Botcon 2012 Review

PICTURES TO FOLLOW SOON...

Okay, I've really neglected this blog of late. But hey, that's what blogs are for, right?

I thought I'd do a quick review of Botcon, just to bore the heck out of people with an opinion piece which includes outdated news. Hey, that's what blogs are for, right?

Highlights of the Show

Queueing

It has to be said, that this was the best I've seen the queues in the four years I've been attending Botcon. My guys didn't think so, and as this was the first time in attendance for my two travelling buddies – hereafter known as Nick and Dick (or collectively if you'll indulge: The Icks) – they complained about the queues a lot. Enough to make me wish they'd come in 2009, that would have really given them something to complain about. I never complained about the queueing, despite having MORE GOD DAMN REASON TO than anyone (see: The Misery File; filed under diarrhoea and losing a day in the hotel room).
Overall though, I couldn't have picked a finer couple of mates to stand in a line and dick about with for a few hours.

Buying Toys

Oh yeah, I got to buy loads of toys, here's a quick picture of my haul, and we'll come back to it in a bit when I start listing shit.

Meeting Peter Cullen

So this year, instead of insanely long queues starting at 8 in the morning, this year FunPub implemented a “lucky draw” system for meeting Peter Cullen, this meant he didn't have to sign and shake quite as many hands, which must get tiring over along weekend.

On the downside, the new draw to meet Cullen was decided on the day, with EVERYONE who attended being included in the draw. As several people rightly pointed out, this should have been an online draw which you had to OPT IN for, that way it would only include people who wanted to meet Peter Cullen (several people already have met him after those insane queues I talked about in previous years). The other advantage of doing the draw ahead of time is you'd know in advance and could plan accordingly. I have millions of items at home I would love to have signed by Peter Cullen, from my original G1 toy to DVD sets to artwork and beyond.

Instead, I had a mad twenty minute rush around the dealer room to find something to get signed that was cheap and cheerful. You'd think FunPub would provide some nice glossy prints of Peter Cullen for a meagre $5 or something, but no, because that money is obviously better spent on a Soundwave headband.

Anyway, enough complaining, this was a good problem. I ended up buying a sealed TFPrime RID Optimus Prime to get signed (see picture, newb!), but this did unfortunately get a little crushed on the way home. Having said that, I did somehow manage to get seventy new toys home, as you'll see, some of them were fairly big as well. Not bad for one suitcase.

Peter Cullen is a lovely chap, I tend not to get star struck by famous peeps, but I'ms ure I babbled incoherently a bit as I explained that I've wanted to meet him for years but could never be bothered to stand in a line for four hours. He seemed to take it as it was meant, rather than interpreting it as some sort of sleight against him, so I thought it best that I didn't ask him to dedicate the piece “to ebay.” Nice guy.

Buying Toys

So yeah, seventy toys. I'm not going to list them all, as that would be boring, indulgent and strike me as something from Bret Easton Ellis' “American Psycho” novel. Having said that, what IS what blogs are for, right?

What I will do is talk about a few pieces that are special to me, or stand out a bit.

My first purchases, within minutes of entering the dealer room on the Friday preview, was a boxed set of the Sonokong Goldran toys, from the Brave line.

I've recently gotten into Brave more and more, and I will do an article dedicatd to them soon.

I asked to look at the figures and they looked great, but being somewhat of a Brave novice, I wasn't 100% sure what I was buying. Fortuitous moment of the day: I spy fellow UK trans-fan, TFW mod and all around nice guy and Brave expert Sol Fury about three feet away. Yoink! I collared him and he was great, really taking the time out tomake sure I knew what I was buying. A swift bit of haggling later and KA-CHING! I was $220 lighter.

Before I got to leave the stall, I chatted with Sol Fury about Brave and remembered that, shit, I really wanted a Shadow Maru. See picture that follows. Shadow Maru is a repaint of the G1 awesome ninja Sixhot – who in my personal canon doesn't enter into a Yaoui relationship with Spikes son, Daniel – retooled with a new robot head, animal head and some great weapons. They wanted a $100, but after I pointed out it's cheaper on their website but the shipping has put me off, and c'mon mutha fuckers I just spent $220 with you, I got it for $80. Cheers Toy Arena!

The two panels which are worth attending

The Hasbro Panel, and the TFCC panel are the two panels I consistently attend, because you need to see the pictures. Every other panel you can read the shit online at your convenience, and that's precious toy buying time going to waste.

The Hasbro panel was disappointing. Sure, a couple of goodies and better than the awful 2011 reveals, but compared to the awesome 2010 revelations...LAME!
C'mon Hasbro, you know your audience, give us some new, original mold G1 characters – preferably from 87-90 unless it's Trailbreaker – in the Generations line. It's what we want, and every day you procrastinate you lose an opportunity to the third parties.

