The second "Pete's Robot Convention" was on two weeks ago, and I just came across this youtube video of the 3H reunion panel - the two Hartmans with Glen Hallit, for the first time doing a panel together since 2002.
It goes for an hour, and I haven't watched it yet, but I'm hoping that they talk a bit about their time doing BotCon together (1997 to 2002), and some stories we haven't heard before.


A group photo on facebook of the four people who have been involved in most of the BotCons in its 22 years - Jon Hartman, Karl Hartman, Pete Sinclair, Glen Hallit.


Heaps of photos on the PRC facebook page, and some comments and photos of the weekend on TFW (from post #61) and Allspark (from post #257). (including the Custom Class toys, using actual Hasbro toys, and they had another presentation panel of unused concepts, that had some more items not revealed before, including being told that Hasbro had developed new heads for CW Devastator to release it as RID Build King with two new team members of Gen1 Scoop & Quickmix, but obviously decided against producing it)


From the Allspark topic, of the panel of unused concepts & insight into dealing with Hasbro...


SG Knights of Unicron – Checkpoint, X-Brawn, Autotroopers

Checkpoint was gonna use the Offroad mold with the Trailbreaker head. The Autotroopers were gonna be the same mold with the unreleased Hoist head. They were originally going to be the custom class toys for BotCon 2016, but Hasbro wanted them to use the First Aid version of the mold with then-unused Ratchet head instead.

X-Brawn was gonna use the Brawl head that was the original pretool for Rook. He would have been another 2016 figure before the theme of the con became "Dawn of the Predacus".

All these characters did make it into the "Another Light" comic story, though.

Hasbro's CW Computron giftset was originally going to have the Rook mold with the Brawl head as "Ironclad", who was G1 Ironfist(!) as a new Technobot.

One of the last subscription service proposals was Liege Maximo from Straxus, Alchemist Prime/Maccadam from RtS Perceptor, and Solus Prime from Arcee with a possible head reuse as Override Prime. Did not come about due to Hasbro already planning to make the Prime Masters at the time.

The Thirteen were going to be the focus of a new storyline set after the merging of the Classics and Shattered Glass universes and after the doing-away with the Singularities concept. They were gonna introduce the new Thirteen of that merged SG/Classics universe and they would have been the focus of that new story. SG Rodimus Prime would have attempted to seize the slot of the Thirteenth Prime for himself.

Ironfist as Ironclad was entirely a Hasbro thing.

Surprise revelation: Titan class Devastator had alternate Hasbro-tooled heads as the Build Team from RiD 2001, with Gen1 Scoop and Quickmix as the remaining too!

CW Sideswipe (had Fun Pub made him) would have been a straight redeco of CW Breakdown. No retooled head.

The SG and Wings Universe era of Fun Pub fiction was an odd time when Hasbro didn't want Fun Pub doing anything that resembled what Hasbro was doing at retail.

Hasbro actually once wanted Fun Pub to do Liokaiser before Hasbro did it themselves. But Pete and co. were hesitant since there was no guarantee that Liokaiser from them (rather than Hasbro) would have a new head.

Hasbro also once suggested that Fun Pub do the G2 deco for Titan Devastator, and even once offered them to do a reissue of G1 Grand Maximus after Takara had brought back that mold for Encore Fort Max, but both of those were way beyond any doability by Fun Pub since those molds had too high of a markup for Fun Pub to be able to sell them as exclusives. The sales prices for such exclusives would have been astronomical. They did get to use the Grand Max Pretender shell, though.