Australian Transformers Convention

[jena]

We aren't focusing on a convention, we're focusing on a booth/stall. Please take note of the previous posts. I'm not trying to be a jerk here but this thread is just going around in circles and we need to focus if we are going to get things done. At this point we are trying to brainstorm ideas to draw people to a stall/booth. Please focus on your efforts on that for now.

[GoktimusPrime]

I'd rather try a stall/booth before anything else. If that is popular then we could try for a full convention. If a stall at another event falls flat on its face, at least the losses won't be as bad.

Smart idea!

I don't know if this idea is dumb or not, but there are a lot of talented toy photographers on this forum, so we could sell prints of their photos.

Fan art is another option. We had fan-drawn posters which we sold at SupaNova 2003. The problem with this is Hasbro and whether or not you'd be trampling on their copyright/intellectual property. And yes, Hasbro do care. We sold fan made comics and posters at SupaNova 2003 because I had mistakenly thought that Hasbro had given us approval, but this wasn't the case. Hasbro thankfully decided not to take action against me, so for the next convention I wanted to make damn sure that I had their approval before going ahead and selling any exclusive merchandise; and that's when they told me that I would need to pay $10,000 for their licensing fee (so instead I ended up giving away the merchandise away for free to attendees).

So if you're thinking about producing Transformers merchandise, such as photographs or fan art, and selling it at the booth/stall... then I recommend you investigate and see if there are any legal ramifications for this.

I wonder if maybe some of the people who do awesome customs could come along, display some previous work and maybe even do a repaint during the weekend to auction off? Or even little tutorials.

A customs display sounds like a nifty. Maybe customisers could submit photos of their customs rather risk shipping them and having them damaged -- unless they're willing to come to the convention early, drop the customs off at the booth and pick it up at the end of the con (or pick the toy up off you later at a fan meet or something).

Tutorials sound like a neat idea. You could also do the same for drawing if there are any talented artists who want to come along and show people how to draw transforming robots.

Another suggestion is Transformers Trivia games. I can give you a whole list of questions of varying levels of difficulty for you; I still have a list of triv questions from previous conventions/events and I can easily add some more (and I'm sure others would be willing to submit questions too).

But in 2003 we just had a booth where griffin sold some comics and we displayed some toys and sold our exclusive comic and posters, but we didn't sell any toys. We ran a survey asking people what they most wanted to see in a Transformers convention and the overwhelmingly most popular answer was TOYS... people want to buy toys.

So your first priority must be to get toy sellers. Contact some local dealers or whatever -- contact local fans and see who's willing to bring toys to sell. One option is to ask everyone to put the toys they want to sell into ziplock bags and send you a list of the toys they want and how much they want for them (and whether or not they're willing to have their prices negotiated). Then when they submit the toys to you, put a colour-coded or numbered sticker on each bag - each colour/number code unique to that seller. So for example, if I gave you a whole box of toys I wanted to sell, you could put an orange sticker on each of my baggies and write "GOK" on each sticker. And of course, I would have to also provide a print out of what those toys are and how much I'd like to sell them for.

That way you can have a lot of toys at your booth/stall but without cluttering it full of people trying to sell them. You might even ask other sellers to pay a reasonable sum to help pay for booth/stall hire (which I think is fair enough - you're spending your time and effort to help sell other people's toys, they might as well contribute to paying for the cost of the booth/stall).

Now once upon a time, this alone might have been enough. But these days you're gonna have competition as there are several different vendors at conventions like SupaNova now who sell Transformer toys... so you're not going to be the only one. So think about more things that will make your booth/stall stand out; and I think exclusive merchandise might be the way to go.

For example, you might make an exclusive, like say an exclusive set of postcards (with fan made toy photos and artwork; the reverse side of each post card could contain a random TF fact ) - give them away as freebies for anyone who makes a purchase from your booth/stall.

As kup mentioned before, you're going to need to raise a considerable amount of money to spend on this booth and other associated costs (e.g. postcards) without expecting any returns. You're going to need sponsors.

[jena]

I appreciate your advice from previous experience Gok, it will be a valuable asset.

I think I need to create a team and allocate jobs. I can only do so much. Especially from Mildura.

Perhaps even a new thread.

[kup]

I think that it's clear that for us to progress anywhere, we need to exclude Hasbro as a factor because they are more of a deterrent than a facilitator.

Yeah, I know that there is a risk of annoying them and possible consequences from that but given their overall 'blind eye' attitude to intellectual property infringement (KOs at Botcon anyone?) there is a good chance that their overall neglect could benefit us.

