BotCon 2001 - Thylacine 2000

A Botcon report? YEAH, RIGHT. These will be more like semistructured ramblings, divided up in such a way that, hopefully, it won't be a soulless retread of crud you've all read an infinillion times over the last week.

Botcon Location

Durham does NOT suck, though it took rather a bit of getting used-to. I mean, the only people in the whole town were BC-attendees, and a Johnny Appleseed statue that will probably never sit down comfortably again.

(Speaking of which -- will "Give him a reach-around, why don't you!" end up in the final sentence of the copyright paragraph of Cybertronian # 3?)

Well, I under-exaggerate. There was also Maurice, the batty McDonald's manager. Hey, it's time to play "Guess This Stranger's Ethnic Background And Mock It!" with your host, Maurice! Followed by "Guess Which Of These Strangers Most Recently Had Sex!", starring Maurice! We love him so.

And some homeless people, who were so desparate for panhandling-money that they were on BICYCLES. True. The town was dead-empty, so good begging opportunities are few and far between..... leading to the phenomenon of DRIVE-BY BEGGINGS. They rode on their bicycles until they found groups of people, at which point that they got off and begged for money. That's a new one right there, ayup.

BotCon Facilities

The hotel was superb. The staff was 110% professional and courteous and accommodating in every regard--leagues beyond what we got at '99 in particular. I hope nobody SERIOUSLY gives a damn about the pasta dinner being switched for a portabello mushroom. I mean, it happened to ME and I don't care. Prioritize, folks!

Okay, slow elevators, but still. While you're waiting for the elevator, you can schmooze with Simon Furman or try to decipher whether that scary long-haired dude who just walked in is in fact NRG-Man. And you overhear the funniest stuff, too. HI, ZACK!

Pacing/Scheduling

This in particular, I think, could have been handled a bit better. I think it is finally time for them to just start scheduling BC around a convenient three-day work weekend, because there's just not enough time for everything. And this year in particular, the schedule on Friday seemed rather..... *off*. Check-in at 1pm, but dinner's at 7:45? I seem to recall we had way less "neutral time" last year. Similarly, the Clarinet Theater was big and ornate and impressive, certainly worthy of a BC showing of TFTM.... but with the movie shown at 8am on Sunday, apparently nobody went. Pity.

Events/Guests

The inaugural dinner was great -- I shared a table with Steve-o, Pic, Perc, Sipher, Xiphos, Jameel, Ben Yee, and Phil Zeman, among others. Actually had some honest-to-Gobstoppers insightful and erudite Transformers conversation going on. Well, when we weren't staring in silent befuddlement at the dude who wore a BW Megatron cardboard head-cube *THING* to the dinner. Um. yeah.

By the way..... WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE who are WELL into their twenties and do not know what "semi-formal attire" means?!? We had folks on the dinner line who were in crummy-looking untucked T-shirts and other assorted sleazedom. And, I'm sorry, the Megatron luau shirt is NOT formal just because it has buttons on it, darnitall.

Anyway. Other noteable events included the G1 VA panel (Michael Bell sure does love to say "penis" and its synonyms; he also spit vigorously all over Gregg "Actually Monocle!" Berger"), the G1 creator panel (nobody asked Paul Davids the right sort of questions, I fear), and the Beast VA panel, which was HILARIOUS.

Let me elaborate. We got to see Garry Chalk do an impersonation of Scott McNeill acting out a fight between Dinobot and Rattrap. I ACTUALLY GOT A PICTURE OF HIM DOING THIS.

"Time for y'all to compare your lives to mine and then kill yourselves!"

Of course, I came damn close to killing *myself* when I hadda wait over FOUR SOLID HOURS to get Scott McNeill's autograph. Blaaliaiugghhhhh. Some people just don't understand that "two items" really does freaking well mean "two items". Ah well. Garry Chalk helped out by wandering up and down the line signing stuff.... he was so cool, I must say. I mean, he didn't let Scott's obvious FanGrrl-dom get him down, and he even barged into the middle of the 3H panel just to holler GOODBYYYYEE! at all of us. In my dreams I am Garry Chalk. Talking about my own butt and burping in front of thousands of strangers and getting cheered for it.

And as for the 3H panel.... I thought it was very funny that the 3H dudes put up with all the usual silly fannish questions, but got semi-vehement in denying that there'd be a Springer Wrecker toy. "She's living with Rodimus now. She's moved on. Springer was ringing *THEIR* doorbell. He's out of the picture. DEAL WITH IT!"

