[BotCon 2001] BotCon 2001 Report
cmq
the Marriott quickly and the staff managed to take control of the line
before it got too out of hand...since the line starts forming well in
advance of an hour before scheduled registration was to begin, that
assistance really helped keep things from becoming too
chaotic...repeating the well-streamlined process of last year, there
were four separate stations to claim your registration packet depending
on where your pre-reg # fell and the line seemed to disperse within an
hour...the official t-shirt had the homage to Giant Size X-Men #1, with
Hot Rod, et al bursting thru the image and the fancy badge ID lanyards
were 100% better than last year's (remember the flaw that allowed so
many badges to be lost throughout the weekend?)...the art room setup
seemed to be much more planned out this year, as people had to register
their pieces before setup with the staff member running the room (not a
bad way to do it in the future, it seemed to work well)...
Friday night dinner: I shared a table with some guys from
Transfandom.com, a really entertaining bunch of characters...there was a
slight miscommunication between the convention staff and 3H over the
menu (specifically the pasta dish, which was substituted with a veggie
mushroom dish...and that made for a dicey situation at my table for a
few moments! I thought a riot was about to break out! )...the guests of
the convention were introduced to the attendees, including surprise
guest Gregg Berger (voice of Grimlock, Skyfire, Long Haul and GI JOEs
Spirit among other animation roles) and the convention
exclusives/merchandise revealed...
The dinner exclusives were a pair of Maximal and Predacon Beast Wars
images produced by Mainframe! Measuring about 12" x 20", one featured
the Maximal cast members from all 3 seasons standing on the rocks in
front of the Axalon and a rocketing Autobot Ark...the Predacon image had
the same appropriate cast members (except Inferno strangely...Glen
explained he was in the CR tank when the photo was taken) on the rocks
in front of the lava-crashed Pred ship (I know its got a name...) with
some Vok and the Decepticon cruiser Nemesis in the background sky...they
were great pics, printed on heavy stock and very reminiscent of the
images 3H got as trivia game prizes for BC 99 (a lot of people were very
jealous of that prize, it's nice to see 3H somehow managed to get
similar images for the pre-reg dinner guests...though not at some
cost...apparently it cost $1000 for each piece of Mainframe rendered art
used on the toy packages and something like $3000 per character or
something outrageous like that for the dinner prints)...very expensive
but well worth it, they're really special...
Also shown at the dinner, the toy exclusives..Arcee! You could hear the
gasps when Glen announced the toy, and as the room fell silent someone
yelled "It better not be a Headmaster!"...She is a TM2 Black Arachnia
repainted in off-white and pink tones with classic-looking tech specs
(red decoder strip included in the package!) and a fold-over cover to
the box that shows some of Arcee's martial-arts talent moves...a nice
touch to the toy is the Autobot/Maximal rotating spark (she has an
autobot symbol on her chest too-no removable bra piece)...and the kicker
was a light-activated voice chip (only in the 800-odd toys being picked
up by the pre-registrants-the rest were non-sound) featuring Susan
Blue's voice! Glen commented later that weekend that, having tons of
the toys loose and in the middle of being packaged, they sounded like
the Borg Queen when they all went off at once when the lights were
turned on! It is a quite impressive toy, and a lot of people were very
excited over the piece! Glen kept trying to get the toy to talk, but
the low lighting in the dining room didn't cooperate!
The second toy was a repainted Beast Wars Metals X-9, aka Ravage,
renamed Transmetal Tigatron! Done in white and blue colors, with a box
with foldover flap ala Arcee that featured a nice cgi rendered scene on
the back of Tigatron vs the recent TM2 Tripredacus Agent and Primal
Prime vs a Vok-possessed Fox Kids repaint Tarantulus...Inside, a classy
looking photo illustrated instruction sheet (just like gen 1) and
stickers! Tigatron comes with a spark crystal sticker on his chest, but
like Ravage, you can replace it with a choice of 2 other stickers: A Vok
alien or a Maximal symbol...little stickers for his shoulders included a
Maximal symbol AND a Wrecker insignia (the blue quasi-gen 1
Autobot-looking symbol featured prominently on a lot of convention
merchandise this year)...another great toy! And he came with the 3H
produced Wreckers #1 comic! Apparently the toys arrived quite late,
about a week and a half and four days respectively before the convention
began! The loyal BotCon staff got all the toys packaged and sent off to
Durham in time in an amazing display under pressure...their efforts were
top notch and truly supreme...
