I won't get until I get back. So through incompetence, bad timings and helping out others, I ended up not being able to spend about AU$1800 this year. But I'm not too upset. I was still able to spend about $600 this year, and will come back with at least 43 toys and a number of comics. And there wasn't much more there that I would have bought anyway (I wouldn't buy overpriced items no matter how much I had to spend), so I'm actually happy to be going home with money to my name, for only the second time out of nine BotCons...

[Kyle]

Money that will no doubt be used for Transformers... It's only a matter of time...

[Saintly]

save up for another year!

[roller]

or spend it on a lady friend