BotCon 2016 news and reveals

[griffin]

Just like last year there were very few costumes and few of those were really good. In 2014 we had dozens of costumes and many looked to have taken days or weeks to complete. Now we get some people in coloured clothing to match a character and call it a costume.


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[Megatran]

Awesome cosplay.

Optimus Prime & the Seekers in that pic remind me of the super cute D-style models from Kotobukiya. Optimus must be a reissue ... short smoke stacks.

[griffin]

I missed the third page of my notes on the Hasbro panel... which were more Q&A.

Releasing Figure Stands (like the recent MP one)? - looking at them, but nothing in the future, as they need to be at the right place and price.

No plans for CW Blast Off at this time.

What is the deal with Scattershot? - The single release version was done before Computron was planned, as they needed another Voyager for retail.

A hint that Combiners are coming back in 2018.

BotCon's future? - "not walking away from the fans". Expect something, but it is too early to detail it though. Stay tuned, soon.
(they mentioned convention and club)

Awesome cosplay.

Optimus Prime & the Seekers in that pic remind me of the super cute D-style models from Kotobukiya. Optimus must be a reissue ... short smoke stacks.

That was actually a very funny moment.
The two seekers were there posing for photos (there were several people there with cameras, some with kids), and Optimus shows up in the background and starts walking over to join in for photos... and a couple of the kids started yelling out, "Optimus is behind you" and, "look out behind you"... and it took a moment for the two people in seeker costumes to understand what all the commotion was about, but just as Optimus had snuck up to where they were, they started doing fighting poses against each other for the camera-wielding audience...


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[griffin]

Saturday Noon - Gregg Berger.
(hosted by Frank Todaro again, who started off with his own questions, and then went into the audience with a microphone for their questions)


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Apparently Gregg is a teacher.
He gives all to his character of Grimlock because he says that it is the gift that keeps on giving, after all these years, getting voice work 30 years later because of Transformers.

When he got the role with Transformers in the mid 1980s, he was very new to Voice Acting, so was still learning, and was in awe of the other voice actors he was working with on Transformers who were heroes of his.

He does Odie on the current Garfield cartoon, and Frank Welker does Garfield.
Also does K in Men In Black cartoon.
He did the voice of Niles Crane's cockatoo in Frasier for three seasons, and a Parrot in Hot in Cleveland.



He spoke about seeing Mel Blanc (a VA legend), as well as working with Chris Latta (Starscream) and Scatman Crothers (Jazz).

Recent Roles - the latest Final Fantasy game, and Eeyore in Kingdom Hearts.

Gen1 & FOC Grimlock are his favourite versions.

He commented on the new movies, and noted that there was no Voice Actor for the beast noises done by Grimlock (I think he said that it was artificially generated).


Just like at the end of most panels, people go up to confront the guests while they have the chance... and my room-mate Andy managed to get a minute with Gregg, and had me take a photo of the pair of them.

[griffin]

Saturday 1pm - Costuming and Cosplay.

As usual I didn't sit in on this because I had other things I needed to do, even though I had wanted to, in case it was the last one... and I have
been saying every year that I would make sure I sit through at least one of them.

All I managed to see was the judging part of the panel, of the people in the room who were in costume... which didn't include the best I saw at the
Convention (FOC Soundwave and the Starscream & Thundercracker duo).


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[griffin]

Saturday 2pm - Aaron Archer.

For those who don't know of him, Aaron Archer was one of the longest running Hasbro employees working on the Transformers Brand, starting out as an artistic designer around 1997 on the Transmetal 2 toys, climbing up the corporate ladder to make it all the way to a Vice President role in Marketing when he left during the great purge of 2013.

After a year away from Hasbro and Rhode Island trying other ventures, it seems that he is back there on a consultancy basis for Hasbro.


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Aaron started out at Kenner after Hasbro had acquired them, working on Batman first, then Alien, and Star Wars.

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He noted that when he was called on to help with the Star Wars toyline for Episode one, he was like a fill-in designer, picking up the slack on the projects that everyone on the main design team were unable to finish by their deadlines... which meant doing most of the Jar Jar Binks toys, because it was the one character that each designer would offload first.


After doing a few Transmetal 2 toys and probably some Beast Machines toys, Aaron was tasked to work on the Transtech toyline, which was meant to be a sequel to Beast Machines... but a change of Management at Hasbro saw a direction shift to go back to the core elements of Transformers (vehicles).
He said that he ended up doing about 6-7 designs for Transtech, with some getting to various stages of prototype stage.


