Pete from BotCon answering questions

[griffin]

Yay... two questions finally answered. Although, they were the easiest two (I ordered the questions from easy/flattering to hard/critical so that he might be more willing to answer the critical ones by not putting them first and putting him off the entire post).

I'm surprised, and somewhat happy, to hear about one of the BotCon collector cards this year being a nod to Glen Hallit as well as one being a nod to J & K Hartman.

Would have been better for him to say from the outset that he was definitely going to work through my questions, instead of just acknowledging that I had made a "novel" post... to prevent people from re-asking or reposting my questions, thinking that they had been ignored.
His official role at FunPub is "Marketing", but the key to marketing is customer perceptions and relations. Both of which need work.

[griffin]

I guess that topic and the outstanding questions have been abandoned now.

I'm disappointed, but it seems most people weren't surprised.

[Sinnertwin]

Did anyone expect anything to the contrary?

Oh, crap, what do we do? The international fans are onto our Clubs fraudulent ways... hey guys, who wants a $30 Legends figure with a new head for Botcon? Phew, that ought to distract them...

[Bidoofdude]

Their attempt to look more professional has blown up in their face. This makes them look pretty bad, at least to the people not entirely distracted by the whole "Legends in next year's Botcon sets for $30!" thing. That's a little victory, I guess...

[griffin]

That only distracted people for a couple days... so they did that Archive sale for another distraction.
Then we had the Subscription figure reveals, and a FREE online comic...

What were we complaining about again?

[BigTransformerTrev]

Well, afer 5 goes finally got acknowledgement of my questions, if no real answers of substance.

1. Why was my personal email address used for non-TFCC agendas by Funpub staff?
2. Why is the magazine now far more a comic book than an actual magazine?
3. Why can you only click on the TFSS button when a TFCC member, as this then does not inform non-members that even if they join they will not be able to access the TFSS once the time limit has finished? The only other option being to scroll through page upon page of back notifications on the home page.
4. Why does shipping to Australia cost so much and why can we not have more transparency with this issue? (know it has been asked a lot but haven't really seen an answer specific to this particular issue).

1. On rare occasions, certain issues have been spotlighted. It is a very rare thing though if our terms and conditions do not specifically acknowledge that, I will look in to making sure it is clarified.

2. It's not. We spotlight fiction more some issues than others, but the format has been pretty consistent for the last 6 years.

3. I will also look in to making sure this is updated.

4. I will personally look in to this.

I may follow up with Q2 when I get the next issue of the mag if the number of pages used for each format does not add up, but for now I'll just watch the thread to see if any of this is expanded upon due to further questioning from others. At least after over a month of asking the questions he has acknowledged the issues exist, even if right now it is simply the lip-service of 'I'll look into it'.

[griffin]

He is mostly right about the percentage of pages being about the same over the ten years, with 6 of the 16 pages being comic story. Probably once a year, they've had an extra page or two to promote something else (like a recent issue having a BotCon comic preview).

Since they lost a page to be a cover several years ago, the format has been pretty consistent.

Standard contents to equal 11 pages...
2 pages - cover & intro page
6 pages - comic
2 pages - bios
1 page - back cover "funnies"

Then the variables to equal the remaining 5 pages...
3-4 pages - articles and info (including BotCon review once a year)
2-1 pages - advertising of their toys or conventions (including preview comics)

Sometimes the comic is a decent story, so becomes an interesting element (but only worth reading after you wait 12 months for the entire story), while the 3-4 pages of articles are sometimes the interesting element.
But the articles would be more interesting if they could get more input from Hasbro on future toy reveals. What's the point of paying a license to promote the Brand, if the Brand doesn't give them products to promote, as that's what readers most want - future toy products to get excited about.