BotCon 2016 news and reveals

[MEEEGGGAAATTTRRROOONNN!!!]

Cheers Griffin for the coverage!

[TAAUBlaster]

Thanks for all the news and updates while at Botcon Griffin.
Looking forward to this year's writeup

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Wow, some nice stuff there. Not from Funpub though

That TM Brainstorm looks awful.

Shame they didn't plug the comic as telling the story of the Decepticons surrendering, I might have been more interested in looking at it in that case. But I had no idea what they had planned. Aside from an ugly combiner.

Seeya Botcon, I look forward to seeing what will happen in the future to it.

[griffin]

Working through my images and notes, tonight I'll have the first couple of panels posted up, but first, the biocards of the Convention toys...


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[griffin]

Friday 9am - Club Magazine.



Hosted by Jesse Wittenrich and Pete Sinclair.


The Slideshow was incomplete, as there were some slides missing or had glitches, so the full slideshow might be posted online (maybe).

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(supposed to have artwork by Dan on this slide)


Issue 69 will have big reveals, while issue 72 wraps up everything.

Gaea is the sister of Primus and Unicron.
Gaea transported all six billion humans to another planet (with some Pretenders) before transforming.
The story takes place five years after "Another Light".



Issue 68 (April/May) is being shipped late so that it didn't show up before BotCon, so that the reveals tomorrow at the Club panel weren't spoiled. Because all of the fifth Subscription toys will be in this final comic story, and some would show up in Issue 68.



And the bad news...

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The relationship with IDW was set up for this year, to be an ongoing partnership, but will now only last for one year.


The Paradron Medic from the fifth Subscription series has been given the name "Lifeline".

Two covers to the BotCon comic this year, with this being the one sold at the Club Store...

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John-Paul was supposed to be at the Convention on this panel, but last minute issues prevented him from leaving the UK to get to BotCon... so we had a live skype chat with him to talk about the BotCon comic that he wrote this year.


The story was to cover the event that we all knew about from the Beast Wars cartoon, but was never actually seen before. They didn't want to re-write anything in Beast Wars, so it should work with what is officially known. The mass downsizing occurs after this story, as we are shown it happening at the end of the comic. The Script Reading later today will follow the comic and feature the downsizing concept.

They also had planned to do a more expansive story, spanning more of the time between Season 4 and Beast Wars, but had to cut it back when they found out that there would be no more BotCons or Club comics beyond this year.
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Friday 10am - Stan Bush & Vince DiCola (with Kenny Meriedeth).

Kenny works with Vince on current projects.


Stan first worked with Vince in 1985 while writing "The Touch" for the 1986 Transformers movie.
He was inspired by a Louis Gossett Jr movie at the time, which had a line in it, "you've got the touch kid". The song has the message of believing in yourself.
The song was written before the movie was produced/drawn, and was originally going to be pitched for the Silvester Stallone movie "Cobra", but he's now happy that it was instead picked up for the Transformers movie.
Stan said that he's never met Mark Wahlberg, but thought the movie Boogie Nights (with his song in it) was hilarious.
Apparently the song is also in the TV show "Chuck".

Both Stan and Vince noted that their involvement with the 1986 Transformers Movie is like a gift that keeps on giving, as they have been able to get a number of jobs since then because of it.
They thanked the fandom for that, and reflected on their first BotCon in 1997, as their first contact with the fandom, almost 20 years ago now.

Vince noted that when he was asked to do the Angry Birds game soundtrack, he had to make it sound very 80s.



Vince composed the music score for the 1986 Transformers movie from the Storyboards, but had no experience at doing that, so lied when asked before he got the job. He noted that a lot of his music (which he wrote for specific scenes on the storyboards) was moved around by the music editor, but still liked how it turned out.

He had some of the songs beforehand too, so that he could write lead-in music to them if necessary, or reprisals.

Stan had songs featured on the movies Kickboxer and Bloodsport, while Vince had music done for Rocky 4.

Their original music inspirations...
Stan - the Beatles when he was 10, and his older brother gave him a guitar.
Vince - Keith Emerson (who only just died last month), went to his first rock concert with his brother when he was 14.

Stan's first record was in 1979, while his second record (Barrage) was in 1986 with his Transformers songs.



Just like all rockers, they have their groupies too...

[griffin]

Fans in the UK who attend the GIJoe/Transformers convention Roll Out Roll Call in July, can get the BotCon attendee figure Terrorsaur if they buy an Energon or Crossover admission to the event.


That event in the UK was certainly developing a close relationship with FunPublications in the last couple of years, with news and toys, so it will be a hit to both companies from next year.

[griffin]

Some youtube videos from BotCon posted up by Benson Yee, including...
- Judd Nelson Q&A panel.
- Friday Hall of Fame (human) awards.
- Judd Nelson thankyou speech at the Saturday Dinner (he didn't say much on Friday).
- Three Concert videos.
- Hasbro product display.
- A Dealer Room video.

While looking for photos of things I missed (like the Friday Hall of Fame presentation), I found a photo of the lucky draw green Unicron toy which I had heard someone mention later in the weekend, as it was only in the dealer room on the Friday.
I didn't find this dealer until the Saturday, so didn't get a photo of this myself, as it was gone by Saturday (it wasn't in my Saturday photo of this Dealer's table... but the back of the box is in my Friday photo of Stan Bush's booth, which backs onto this one).
That Japanese dealer is a regular at BotCon, and is one that I've always recommended to others, as his prices are usually pretty good for recent items, and he often slashes prices significantly on Sunday afternoon so that he doesn't have to take back as much with him. After the Dealer Room closed on Sunday he still had about a dozen people crowded around his table looking for bargains.

[griffin]

Spent half of today taking toy photos, so didn't get to do up any more panels... and I still have a couple of toy photos I need to take (like the combined forms of Predacus and Magnaboss).

These are comparisons of this year's BotCon toys with previous versions...

Seaclamp - Hasbro BW, BotCon, Takara. (as we know, the BotCon Tripredacus trio are coloured like the cartoon rather than the toys... Seaclamp is just coincidently the same colour as the Japanese toy)


Cicadacon - Hasbro BW, BotCon, Takara.


Ramhorn - Hasbro BW, BotCon, Takara.


Transmetal Tarantulas - Hasbro BW, BotCon.


Ravage - Hasbro G1, Takara BW, BotCon.


Terrorsaur - Hasbro BW, BotCon. (colours based on the cartoon, rather the toy)


Ratchet - Hasbro G1, BotCon 2016, BotCon 2005, Hasbro 2009 Universe.


Medix - Rescue Bots, BotCon. (I need to retake this photo, with the new Rescue Bots Medix toy, which has green like this BotCon toy.)


Transmetal Megatron - Hasbro BW, BotCon.


Airazor - Hasbro BW, BotCon, Collector Club.


BotCon Airazor with Collector Club BAT, to show it has similar colours to the BAT rather than to the BW Airazor toy or cartoon character.


Tigatron - Takara BW, BotCon 2016, BotCon 2001, BotCon 2006. (there seems to be more BotCon Tigatron toys than regular release ones)


Reflector - Gen1, GEN-14, BotCon (plus Flash Sentry).

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[Lord_Zed]

Thanks for the report Griffin.

Man, Ravage and Tigagtron's tiny heads did not work out well at all.

[MEEEGGGAAATTTRRROOONNN!!!]

Great comparison pics Griffin!

Man, the original BW toys still look pretty good!

Man, Ravage and Tigagtron's tiny heads did not work out well at all.

Dem shrunken heads!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbVi1UsNhJ8