Other answers were even more fascinating.

"Will we ever get new molds for BC exclusives?" "I'll answer that next year."

Exclusives

The way Glen had been going on about talking to Hasbro about "remolds", I thought for sure we'd be getting something seriously new as the larger exclusive..... so when he said "Arcee", well, my first response was to quickly snap a panoramic picture of the 2,000 shrieking fans who immediately jumped to their feet and had seizures, and my second was to assume that it would actually be a *new toy*. As it happens..... well, I'm of two minds on Arachnarcee.

On the one hand, I think it's a bit silly.

On the other, it's a bit-silly remolded toy of a G1 character with a thorough backstory and an ELECTRONIC TALKING BOX that only I and 801 other people besides me got to get.

"Time for y'all to compare your lives to mine and then kill yourselves!"

And of course, there's Tigatron. Glorious, gorgeous Transmetal Tigatron, with his "I incorporate video-game canon into the comic- and cartoon-continuities!", and his quick-draw "I must kill you, because God told me to!" action, and his total beautitude. I think Dan Khanna was born to draw that character in this body. It's so awesome.

And the comic....? Well, it's not completely my cup o' tea. I absolutely adore the follow-up story, which was written by Bob Forward and (unsurprisingly) reads just like an episode of Beast Wars that happens to feature some prominent toy introductions.

By far the BEST exclusives are the dinner-exclusive BW prints. These things are so beautiful, I'd have been tempted to meet Mainframe's price of $3000 apiece Well done, 3H!

What else, what else..... I liked "All Fall Down", though it was plagued by UNBELIEVABLY FAKKING HORRIBLE PRINT DEFECTS. I went through three sets of trades, and they ALL had defects, including the one I'm now stuck with. The first had a giant diamond-shaped wad of paper around a bottom corner of all the pages; the second looked like it had been chewed upu with a buzzsaw, a perforated line being drawn through every single page; the third has a nasty indentation puckering the middle of the top frame of every page. Damn British printing presses. Toss 'em in the harbor, says I.

And I want "Artistic Transformations" just for the cover art. All the movie-character toys lined up on a grand piano. Cuuute!

Dealer Room

Neeeaaaat stuff here. Worlds better than last year's, that's for sure.

Nearly all of G1 easily accessible. As usual, MIB Jetfires were everywhere, $200-400. Practically everything else was available both loose and MIB as well. Tons of carded AMs, and *all* the Pretenders were available loose if not boxed as well. Amazingly, it seemed as if all of G2 was in attendance too; a friend expressed wonderment at how easily he'd completed his set of Laser Rods.

Avalanches of G1 stuff repackaged in foreign boxes at very fair prices.

Refreshingly little TFCR, with the entirety of RID wave 1 in its place. (This stuff was EVERYWHERE. People were bandying it around like gang colors or something.) The various acts of PVCs were omnipresent as well, as were their $25 giant knockoffs that I *almost* wanted to buy just out of spite.

Korean stuff was amazingly common. Korean Starscrem/BB, Korean Gigastorm, Korean Big Convoy, Korean Dai Atlas, Korean Sonic Bomber--EVERYWHERE. And Captain Shark, mustn't forget Captain Shark. Arrrr.

Basically, if you wanted *late* G1 or any of G2, you were in luck.

J-stuff wasn't so diverse, especially not compared to the astonishing glut that had been at BC99. I saw exactly two Deathsauri (one of which was badly incomplete) and a Red Geist; one Minerva; one Blue Bacchus; maybe two Overlords (compared to 30+ at '99); the Same Damn Sad Yellowed Loser Grandus that has been at the last six Botcons running; I *heard tell* of two Star Convoys and one SkyGarry. And that was it, really. Star Saber and Dai Atlas were common, but beyond that? No Soundblaster/Twincast, no Dinoking or Liocaesar, no mint Dinocassettes (the one Diaru was missing some paperwork), no Operation:Combination other than the car/jet two-packs. Oh, and I saw the exactly one Blackshadow I've ever encountered in person -- does that count for anything?

Prices ranged from very fair to very surreal. The highest tag I saw was on the Unicron prototype at the WhizBang toys table: $12,500. Coming in distant second was a Marlboro Wheeljack ($2000), prototype Windmill ($1500), French Diaclone Prime ($1495), and ATB Megatron ($1000, also at WhizBang; the same table had numerous G1 prototypes, an unproduced ActionMaster, and some original G1 model sheets / cels. Droooool.)