Transmetal 2 Megatron (dragon) is one of his favourites that he worked on.


Some reflections on his time at BotCon, as he attended quite a few over his 16(ish) years working on Transformers. His favourite was 2006 (the one I missed), as the convention apparently had the entire hotel to themselves.


Now, he is a freelance artist.


Where to find Aaron Archer and his art online...


He couldn't tell us what the Transtech story was going to be, as he was only an artist at this time.

He's been to Japan over 30 times because of Transformers, working with designers including the famous Hidea Yoki.
On that note, he mentioned that the Energon Dreadwing/Mirage boat toy, had a Gundam influence in the design, especially with the boat halves in robot mode.

Beasts are a lot harder to design as Transformers than vehicles.

He told us how he got onto Transformers full-time for Armada. Walmart were looking to drop Transformers after Beast Machines, so the brand was not going to be prioritised by Hasbro. A new CEO stepped in to make it a feature toyline for Hasbro, and at the same time the Kenner offices in Cincinatti was finally being closed down, which opened up a spot on the Transformers design team because someone wasn't wanting to move to Rhode Island (the Hasbro offices). Aaron applied for the position and thinks that getting it was the best thing (next to getting married) ever to happen to him.

He noted the changing of the times in just the last 20 years since he started with Kenner/Hasbro. When he started in the mid-90s, it was two years before he got a computer as everything was hand-drawn... now it is all digital.

Naming the Minicon faction (with the "con" at the end) - he was really early to Transformers, so didn't know what mattered to fans when it came to factions... but he wasn't able to use the name Minibot or Micron due to trademark issues.

The Armada Unicron toy was one that they didn't think would ever be a toy, even just a couple years before it came out as a toy. He noted that one of the Masterpiece designers helped work on the Unicron.

Orson's World on TFW2005 about 10 years ago (which was Aaron interacting with fans under the name of Orson), was the Brand team recognising that the fan community was now huge, and needed issues clarified quickly.

Alternators - one of his favourite lines. It was during the upswing of the Brand, so he wanted licensed, detailed items as collector grade "toys".

The TF-Cybertron keys - Takara wanted them to be unique to each toy, but Hasbro wanted them to be universal in case kids lost some.

He was finally talked into publicly telling us the story behind the SD74 tampo on the Armada Hoist toy... which he confirmed to be a nod to the rumoured story, that involved a drunken night in San Diego, and a crane on a construction site. He noted that the font colour of the lettering was even chosen to match the colour of the keys to the crane.
(he assures us that there wasn't anything significantly damaged that night on the commandeered crane)

He said that Transformers has been a very special and unique toy Brand, with its exclusively-Transformers conventions and the fans & feedback.

[griffin]

Saturday 3pm - Collector Club.



The panel was started by Lanny and Brian.
Before they started their slide show, they warned us that a number of the slides were not working, similar to yesterday's Club Magazine technical issues.


As per usual, they went through the colour charts of this year's BotCon toys.

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Note the preliminary name for the Unit-3 toy, confirming that it was indeed based on the 1996 Under-3 Happy Meal toy.

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The translucent green on Airazor is so bright here, but the actual toy is very dull, almost clear.

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FunPub changed to a new company this year for their exclusive heads, called Digital Designs, who 3-D print the heads from computer renders, for the factory to then use.
The first ones shown were actually from the 4th Subscription set and the Ramjet membership toy, but the slide says BotCon at the top.


These were the heads for the BotCon toys.

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For the Predacus head, they had to make a separate second piece for the horn on the top.

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Next up they rushed through (almost) every BotCon toy done by FunPub, from 2005 to 2015.
I took photos of them all, but decided to only do up a collage of the first three years, with the first year (2005) included below.

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After that, they then tried to show us the various Membership and Club exclusive toys during that time as well (several slides were blank or had the wrong toy).

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My camera ran out of power at this time, and both of my spare batteries decided that now would be a good time to not work, so I had to take the rest of the photos with my phone's camera... which isn't very good as a camera.
As such, I have included 8 photos from another source (Seibertron) of the new reveals at the end of the slide-show.


Pete had joined the panel by now as well.


2016 Membership toy Ramjet, and Club store exclusive Skywarp. Due to an issue with the head's ball joint, the toy had to be retooled and missed the shipment with BotCon & Subscription toys... so will be coming later.


The second Transformers/GIJoe crossover - Gen2 comic 5-pack.
With Scarlet, Cobra Commander, Dr Biggles-Jones, Ratbat (from the Masterpiece toy) and Megatron (from the GEN-13 Legends toy).