It did seem to me from the feelin the room that Hasbro have gone the wrong way releasing the Generation 2-esque day-glo version of Bruticus to stores, and the “real world” colours as an SDCC exclusive, and Hasbro didn't really make it clear that both were coming out. I think several people got the wrong end of the stick thinking that the SDCC version would be the only version, until they saw both figures on display in the Hasbro booth.

So overall, slightly disappointing. Having said that, MP10 for under a hundred bucks...it seems rude not to.

The TFCC panel was actually pretty good, especially with the reveal of the TFCC subscription, similar in style to the Matty Collector MOTU monthly nerd snail mail drop. The highlight for me was the announcement of an actual official G1 Breakdown. A no-brainer really, as they have the mold and the head available, and it beats CHMS at their own game. Sure, I buy and support third parties, but I'm not a huge fan of how CHMS do things, and would always rather have an official figure (unless it's shit, CHUG Galvatron!).

Overall, I like the idea of a subscription service, even though I'm no longer even a member of the club (but I already have people in place to send these to in the US to avoid getting raped monthly for shipping and customs charges). This is what the fans have requested for years, and with obscure characters and even the occasional Animated figure, I really am quite a fan, but I hope that all the people that have pushed for this realise that the majority of G1 figures we want will be sidelined as exclusives and cost $45+, rather than trickling out slowly into stores for $10-15.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think part of the reason Hasbro agreed to this is to move them aside, to concentrate on their main lines, which basically means any lines which have mainstream appeal and a cartoon or movie backing them up.

Buying Toys

G1 toy wise I did great. I finished off several sub-sets, such as Junior Headmasters, Junior Targetmasters, Sparkabots, Clones and Monsterbots. Some were great deals – Quickmix for $25 complete, others were a bit more than I'd like to pay - $100 for a complete Hosehead, although I did haggle down and trade a few pieces. I've spent sometime cleaning them up, and with a few repro labels these will all pop.

All in all, it means I only need four figures for 1987, and three figures for 1988 and I am done with what I consider the main G1 collection, and then I can concentrate on Pretenders (hate them), Micromasters (I never remember what I have and what I need) and Action Master – whoI have strangely some tolove given their awkwardness and oft-lamented place in G1 history as a “line killer”. I made good bounds with Action Masters after scorring a complete Jazz for $10 and thinking, “hmm, I wonder what other Action Masters are here”. Fifteen Action Masters later, I am close to completing the first years worth.

American Dogs! ... or Dallas City Centre.

Dallas was awesome. It's not as great a venue as Florida or California, which I will happily spend two weeks in with all to see and do (that basically means theme parks, comic shops and a drive to Vegas). Because of this, we opted for only five days / four nights in Dallas. With a 12 hour flight each way, that was a crazy schedule to keep.

Overall, I feel I saw and did everything I wanted to in Dallas, and the enthusiasm of one of my travelling buddies meant that everything we saw and did was an experience, whether it was taking photos of fire hydrants, traffic lights or spotting different coloured taxi-cabs.

Exclusive Toys

The Club Store was an epic mini-adventure all in itself. I was the only one in my little group who wasn't hit by the TFCC credit card fraud problems this year, mainly because I moved about so much last year by addresses are no longer valid, and because I thankfully didn't renew my membership this year. Both my friends who I travelled with were stung. Twice in one case.

Freshly armed with new credit cards, I asked my buddy if he had told his credit card companies he was going on holiday. He said no, but it shouldn't be a problem as he used to travel abroad fairly frequently. The problem was, he had been stung by FunPub twice, naming them as the potential security breach when it happened, so when his card had a sudden flurry of activity in Dallas, and then was used to try and authorise a sale with FunPub, warning lights went off and they blocked his card. A massive pain in the arse when your four thousand miles from home with no money.

Thankfully, my debit card was going through a rare period of actually showing money in the account, so we managed to get all the toys we wanted.

It just goes to show though how the credit card fraud thing goes on to have long lasting ramifications long afterwards, lets hope TFCC sort that shit out!

Much has been written about these, and I don't want to go into too much detail. Suffice to say, I thought this was one of the weakest sets of exclusives they've had. Generally, I feel 2009 and the “Wings of Honour” set was the lamest duck of them all, but because of the novelty of that being my first Botcon I feel I need to keep the toys and boxset.