The comic is a really slick looking piece of work done by Glen hallit,
Bob Forward, Dan Khanna and Rob Gerbracht...featured stories include the
formation of the wrecker team featured so prominently on Botcon Beyond's
site (including some classic gen 1 characters reborn into new forms),
the origin of Arcee's new form, and some rather shocking events
regarding some less-than-beloved gen 1 characters (you'll have to buy
the comic to see! It's really worth it, and they probably have a number
left over after the con closed...3000 were printed, and about 1200 went
into the toy boxes in an attempt to recover some of the costs of
printing so many (the price of the toy was bumped up slightly to make up
for the costs of making the comic)...
Other con exclusives included the second in the BotCon plate edition,
this one featuring a tribute to the TF movie (Unicron and the movie
Deceps looming over Hot Rod and the new Autobot heroes)...a couple of
additional t-shirt designs (of the movie Deceps, the other the movie
Autobots)...the hardcover edition of "All Fall Down" reprinting TF
#69-74 comics (a nice product in this format, hopefully the next chapter
can be done in hardcover as well so the sets will match! Diamond is
carrying the trade paperback versions of both volumes so check your
local comics shop!)...3 Vince DiCola cds were released, a newly
remasterd Movie soundtrack printing (Lighting their Darkest Hour), a
demo cd (The Protoform Sessions) featuring early versions of the movie
music/vocals with Gary Falcone instead of Stan Bush, and a piano version
cd (Artistic Transformations) of some TF movie music...
Saturday morning the line started sometime around 6 am, and
unfortunately due to some sort of electrical problem the dealers were
having to allow for credit card transactions, the dealers rooms didn't
open until about 40 minutes or so behind schedule...once the kinks were
straightened out, the mobs swarmed the large and small dealers rooms and
you could really appreciate the amount of merchandise that was
inside...it seemed as if there were more merchants and much more
merchandise around than any other previous BotCon that I had attended
(there's nothing like seeing rows and rows of the same transformer toy
at seemingly ALL the tables!)...there were a few tables with Robots In
Disguise toys (mostly the gobot basics, one with Sky Bite and the Pred
recolors, Megs, and I don't think any had Prime and Magnus or the car
brothers)...a lot of packaged Beast Wars toys could be found, TF Car
Robots were still a presence as well as the other Japanese BW
series...and what seemed like a lot of packaged Gen 1 stuff too (where
does it all keep coming from???)...HardHero Enterprises was there with
their Optimus Prime cold cast bust, a really nice looking piece! They
had designs for Megatron, Prowl and Soundwave at their table too...It
was pretty much mass craziness early Saturday morning as both dealer
rooms were overflowing with people!
There were more than a few Fortress Maximus (Maximi?) around for prices
ranging from $300 to $1500 depending on completeness! Some interesting
things to be found at some tables included one of the Unicron prototypes
(it apparently sold to someone that weekend for who-knows-what-amount)
and another with copies of the art boards for the cancelled Trans-Tech
line (Optimus looked almost like one of those wedge-shaped battlebots
from the tv show Robot Wars/Battlebots...Cheetor had unusual curving
loops around his fenders in car mode...the much-discussed Cerberus
toy-not looking like the Webdiver toy-had some bizzare name like Bad Dog
or something akin to that...Starscream was a futuristic jet...Megatron
was apparently a tank again...I don't recall what Shockwave looked
like)...it was interesting to see and mysteriously the pics disappeared
later in the con (some people speculated the Hasbro people didn't take
too kindly to that and asked the dealer to remove them or even were so
outraged they left the con, but apparently that wasn't the case at all
as 3H explained later on)...
