Collector Club Magazine #41 (Oct/Nov 2011)

[griffin]

Thought I'd see if there was any interest in talking about the Club magazines, good or bad. There are a few of us down under who are members, and we miss out on the "fun" of talking about any exciting contents (if it ever has any) with the bulk of members (in America) who get the issues a month earlier and talk about them on the American fansites, including the official Club messageboard.

Aaaanyway...
The current issue that most of us received in the last week, has the following contents:

Cover/P1 - artwork for 2012 Membership toy Runamuck.
P2 - mentions that BotCon 2012 location should be announced any day now (which was a month ago now).
P3 - Interview with Dan Gilvezan (VA of Gen1 Bumblebee).
P4 - Interview with Hasbro about NYCC (a full page of nothing news-worthy).
P5 - The photo-shopped images of their 2012 Club exclusives (Runabout, Runamuck, Shattered Glass Drift)
P6 - Profile of "Gyronian Sentry"
P7 - Profile of "Sprocket".
P8&9 - Interview with Simon Furman & Andy Wildman, about the Marvel Gen1 Human super-team "Neo-Knights".
P10-15 - Part 5 of 6 "Battle Lines" comic story.
P16 - Word Search, Fan art, mini-comic.


Not much in this issue that's exciting, news-worthy, or more importantly, boast-worthy (the point of being in an exclusive club that you're not allowed to reveal to non-members).
And for me, the most interesting read ended up being mostly non-TFs related with the Neo-Knights article.
They waste a full page on Hasbro saying they will be at NYCC, without anything note-worthy being said or revealed. Then they waste another full page on their exclusive 2012 toys, which are already featured on their website. The Hasbro page should have been a single paragraph on Page 2, while their exclusive toys feature could have been a quarter page somewhere.
The interview with Dan was worthwhile, but I've seen a lot of interviews with him online & at BotCon, so didn't interest me.
The two profiles were disappointing, covering a generic background, nameless trooper, and an Actionmaster who already has a bio/techspec.
The Comic story aims to be a part of Generation One, with all the early year characters replacing the (Animated?) Elite Guard cast they were using in the previous year's story. And they manage to work in their BotCon 2005 story into the mix as well.

And then there's the back page. I don't mind it featuring fan-art, but the word search looks like it was a last minute rush-job to fill space... while the mini-comic doesn't make any sense (as usual). I think it's supposed to be funny, but never is. The creator might be an amusing artist with his cutesy versions of TFs characters, but he's not very good as a writer.
Speaking of the word search, it fills a third of the page but only asks for 10 words. It could fit at least 50. It has 224 letters and you only have to find 71 letters. The usual concept of a word search is to use up almost all of the letters, with the remaining unused letters spelling something.
They should have had the exclusive toys with just the fan-art on the back cover.

They really need to put more effort into the Magazine, even if they have guaranteed membership numbers with the annual toys. Most TFs fans are collectors of the toys, either as their main interest, or at least one of their reasons they are into TFs... so where are the toys in the "Official Transformers Club" Magazine? It should be featuring future product, or even current stuff at the very least.... giving us images, exploring features or reviewing the toys. Anything to hype up the new toys, and give members something worth boasting about or looking forward to every 2 months. And it'd give fans another reason to join up, aside from the toy. (see, the reason they are getting so many members is for the toy, so start filling up the magazine with toy content)

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I will be in this, although I feel like I often bag the magazine. To be honest, before I used to look forward to it arriving and would open it straight away, now I am usually like "oh, that again" and go open my bills first and then look over it, leave it somewhere and read the rest on the toilet...

When I joined up I thought it would have some awesome behind the scenes stuff going on because its the official mag, but now , pah. Whatever.

I thought the word search was a waste of space. If anything, a crossword would have been good. I think there could be some real cool questions for that, but it probably requires too much thought.

The art in the comic is going down hill a little bit and I find the shift of story ark as a lame attempt to make Deathsaurus and the botcon set he is in sell a bit more. Ever since Megatron rocked up it has dropped. the bit with the making of the Combaticons was nice, but after that....

A sentry drone? Meh, I had never even noticed him before.... At least the bio wasn't full of un-needed commas.

the Neo-knights interview was interesting, I had never heard of them before and only had one comic with Circuit Breaker in it. She always interested me because she was a super-hero(villian?) in the TF comics, but it was not really all that TF related and first struck me as a space filler. As if they didn't have anything better to put there.

I'd like to see some super-secret news about Prime and things, but nothing new seems to come. I guess it doesn't help that it seems to take 1 month to a month and a half to get here sometimes.

I am glad I am not the only one that doesn't find the "Recordicons" not funny. The news things they used to do, were they meant to be funny as well?

All up a nicely made half-arsed issue if you ask me.

[kaiden]

that's disappointing, I am intending to become a member next year for the free toy and well, the magazine sounds like its more useful as toilet paper.