The UK dealers remain on bluddy crack: Action Master Elites "discounted" to a mere $700, but the standard UK-AMs skyrocketed to $500 to compensate. $160 for the AM powersuits. $500+ for all MIB/MISB series-1 G1 toys.

Indeed, prices on many G1 figures were just arbitrary and bizarre. Especially, I'm told, Scourge and Cyclonus. $90 *loose*?

Oh, and this was also my year of getting ripped-off and having to pester dealers for refunds, whee. I bought an allegedly MIB Skystalker, only to find that it was missing many stickers. Returned it for a refund. Bought a second one, this time seemingly perfect -- not til I took it home was I able to discern that the giant double-laser was missing its connector post, and some stickers are upside-down or misapplied. GOD DAMMIT, IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR "MINT" TO MEAN "MINT" AND "COMPLETE" TO MEAN" COMPLETE"?!?!?

Not long thereafter, I bought what I thought was a MOSC Tailgate for $25, only to later notice that it had actually been removed from the bubble which was then taped back on. Very angry, I returned it to the dealer (different guy) and requested a refund. He eventually obliged, though he implied that I ought to have just magically known that the toy COULDN'T be sealed with a price like $25. "If it had been sealed, it woulda been $85", he assured me.

"$85," I stammered. "For a two-inch-tall minicar that hasn't had the bubble slit open. $85. Dude, I was *sure* that asking even *$25* for one of these things meant it had to be guaranteed sealed."

Guess I'm just real naive or something. Got my money back, though. Then walked right next door and bought a loose mint Tailgate with the card for way less than that. So at least that worked out nice.

Still. Between "All Fall Down", Tailgate, and Skystalker, I was just one craaaazy refundin' fool this past weekend.

There *were* some sweet deals to be had, though. More to come in a bit.

Oh, speaking of dealers: Part's Parts Party was very creepy. Like, trying to shoulder your way over to the water-cooler while a gangbang is going on, sorta creepy. You're trying to participate in what seems like normal-life socialization, and all kinds of weird peple are doing VERY weird things all around you, and totally violating your personal space in the process. Ironically, not a soul there was willing to buy my Super God Fire Sword, so I ended up foisting it off--er, helping Phil out by letting him buy it, yeah.

Revelations/Hints For The Future

The HardHero TF statue folks were in the dealer room, selling the OP bust. Looks fine. They had the pre-production art for Megs and Soundwave too, and that's BEYOND fine.

Doug Dlin and the Antarctic folks pulled through: Cybertronian-2 was there, and kicked my ass for the remainder of the weekend. Super well done.

Blue Megs blah de Cryotek blah Target blee. A TF / Visionaries crossover? Considering what Hasbro Direct has done in the past, who knows?

First episode of RID has all the re-editing and dubbing completed, and all that remained as of BC-time was the addition of sound effects. THAT was a welcome relief, after the BW actors sorta-kinda implied that it was possible the show hadn't even begun productio yet!

The status of Megabolt is still totally up in the air, sadly.

Wreckers toys as Hasbro mockups. Let's see how I feel when the surprise has worn off.....

Miscellany

Mon's homemade beer ruled, and didn't even kill any of us, even. I got a pic of Scott McNeill drunk out of his mind on it, and Simon Furman chuggin' away. Steve Stonebraker is still a cool roommate, and much props must be extended to Walky for reserving the room for us in the first place.

The Final Haul

TM Tigatron Electronic Talking Arcee Which You All Wish You Had Ha Ha Ha Ha Thhbppt Incomplete Falsely-Advertised Shit In Box Skystalker Loose With Card Tailgate Case of PVC-3s (thanks, Swift!) Battle Unicorn (thanks, Hoop! Hope you like the Joes! Even though I had them all up my butt!) Snap-together transforming kit of Galvatron Super Hybrid Model Galvatron (the dark blue Internet mail-away edition) Super Hybrid Model Galvatron (lava orange edition; thanks Raksha!) Both handguns for Fortress Maximus (thanks Rose!) Guns for Squeezeplay and Octane "All Fall Down" hardcover Cybertronian-2 Rereleased TFTM musical score Fan posters by Walky, Dan Khanna, and M "That's How I Say Good Morning" Sipher

TTT, whoa, a BC at which I didn't get a single piece of MISB merchandise that would actually *transform*...... musta been ill or something.....