BotCon Panels 9/12 - TFs Collector Club.

[griffin]

Saturday 3pm.
Panelists - Pete Sinclair, Rik Alvarez, Lanny Latham, Brian Savage, Benson Yee, Karl Hartman.

Slides first.

With the 2008 Seacons selling out and Nightbeat being almost as successful, they are already onto producing a pair for 2009 (although Brian did admit that they are aiming for a 2009 release, we should expect 2010).

He originally wanted to do 2 exclusives per year, until he met Takara, and found out how difficult it was to get a limited edition TFs toy produced.

The '2009' toys are:
- Punch/Counterpunch, using the Universe Sideswipe/Sunstreaker mould with a new head. It will be featured in next year's Magazine comic.

- and... they can't tell us yet. Actually they had it in the presentation, but pulled it that weekend because the toolings hadn't been tested, so didn't want to tease us with something that might be prevented from happening. I think they mentioned it was a Leader sized figure.

Next was some slides on the process for the 2009 Boxset.
- The special box and working out the opening flaps.
- The early colours for Razorclaw.
- Scourge's wax head sculpt.
- Scourge's colour chart
- Scourge's mould chart (which pieces are moulded together in the same colour and plastic types)
- Kup's colour chart.
- Leozak.
- Landshark.

Brian asked the audience what they thought about the Sweeps 3-pack, and if anyone bought multiple packs for army building.

He also asked, because the Seacons sold out, if we would:
- want another run (of Seacons) done in those colours
- another lot done in Gen1 colours
- another lot done that can glow in the dark.
- or none at all now that they've been done once.

The next 3 Membership toys are related, like the last five.

A compilation of the first 5 years of Club comics is planned, but nothing yet.

There are about 2,700 members now.

And now, Nexus Maximus...
Okay, I didn't know this until I was at BotCon, but there is a story to tell about the Club Membership Combiner which is called Nexus Maximus.
As Kup would say, 'gather round for a tale of mystery and adventure'... okay, maybe not.

Fun Publications (the company that does the Club and Convention), submitted 2 proposed names to Hasbro for their Combiner character - Prime Nexus and Maximus Prime. They wanted it to be a Prime of some sort because it is one of the first 13, but they also thought about using 'Maximus' to go with the other Energon Combiners that have it in their names.
Neither cleared because of the 'Prime', which Hasbro doesn't like others using much. But Hasbro legal suggested a combined name - Nexus Maximus, saying that nothing came up on their searches to get them into any legal trouble.
Problem was, since it is corporate policy to have safe search filters at Hasbro, they didn't realise that 'Nexus Maximus' is something porn-related, and Fun Pub used the name on Hasbro's approval.
(I thought it must have been a porn star, but looking it up, it is actually a 'toy' of a different nature...)
So now the call is out there to talk about Nexus Maximus as a Transformers name, as much as possible, so that anyone searching for it, will only come up with TFs related hits. (and it does appear to be working, as google only came up with one non-TFs hit in the first 20 when I did the search the other day to find the non-TF meaning).