I ended up picking up an Omega Supreme complete ($90 plus $10 extra for
an incomplete Cloudburst inner robot & gen 1 Silverbolt) and a Sky Lnyx
($40)...the 2 Japan BotCon exclusives Grizzly-1 and DoublePunch for $30
apiece loose...Octane w/o weapons $20...a bunch of bootleg chase pvc
figures (the weapon arm Optimus and Megatron)...one of the items I was
hunting for was the pvc chase figure Fortress Maximus from act-3's
collection...quite a few dealers had them, with prices ranging from $75
for the clear version to $100 for the colored (Wizzywig had them all
beat when they put out one late Saturday for $30)...I also picked up an
Icepick Pretender (I still need a foot, but at least now my Monstructor
has a second leg to stand on!)...
The Japanese dealers were back, with some neat little penny racer super
deformed TF cars...another dealer was raffling off a boxed Grand Maximus
($10 per ticket, dunno how many tickets sold but you gotta figure he
probably made up for it)...strangely a video dealer was present selling
(of all things) bootleg Shrek movies and obscure video esoterica...one
table had a lot of cool knock-offs that looked quite attractive in their
professional style packaging (BW Neo Big Convoys, BW2 Gigastorms, some
really nice looking Defensor and Bruticus copies that had slight
modifications-Hot Spot had a basket on the end of his ladder)...there
were tons of loose toys everywhere, it seemed like you could pretty much
find anything you wanted (I exaggerate of course, there's ALWAYS
something you're looking for that no one seems to have) and it was kinda
fun to dig around in the junk boxes to pull out some pretty decent
looking toys I never had (like Sandstorm) and figure out how the
transformations worked...
The first panel of the day was the Gen-1 voice actor panel, and it was a
treat to see Michael Bell (Prowl, Sideswipe, among others...he does
voice actor training in addition to acting/voice acting), John
Stephenson (Thundercracker, Alpha Trion, Mr Slate from the Flintstones!)
and Gregg Berger (Grimlock, Skyfire, Agent K from MenInBlack) answering
questions about the good old days...among the amusing anecdotes, Bell's
description of Mel Blanc's Speed Buggy impression (imagine an even more
saliva-spewing Sylvester the Cat and you'll understand why no one wanted
to sit next to Mel during recording sessions! Michael described his
right sleeve and arm covered with Mel's saliva and a hilarious story
about guest voice Alan Oppenheimer being lured in by Michael to sit next
to Mel and the astonished look Alan had on his face when the spit began
to fly...John lamented the fact that cartoons are not done like the old
days, like in radio when the entire cast was present and could play off
each other...Gregg mentioned the Simpsons is perhaps the only animated
program that is still done the old way, script reading in rehearsal and
the entire cast recording at the same time...since the show characters
were some 17 odd years removed from the present time, a lot of the
actors had difficulty recalling how they did a certain character (eg
John with Huffer) and apparently a lot of fans helped out in their
rediscovering of their voices...how celebrity actors seemed to be taking
away jobs from strict voiceover artists...there were the obligatory fan
requests for specific line readings and such (Gregg did a Grimlock meets
Duckman's Cornfed Pig routine, Michael did a rousing "Yo Joe!", and John
told stories about Wally Burr, the vocal director who was quite the
dictator at times when it came to reigning in the hijinks in the
recording room-he almost did a line reading for Orson Welles until Mr
Welles asked "You're NOT going to do a line reading for me are
you?")...perhaps the most unanticipated moment came during a discussion
of how to break into voice acting as Michael Bell began by explaining
how someone may be able to do a voice but unable to literally act while
doing that voice was like having a tool without the skill, and akin to
'having a 12 inch penis, if you don't know how to use it, it's no good
to anyone' and that brought down the house! It was certainly a treat to
hear from these actors and the time flew by quite quickly...
