Friday afternoon registration: quite a queue developed in the lobby of 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...
BotCon 2001 exclusive Arcee
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 Men In Black) 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...
Scott McNeil and Garry Chalk
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 a la 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??
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