BotCon 2002 - Suzanne Ferree

Before I left, I'd mentioned that I was a bit surprised when the Botcon schedule arrived and I only saw three speaker events for Saturday. At the time, I'd pointed to that and speculated, "That means this will probably be a small Botcon." At the time, I didn't mean it as a relation to the number of people who'd be there, but as a feeling that there wouldn't be as much to do as Botcon 2000.

Furthermore, based on that, I decided to take Xiphos up on his offer to ride with him instead of the idea of taking a plane ride this time. I still don't regret that decision. I had a wonderful time on the road trip. I'm not saying that Botcon 2000 "airport hopping" wasn't fun as well, but the road trip was much more fun because I was sharing the experience of the trip.

Err, anyway, back to Botcon 2002. From a technical perspective, there seemed to be more dealers this year and the layout for the dealers was considerably easier to navagate around in comparison to 2000. Even though there were still times where I had to ask to pass through (especially around the Armada preview area--Hasbro should have had that in a separate room IMO), overall it was much easier to travel directly to the table that I wanted to go to (or even to visit all of them).

There was still some price gouging, but spotting some of the silliest ones is part of the fun of the dealer room. As I already mentioned, the most funny one for me was the dealer asking $50 for Battle Unicorn (when most wanted $12-15). Open versions of the small PVCs were much easier to find and much cheaper than I expected (Around here in Bellevue, NE, unopened ones sell for $10.). The prices on opened PVCs ranged from around $3 to $7 to $10 (for "rare" ones).

I found a few items I didn't know existed, as well as the completion of items from my G1 and Japanese wish list (Granted, all the 'Japanese toys' on my wish list were BW molds, except for PVCs.).

I later learned that the scavenger hunt had been canceled (which I honestly hadn't cared about anyway). The autograph lines were long (which, again, I honestly hadn't cared about anyway).

The free toy was a recolored Cliffjumper (Green body, grey windows) keychain named Tap-Out, so I decided to buy the recolored Bumblebee partner (blue body, silvery windows) named Glyph, a female. Both came with a tech spec that was created to match the old G1 collectable tech spec cards (which suprised me greatly. I hadn't thought about them in years).

I didn't preorder nor buy the other two toys. One, of course, was the Cyclonus recolor of the big Jetstorm toy while the other was yet another recolor of a Cheetor, the Nightslash IIRC. Cyclonus looked very well done and the original mold is a favorite of mine, but I don't really have the space for a second Jetstorm toy.

I decided not to attend the Furman/Dreamwave comic book panel, even though over the past few months I've bought three of the four Furman reprint books and a few weeks ago I bought issues 2, 3, and 4 to the G1 Dreamwave comic (I was unbelievably impressed by them.). I'd been impressed by most of those, but I'm a cartoon fan and I wasn't sure if I'd really get much out of that presentation.

On a similar note, while waiting in line for the Hasbro panel, I talked to another person about his impressions of the new comics. I didn't catch a name, because this year's tags didn't have any names to catch. His impression was exactly opposite mine. He felt that the new G1 comic was trash and he kept raving about how brilliant the Armada comic was.

I felt like I was talking to a space alien, because I had the exact opposite impression. IMO, Armada #1 is boring and drawn out in a been-there, done-that explosion-fest. I came into the new G1 comic expecting to hate it and was blown away by the writing. Oddly, both comics are written by the same person.

The Hasbro panel looked very professionally done this year (versus 2000, where for all I know the 'Hasbro' people might have been people they grabbed off the streets and were given a script to read). Surprisingly enough, I really enjoyed myself while watching it (I made a few notes.) and I was equally impressed by the great percentage of good questions asked (as well as the lack of repeated questions).

The only 'bad' thing that happened in relation to the Hasbro panel was near the end. It was only there that I learned that the table with the CDs on it was a place for Hasbro to allow people to receive a free CD for filling out a survey. I'd seen the CDs on the table, but at the time I'd thought that they might have been fan ones. I would have filled out a Hasbro survey w/o any reward at all, and almost every single time we've bought a Hasbro computer CD I've always tried to fill out the survey (even if it's just an e-mailed one).