The Beast Wars actor panel later that day was entertaining right off the
bat...from Scott McNeil's new Fabio-esque hairstyle to Garry Chalk's
self deprecation, the BW actors had the crowd wired and laughing the
whole session! Garry related the infamous coke incident (he had tdrink
a can of coca cola to perform a belch and instead coughed up a geyser of
foam which he promptly sucked back in when he inhaled in horror!) and
Scott related how, in a heavily congested and crowded supermarket, he
said in a low, gutteral, demonic voice "GET OUT OF MY WAY!" to his
wife's chagrin a few aisles away...they did numerous requests: some Hack
and Slash from 'Reboot'...a routine where their characters ordered
takeout from McDonalds...Waspinator saying "Whassup?"...Wolverine
meeting Rattrap...Garry was asked what he thought of his 'Dark Angel'
co-star Jessica Alba being voted one of the sexiest women in the world
and he graciously praised her acting ability and beauty until Scott
chimed in with a "But she's no Venus Terzo!" They also spoke of voice
acting basics, how they looked at the art reference and tried to get
into the character's head and figure out how such a character would
speak...and mirrored the Gen 1 actors that when it came to discussing
breaking into voice acting and how difficult it was, how one must be
prepared to convince whoever is hiring that they are the person who is
needed and how much easier they will make that persons job if they get
hired...Garry had the misfortune (in the low lighting and his 'bad
eyesight') of identifying a female questioner as a male and of course
Scott didn't let him forget it for the rest of the session! Garry
lamented the fact that Primal never developed a sense of humor (his only
sarcastic line was in episode 1!) and Scott reiterated how he never saw
Dinobot's demise coming ('Dinobot saw it coming 4 episodes earlier, but
me...')...It was an incredibly entertaining session as usual, the BW
actors really look like they love meeting the fans!
The Charity auction brought in about $1500, with Hasbro donating the
entire RID line for auction (the prices seemed to be a little low,
perhaps because all the toys had already been out for all intents and
purposes for a year in Japan and here by default via importers)...an
incomplete lava Galvatron BC Japan exclusive went for over $200, with BC
Japan's Fumihiko offering to send the one missing piece directly to the
winner of the auction...
Speaking of Hasbro, their panel on Sunday was indeed cancelled (I had
fears the 'vomitous' comments last year was cause for the payback of not
showing up this year, but Glen said that the recent closing of the
Cincinnati HQ-almost all the 3H contacts there were let go-and
relocation to Rhode Island, the summer vacation period leaving the
offices shortstaffed and plain old scheduling difficulties/early flights
led to the cancellation) but there were a few reps there during the
Friday dinner and most of Saturday...The RID show was not finished (no
sound effects yet) as of the BotCon weekend, so it was not screened, but
3H did try to get it...Voice cast is unknown but the BW actors didn't
seem to know if they would be on the show or not (presumably if only the
sound effects are left, the voice tracks have already been done by
another group)...so we don't know whats in the works after RID...
There were a couple of fan panels dedicated to Japanese transformer toys
(some rarities and how to get them from Japan if you ever go there) and
cgi movies featuring rendered gen 1 characters (among others) in a
pretty neat display of what can be pulled off in animation when you
don't have Mainframe's budget or computer power...
Saturday wrapped up with the exclusive pre-reg trivia contest/Vince
DiCola concert...the contest was done ala Who Wants to be a Millionaire
(in this case a Transformaire, $500 top prize)....10 contestants picked
10 lifelines out of the audience (they also got a 50/50 lifeline but no
audience poll)...The questions were pretty evenly balanced so that
super-knowledgeable fans didn't necessarily have an advantage over more
casual fans, and the show ended up being quite a bit of fun (no one got
to $500, I think 2 people went away with $150 prizes)...following the
contest (with Vince DiCola music effects! He played the Jeapordy theme
and Jingle Bells too if I recall instead of that threatening
Millionaire-ish music) was the concert, where Vince and Gary Falcone
(who was the first vocalist of The Touch and Dare before Stan Bush was
hired) performed some new and some classic TF movie tunes/songs...