Being a 99%er – that is I'm nearly completest, but if I really dislike something or feel it has no place in my collection I leave it, things like Armada Scavenger or CHUG Galvatron. I thank the movie line for breaking my will and any miss-held belief that being a completest was a clever idea – I had recently parted with my Shattered Glass 2008 box set.
Shattered Glass is an excellent way for people to expand their collection, to buy an necessary second version of every figure or repurpose an obscure repaint into a new line. However, I have my G2 redux collection for that, and much prefer the crazy colour schemes one can get away with on G2 figures. Either way, both are great for customs, but I went for G2 and don't need a third set of everything with wrongly coloured faction labels, I'm much happier with obscure faction logos.

I kept the box set, as it was a Botcon I attended, and I have repurposed the awesome red Tracks as Road-Rage for my Classics collection along with Kick-Off, and Treadshot as an evil Decepticon. As it stand I still have Overlord, Metalhawk and Octopunch (pending a new head for the latter), but I may well sell all of these off and leave myself with just two figures in the box set. I have kept the Spinister even though I feel they got the colours the wrong way around, but that if the way the figure is molded and the transformation is so different to the original, having one mode in inaccurate colours was inevitable. I have also kept six of the SG Junkions, currently I am displaying them with my normal Junkions, without a hint of a continuity retcon as to who they are or why they are there. They are black and purple and look cool, that is enough for me.

So that means I sold off a few figures. Ultra Magnus and SG Prime had to go, I hate the mold, it is of no use to me and I am happier with my four versions of the G2 Laser Prime mold. The stoopid Bard of Darkmount, yellow Straxus was also no good to me and I traded that in fairly quickly for extra spening money. The way I look at trading the exclusives is, sure, I might get more for them if I sold them in the UK at Auto Assembly, but less money is worth more to me at Botcon where I can buy all sorts of obscure goodies.

That leaves just Soundwave unaccounted for, and my epic tale of trade in fail!

Despite the fuss surrounding the character, I thought that was the weakest of the set. I don't like the mold, I don't like Shattered Glass, I don't like Soundwave in white...and I REALLY don't like obscure GI Joe references. If I wanted a cold slither I'd give myself a reptile enema. He HAD to go.

First day I traded him for like $65, that went towards my G1 Doublecross. I was happy.

Then I saw a dealer offering, get this, $80 cash for Soundwave and $40 for the $5 headband. I know, right!

I told my friends Will and Rich, and ran off to the dealer I sold him to earlier with a tale of woe and regret and I wish I'd kept the figure really, honest guv. He very nicely agreed for me to buy the figure back from him for $65, as I've bought from him in the past. Nice one!

I run back around to the cash offering fool / dealer, bumping into Will on the way. Will has traded several figures in after my hot tip and made great money, Rich is in the process of trading with the dude as I get there.

What does the guy say to me?

“Sorry, too many, no more!”

Thanks to my amazing nice guy attitude helping my friends out, I'm now $65 and back in the possession of fucking Soundwave...

To be continued.

Wal * Mart (to buy toys)

No trip to the US is complete without midnight visits to Wal*Mart. I love Walmart, I really do, and when you're surrounded by hotel prices and hotel bars, it is very wise to stock up on snacks, water and soda...even if the soda didn't agree with me.

Frutiful visits – thanks to Will having a car – scored me some new t-shirts and an RID Prime Ratchet. Yay. It's fun to buy at least one toy from retail.

More toys...

No good deed goes unpunished. Stuck with my Soundwave (and headband!!! Great), I don't manage to offload him until Sunday morning, after resigning myself to the fact I was probably going home with him.

I managed to swap him with an awesome dealer guy for White Berserker SixWing, six Micromaster figures which merge into one figure, the last of the Micromaster combiner re-issues I need to complete my set. One which was currently selling on ebay in my watch list, for $180! Win! I can't complain with that.

Kennedy!!!

Another awesome aside to Transformers was the full Kennedy experience. I'm a big fan of American politics from '45- '72, and it was great to see such an integral slice of history. For every Bill Hicks myth it dismissed it raised four more questions, and my knowledge of both Jack and Bobby's assassinations is now pretty insane since returning home and reading up / watching all the films about it. Yep, I too stood on the grassy knoll, and marvelled and people willing to risk death for that all important photograph stoof on the exact spot he was shot, helpfully marked with an “X” in the road. Classy Dallas, classy. Given how much Dallas hated Kennedy prior to that fateful November afternoon, no-one can argue he hasn't been damn good to the economy.

Parts Parties (to buy toys)

I love the parts parties at Botcon, and this was my first chance to really indulge in them, as this was the first year I stayed in the actual convention hotel. For 2 weeks, I couldn't justify the expense, but for four nights, split three ways, it was worth the money.

Megamus and Megatoyfan stole the parties again, hopefully with less asshole thieves than last year, and I got some great bargains. There was a chap four doors down from our room which had a nice little set-up, and I got quite close to buying the super exclusive DIY custom-class Shockwave / Longarm Prime off him for $200. I didn't really want it, but knew I could flip it for a profit. He ended up selling it for $500, and more power to him. Even though I booked within four minutes of ticket sales opening, I still missed the customs bookings. Next year...