It would basically be a 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy. I am sure that Hasbro won't give a damn unless we make them aware of it.

[liegeprime]

I think that it's clear that for us to progress anywhere, we need to exclude Hasbro as a factor because they are more of a deterrent than a facilitator.

Yeah, I know that there is a risk of annoying them and possible consequences from that but given their overall 'blind eye' attitude to intellectual property infringement (KOs at Botcon anyone?) there is a good chance that their overall neglect could benefit us.

It would basically be a 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy. I am sure that Hasbro won't give a damn unless we make them aware of it.

Dat be true... it's just sad, coz overseas Hasbro offices ( particularly in Asia) "cooperate" with the fanclubs as they know this gets more media exposure for their products and all that positive stuff... here... I just dont get them

Just a question though, there is that TF toy convention called Dairycon if Im not mistaken - they're about TFs as well and yet they pull off yearly conventions, are they Hasbro sanctioned or they just dont care and go ahead with whatever?

[Paulbot]

Just a question though, there is that TF toy convention called Dairycon if Im not mistaken - they're about TFs as well and yet they pull off yearly conventions, are they Hasbro sanctioned or they just dont care and go ahead with whatever?

I was wondering about them too after seeing the G1 Cosmos repaint today. How exactly they get away with making their exclusives of toys of not recently used molds.

[kup]

Dat be true... it's just sad, coz overseas Hasbro offices ( particularly in Asia) "cooperate" with the fanclubs as they know this gets more media exposure for their products and all that positive stuff... here... I just dont get them

Just a question though, there is that TF toy convention called Dairycon if Im not mistaken - they're about TFs as well and yet they pull off yearly conventions, are they Hasbro sanctioned or they just dont care and go ahead with whatever?

I don't think they are fully sponsored by Hasbro but I think that they do have some dealings when it comes to ordering exclusive toys otherwise where would they get them from and in enough quantities? However then again, I believe that con is relatively small so they would not be able to order Hasbro's 'minimum' amount and cover their costs yet it's a successful yearly event.

Well thinking about it, relatively small is probably huge by Australian standards..

I was wondering about them too after seeing the G1 Cosmos repaint today. How exactly they get away with making their exclusives of toys of not recently used molds.

I could be wrong but I think that as long as they are available for production, you can order them from Hasbro just as retail stores have exclusives. The molds may be old but they are current production molds which were fairly recently used.

[jena]

I tried to get some ideas out of my dad yesterday, he's a model railroader so I asked if he had any ideas that we could steal from train cons. He said that they do a customizing/kitbashing thing like I mentioned, where someone does a custom/kitbash throughout the weekend and people can walk by to see them doing it and then it's auctioned off at the end of the con which is exactly what I was talking about so I just thought that was cool.

Still struggling to come up with any other ideas. My mum suggested a comic but I told her about the issues with that. Would creating our own little aussie posse of TFs avoid issues? I mean, if we come up with our own characters, surely that's innocent enough to avoid problems.

[kup]

I tried to get some ideas out of my dad yesterday, he's a model railroader so I asked if he had any ideas that we could steal from train cons. He said that they do a customizing/kitbashing thing like I mentioned, where someone does a custom/kitbash throughout the weekend and people can walk by to see them doing it and then it's auctioned off at the end of the con which is exactly what I was talking about so I just thought that was cool.

Still struggling to come up with any other ideas. My mum suggested a comic but I told her about the issues with that. Would creating our own little aussie posse of TFs avoid issues? I mean, if we come up with our own characters, surely that's innocent enough to avoid problems.

We could easily do something similar to what the 3rd parties do in regards to comics. Use original characters in a world that is familiar to the reader yet never addressed by name.

Remember that Hasbro owns Transformers but not the 'transforming robots fighting a civil war' license.

[liegeprime]

We could easily do something similar to what the 3rd parties do in regards to comics. Use original characters in a world that is familiar to the reader yet never addressed by name.

Remember that Hasbro owns Transformers but not the 'transforming robots fighting a civil war' license.

Well there was those minibots (recoloured) characters already made up by Gok at Sabretron before, and these were Aussie inspired ones, Maybe you could use those plus any new characters so we can build our own little nook of characters...

You can also use my avatar character (shameless plug incoming)- Nightfall - he's more of a guardian like duty fella - a good guy with a bad temper....and a power sword and tech to back it up heheh he also likes collecting (erhmrm hoarder...) energon cubes and used to photobomb my early acquisition pics heheheh... In fact there are a lot of fellow members here I believe who has their own characters made up - why don't you just use em instead for a comic story?

Here's Nightfall