Sunday morning: The Carolina theatre, which conveniently had an access
corridor to the convention center, played the theatrical version of
Transformers the Movie, and it was quite a thrill to see it on the big
screen again! The video room was running Beast Wars seasons 1-3 over
the weekend, so this was pretty much the only chance to see the gen 1
characters larger than life (or at least larger than the tv back
home!)...
The dealer rooms were pretty quiet throughout the movie showing, a lot
of them were actually starting to pack up before noon! It seemed as if
there was a lot more product than demand this year (have we reached the
saturation point yet as far as collectors go?) and a number of tables
began to clearance stuff to avoid packing it all up and bringing it home
(one table had 50% off everything, and they had quite a number of boxed
items, a $150 Fort Max after discount, among others!)...lots of bargains
to be found! I saw a lot of Car Robots Brave Maximus toys going to new
homes...
Speaking of Gen 1 characters bigger than life, MST3K tore "Aerial
Assault" ('AHH! I'm possessed!'-Slingshots reaction to his
appearing/disappearing rolls royce chest grill animation error) and
"Dark Awakening" to pieces! Some of the biggest laughs were the Daniel
line "I see dead people!" in the Autobot crypt and the "That's for
getting me killed in the movie!" line the resurrected Prime uttered as
he blasted away at Hot Rod's chest! The Beast Wars/Machines episodes
butchered were the one with the cyber-raptors (It's Jurassic Park 4!)
and the hate-plague show (gets the red out)...
The comic/gen 1 show panel followed, and Paul Davids (production
coordinator from approximately episode 14 to the end of the series)
reflected on how he was chosen for the job (he took off for an 'early
lunch' from his regular job, did the interview and started working on TF
that very same day in his new job!)...he spoke about how much producing
the show was like balancing spinning plates, you had to make sure
everybody (writers, storyboard artists, foreign animators, voice/sound
recordings) was busy at the same time or the entire process crashed to a
halt! Even then, the shows often came back with outrageous
continuity/animation errors and would have to be sent back to be
corrected (and sometimes the corrected film came back with more
errors!)...a lot of the third season episodes were farmed out to other
animation studios (Toei was working strictly on the movie by then so
studios in Korea, Singapore, etc go the work) were so bad that entire
chunks were eliminated from the final episode and thus padded out with
those Transfomer Universe-esque bumper segments or left in because they
had no choice (I had always suspected they were done to increase the
running length of some shows)...one attendee commented how frightening
that statement was considering how many animation goofs actually slipped
by! Paul also wrote some episodes ("Cosmic Rust" was an AIDS analogy,
an out of control disease running rampant)..."Grimlock's New Brain" was
a twist on the many stories of a sub-intelligent guy getting an
intelligence boost but ending up losing it as the effect was temporary
(in this case the twist was Grimlock deliberately sacrificing his brains
to give the Technobots life)...
Simon Furman related how difficult it was to squeeze stories in the UK
comics into USA continuity especially with the weekly nature of the UK
run...pretty much anything done could not affect the USA continuity, so
when the movie era characters were introduced it allowed Simon to run
wild and explore many more ideas due to the gap in time periods used in
the USA comic and the movie era characters time period...He discussed
how Death's Head started out in the TF comic and had so much potential
that he got spun off into other non TF books and finally his own
book...Simon related how he clicked so well with Geoff Senior and Andy
Wildman while doing the UK comics that he made a point of bringing them
along when/if he ever got to do the USA comics...among the other artists
to work on TF in the UK were Bryan (JLA) Hitch (who is also doing the
cover to the trade paperback collected edition coming out soon that
follows the "All Fall Down" storyline) and a few other comics notables
who are pretty big names now...Simon hopes a hardcover edition of comics
#75-80 can be done to match the BotCon edition, and after that, more of
the USA comics reprinted (perhaps eventually the UK run as well, if the
film can be found)...
