<Facepalms> Drift. As a toy.

[Tober]

Drift as a character and toy was announced by the IDW panel at SDCC last year. Recent interviews with Shane MacCarthy stated that Drift was still in progress but still in planning stages.

After Hasbro dodged the question at Botcon this year maybe IDW will make an announcement at this years SDCC - about 3 weeks away.

[GoktimusPrime]

Never heard about this incident. What happened? or is there a link to details?

What happened with the takara thing?

In BotCon Japan 2000, Ichikawa Hirofumi had created an exclusive comic book called The Cybertron Chronicles and was selling it to fans simply to cover the cost he spent printing it. So he wasn't out to make a profit, just trying not to make a loss, which fans understood and were willing to support him on. Takara then stepped in and said that the comic book was unlicensed and an infringement, so they ordered Ichikawa to give away all the comics for free. Attendees and fans across Japan were outraged to say the least over the way that Ichikawa was forced to make a substantial financial loss. While what Takara did was within their legal right, fans found it completely senseless as the comic was in no way impacting on Takara in any negative way - if anything it was helping to further promote Transformers.

As a result there was massive widespread condemnation against Takara from fans. Takara at this time was also starting to fall into financial strife too; so they went into extreme damage control. They forged an alliance with Ichikawa Hirofumi - the very fan whom the fandom thought Takara had wronged, and hired him as part of the creative team for Transformers - his work is detailed in his TFwiki page; works include:
+ e-Hobby exclusive TF bios
+ Pepsi Convoy bio
+ DVD exclusive "Linkage" comic
+ The Story of Binaltech
+ Some illustrations for TFC and Hasbro Commemorative reissue boxes.
+ Some toy designs for Energon and Cybertron

...so a lot of good came out of the subsequent alliance between Ichikawa and Takara but sadly one casualty of the incident was BotCon Japan - it was disbanded after the 2000 incident.

[kup]

Thanks for the good history lesson. I didn't know about that.

[liegeprime]

...so a lot of good came out of the subsequent alliance between Ichikawa and Takara but sadly one casualty of the incident was BotCon Japan - it was disbanded after the 2000 incident.

Awww man, it would have been so much cheaper and closer if there was Botcon in Japan. With Jetstar prices really cheap now plus I would like to go to Japan one of these days..... and going on a Botcon event would be an added bonus. Well at least there is still that Winter toy festival thing with a lot of other robots featured as well....only need to time and yeah money.