The 3rd crossover exclusive should be Arcee & Rodimus as humans (revealed at last year's BotCon), but will depend on timings with the factory.
The other pair (Springer and Ultra Magnus) are not likely to happen now.

Finally, the fifth subscription set were shown to us.


Counterpunch - apparently using an alternate head that Hasbro had created for Counterpunch, but didn't end up using it (like Ratchet).


Scorponok & Fractyl. The Scorponok was probably done to complete the set of FunPub pre-Beast Wars toys, but I think Scamper was a poor choice just to complete the set before they run out of time to do one. That doesn't make me think of Scorponok, nor is such a tiny toy worthy of being a homage to the Voyager class toy from Beast Wars.


Toxitron, again. We still don't have the original Toxitron mould (the Gen2 Laser Rod Optimus toy), but keep getting substitutes from FunPub.


The coup of the set, is the original Japanese Gen1 pretender shell from Grand Maximus, which was released way back in 1988. To go with the already revealed Optimus double pretender, this was a Megatron double pretender, with a targetmaster gun based on the unreleased Spacewarp toy (the redeco Armada Jetfire toy coloured like Astrotrain, and then released with a slightly altered colour scheme by FunPub in 2006).


A Paradron Medic, called Lifeline, with a targetmaster gun.


And the previously revealed Optimus double pretender, reusing the BotCon 2015 pretender shell that FunPub had created, based on an unreleased prototype shell.


Plus noting the secret incentive 7th figure, to keep people paying all three instalment payments (if not paying all at once at the beginning).


Pre-orders were meant to begin in two weeks, but they've missed that time... and whenever it does start, it should be open for about 4 weeks.

Q&A from the audience.

Terrorsaur missing the giant foot/fist - the factory failed to produce it.

Membership renewals were not permitted after March 31st, so they will try to alter the system to allow past members to access anything being sold later this year (Subscription set, Skywarp, and the 5-pack).

Everything has to be sent out by December 31st, as that's when their license ends.

The BotCon name stays with Fun Publications, but don't have any plans to use it.
They will still exist as a business beyond this year, and are already exploring other ventures.

Lanny and Brian both got a bit teary when reflecting on their time with Transformers since 2005, and got a standing ovation from the audience.

[griffin]

Saturday 4pm - Judd Nelson.

The last of the Saturday panels was with the VIP guest, hosted by Frank Todaro again, after a very last minute gathering of questions from half a dozen fans sitting near the side door where Judd was going to come through.

(I think Judd Nelson was wearing the same clothes all weekend)
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The 1986 Transformers Movie was his first role as a Voice Actor.

He's since been doing a fair bit of VA work, and enjoys doing it.

Best known for his roles on the Movie The Breakfast Club, and TV series Suddenly Susan.

The favourite actor he's worked with is John Hurt. (who played the War Doctor)



Recent two films - Creep and Stagecoach.

Childhood favourites - Rocky & Bullwinkle, and Speedracer.

Had/has a crush on Sofia Loren and Rachel Welch.



Likes doing stage productions.

Favourite Voice Actor when doing the 1986 Transformers Movie - Lionel Stander (Kup). (he would have spent a lot of time recording with Lionel since their two characters spent a fair bit of time together)

Due to the last minute nature of gather the questions for Frank to ask Judd, we got quite a few rubbish questions, like what his favourite pizza is (which is cheese or pepperoni).

[Verno]

Did you see anyone walking around with one of these t-shirts on?

[griffin]

Blue Steel...

I didn't pick up on if anyone was wearing Beast Wars t-shirts... but I have a lot of Dealer Room photos with people in them to get an idea of what people were wearing this year.


Okay, 10 of the 38 pages are now up, and they are the biggest ones....

SAT 11am - PANEL - Hasbro Products

Dealer Room (WARNING - Big page of photos)

Art Contest Display & Costumes

Hasbro display
Display Case 1 (Titans Return Fortress Maximus)
Display Case 2 (Titans Return - Deluxe, Legends, Titan Masters)
Display Case 3 (CW Computron & Titans Return - Leader, Voyager)
Display Case 4 (Platinum Edition, SDCC & Combiner Wars boxsets)
Display Case 5 (CW Victorion & RID - Power Surge, new Warriors, Legion, Minicons)
Display Case 6 (CW Gen2 Bruticus & RID - Platinum Edition, old Warriors, Battle Packs)
Display Case 7 (Merchandise & Alt-Modes)

And for future reference, the main intro/index page can be found here, for links to the other pages as they are done.