The art room had a number of interesting kitbashes (a submarine/sea
vehicle version of Seacons that transformed and combined) and customs
(there was a nice Silverbolt figure that looked exactly like his cgi
robot mode) and dioramas (one had a buch of Sharkticons tearing Kup and
Hot Rod to pieces, another had Prime and Megatron dueling over a
billiards table, another a lynching of Go-Bots) and costumes! There
were three rather cool costumes, Megatron, Prime and Arcee...Megs and
Prime were about 7 feet tall in full costume (stilts in the boots added
to the performers' heights) and were pretty impressive looking! 3H had
a bunch of interesting recolor toys (the Wreckers) on one table plus the
blue TM2 Megatron (rumored to be a Target exclusive 'Cryotek' in the
fall...among the neater recolors were a purple ultra Jetstorm with
Decepticon stickers (Cyclonus) and a black deluxe Jetstorm also with
Decepticon logos (Skywarp)...green Ramulus (apparently an early
production run of these were done but then abandoned in favor of the
magenta version that made it to stores) became the Wreckers version of
the same character...a purple Obsidion basic coptor became Rotorbolt, a
blue and red Mirage became Devcon, and a purple and white Snarl became
Alpha Trion!
The wrap-up panel was informative as always...Glen lamented the slow-but
steady growing nature of BotCon was starting to result in some
less-than-acceptable behavior from some people (nasty language and
violations of personal space were the two things he mentioned...he
didn't name specific instances but I put two and two together and think
that maybe the electrical snafu with the convention center and the
dealers may have been a part of that) and he reiterated that it would
not be acceptable next time at all (if an example needs to be made it
will be done to an offender)...BotCon continues to creep out of the
small convention status and into the medium standing, which may affect
which convention centers they start looking into next year (Atlanta was
too expensive, others in the South were too small for the con as it
stands now-approx 1800 people attended this year, 1100 pre regs and
about 700 walk-ins)...whether BotCon ever settles in at a permanent
location is a possibility but not one that is being looked into at the
moment...The growth of BC has resulted in a sort of change of status
with Hasbro in terms of formerly being the 'unofficial' TF convention
but with growth has become more and more 'official' despite still being
'unofficial' (though Glen hinted that it may change for the better next
year). Relations with Hasbro remains strong (despite the almost
disastrous snafu with the production of the toys, done within the last
month and delivered mere days before the con due to changes in the
restructuring of Hasbro)...
3H apparently had a lot of choices in regards to molds for the exclusive
toys (not TM Terrorsaur, since that was being used for Dinobots
Terranotron, so no TM Fractyl)...they were interested in seeing which of
the Wrecker figures on display in the art room the fans would like to
see made...regarding the Gen1 Takara molds being used was not a priority
as Takara is seemingly repainting everything they put out and it just
wouldn't be special enough...3H apparently put an end to spqkky's ebay
auction of the Tigatron earlier this year by buying the thing
immediately (Glen wasn't too happy about things like this sneaking out
and really tried to make a point to not feed the scalpers/sellers of
dubiously acquired merchandise)...Glen seemed to hint something
regarding the Quintessons was coming up, whether a pvc style figurine or
something entirely else was not specified...it's probably unlikely a Gen
1 music cd will ever be made as the rights lie divided between 4
companies and going through the legal hoops with 4 different companies
seemed too daunting for the 3H staff to tackle....likewise some light
was shone on the Frank Welker situation...in addition to him being a
extremely busy man, he is also very private and probably would not
submit himself to the crush of fan attention (Glen didn't rule out a
conference call/modem line interaction interview/q&a session as a
possibility and Michael Bell and Gregg Berger share the same agent as
Frank so maybe if they report back that they had a blast...)
Whew! That was pretty much the weekend! I have to say the time passed
both slower and quicker than I expected as the weekend seemed to last
forever but when it was done it was like: It's over already??