Outside of the regular TF affair was the proliferation and reveals of the third party companies, this year safely removed from the Hasbro eagle eyes on the dealer room floor. Mostly...

Joe photobombing a previous years and this years entry.

Custom Competition

I'm gonna save this for a separate entry and showcase a few of my customs over the years as well, as I've already waxed on enough. Mind you, that's what blogs are for, etc...

More toys, third party edition.

On display at the parts partys was the awesome finished version of Cyclops, and a very close to finished version of Air Screecher, Hands of Steel versions of Shockwave and Starscream, courtesy of MMC and Captured Preys hotel room. These are awesome, and there is a good chance I won't be able to resist all three seekers upon release. I am lucky enough to have fiddled with a test shot version of Cyclops, all in all, this could be the best release of the year.

Also were on show were the awesome Venksta's Hubcap and Bumper add-on kits. I am a big fan of his work and he is a lovely, affable chap with some nice things to say about my custom work, bless him. If you don't have his add-ons for Darkwing and Skyfall, then shame on you. Annoyingly he had Goldbug heads, but as mine were in the post at the time, I had to learn patience...young padawan.

Other third party wins included chrome Drift swords for $10, Devils Horn add-on kit for Cliffjumper for $20 and some more add-on kits from Maiden Japan. I am a sucker for his junkion add-ons.

There were more third party goodies discussed and seen at the show, but several of these weren't for public consumption...yet.

Guests

That guy!

The guests always kind of go under my radar, as I tend to avoid panels and long autograph queues. It was nice to meet David Wallis of Shortpacked infamy, always good chatting with Garry Chalk and the fact he is a fellow smoker (occasional in my case) really helped, I offered to save Simon Furman from an over-zealous fan which I will mock him about in the future (I think they were arguing continuity errors from comics he wrote 25 years ago), caught up briefly with the always busy David Kaye, was reminded by Derrick Wyatt that I have to finish a custom for him (kind of humbling that) and got a chance to talk bad sci-fi with the brains behind the Animated Almanacs again. Can't be bad.

Even more toys...

Some of the best parts of the toy shopping were swapping parts with people and haggling. Although the problem with taking a parts box with me was - not only did it chew up suitcase on the way back – I broke any number of international laws by taking a G1 Megatron IN GUN MODE in my suitcase. Completely my accident. It didn't even register to me as a thing, it's just a junker to me. Oops. I got away with it, which was great, but gave it away rather than attempting to “smuggle” it back. Dumb ass!

I had almost as much fun buying stuff with my guys though, picked up all four G1.5 Axxelarators for Rich, who managed to come back with nearly as many toys as me but did much better on deals than I did. $20 for an Animated Fisitron!!!

The best “win” of the event..

Okay, it may not have been the best figure I bought back with me, but man, how psyched was I when I (finally) got to the Club Store and they had a few Runamucks in stock for $25?!? I refused to rejoin this year, as I have paid $79 every year (shipping is the killer) for the last six years only to see the toys for sale much, much cheaper on the secondary market. Instead, I joined a group order for Runabout (to spread the horrendous cost of shipping and customs, last year I paid close to £200 for Cheetor and G2 Ramjet, only to see them cheaper at Botcon...and I hadn't even received mine yet) and trusted that somehow, somewhere, I'd find Runamuck. $25? I bought two.

Yeah, I'd happily pay £800 for a holiday to save $54 on a toy. What of it?

Save the best 'till last: The people.

This is always bittersweet.

I love America, and Americanna. I collect American toys, I spent twelve years working in a comic shop that sold US comics...I drive a freakin' Pontiac Firebird (with UK petrol prices!). I love America, and I struggle coming home, and it's only been made harder by the amount of great friends I have made in the US. I console myself with the fact that Botcon is only a break from reality, and living in the US wouldn't be a non-stop Mecca of toys and geekdom, that real issues like guns, and employment, and that fucking abortion issue would keep cropping up.

Ill and bloated...or fat?  You decide.

From photobombing with Joe (present) and Joe (absent), selling customs to Will, to fucking about in the hotel pool with Colin, smoking with Chell, getting that one missing Decoy for my collection from Christian, sending a UK exclusive GI Joe convention poster to Kevin (also absent, lazy West coasters!), riding in elevators with the Icks to see the OCP building from Robocop, from meeting new random people who find our awkward brand of sarcastic British humour appealing, being given TF Prime toys that I'd completely forgotten I paid for months ago whilst queueing...

...I miss the guys there. I go for the toys, I stay for the people.

Still, there is always Auto Assembly :)