We were given a choice near the end: we could either come up to the panel in front of the panel room or return to the dealer room to fill out a survey (which I later learned, all the surveys had already been filled out ). Therefore, I missed my chance to meet Swiper in person *and* the chance to give my input on one idea I had all in one blow.

(I should have told more people what shirt I was going to be wearing, even if it is the same shirt I always wear Botcon weekend, whether I attend Botcon or not. How was I to know the tags wouldn't have names on them this year? )

On the plus side, my idea involves Hallmark (I might have mentioned it on here before) and since I'm a long-standing member of Hallmark's Gold Crown club, they have an exclusive e-mail address to e-mail comments/ideas, so I could tell them the idea and maybe Hasbro could hear about it if Hallmark likes the idea. The trouble is that Hallmark only creates one fan-made ornament submission per year. :/ I don't know if I'd be that lucky.

Anyway, the art room was absolutely wonderful. Most of the projects were incredibly top-notch, espeically the dioramas. Instead of simply having a hard time voting on art for the 3-D section (which is always a tough call), I had a hard time voting in almost every section (with the exception of the color art. I don't remember what I voted for, but that one stuck out of the crowd to me.).

I especially had a hard time voting on the dioramas and the BW art. The five dioramas were either incredible or incredibly creative.

1) Predacons in a Barbie house in drag (which received a healthy number of looks)

2) an exact duplication of the front exterior of the Ark and Teletran One (complete with a detailed mural on the screen of the computer)

3) an overwealming horde of the grasshopper Fuzor disassembling a Supreme Cheetor (as well as a checklist of other previous victims--some of the guys were kitbashed with special detailing)

4) a bunch of one of the BW/BM figures (I can't recall which one right now) who had signs up and they were marking themselves down on sale

5) one containing Skybyte in disguise on vacation w/ X-Brawn surfing in a cowboy outfit.

There might have been one more diorama there that I'm forgettting. My favorites out of the 3-D section were a figurine that was the spitting image of the destroyed OP in the pilot's seat from the end of Dark Awakening (which I originally voted for, but erased when I saw the other one). It had looked like it had been done with professional tools.

The other favorite was something that IMO should have been called a diorama. It was several different BM characters consisting of BM Megatron's drone (in an exact likeness), his giant sculpting cloak thing (Again, it looked 100 percent like the cartoon. It was like it had stepped out of the TV.), and a modified dragon Megatron. My mouth stood agape when I first saw that and I immediately erased the DA number from my form.

At Botcon 2000, I didn't really enjoy the black and white, because most of them resembled comic book drawings. This time there was a very beautiful chalkboard type drawing of the Dinobots, as well as a few other amazing drawings (including one that had Mindwipe and a few Headmasters, with G1 Scorponok holding the disconnected robot heads in his right claw.). The Dinobots one impressed me the most.

At Botcon 2000, I didn't take any pictures from the work in the art room, because I felt a little guilty doing so. This time I used up the remainder of my first camera and returned on a second trip to take several photos from my second camera.

BTW, I took two 39 exposure disposable cameras with me. IIRC, I took 5 pictures of the trip there and back. Xiphos and I arrived Saturday at around 10 something and we left Botcon around 9:36 or so. I didn't take any pictures at the voice actor panel. I now have 22/23 pictures to use up. That means, out of 78 pictures, I used 50 of them in one 24-hour period, mostly in the art room.

In contrast, in 2000 I stayed from Thursday through early Monday, brought two 27 exposure cameras (54 pictures), and mostly took pictures from the toy display room (which wasn't around this year). That year, I also took pictures of some of the sights from the airports and I still didn't use up all the film until I returned IIRC.

I believe the only remaining tidbit was the voice actors panel. Again, before I went to this Botcon, seeing that all five would be at the same panel puzzled me. At Botcon 2000, the actor behind Blurr had been separate from the Beast Wars/Beast Machines voice actors. I was afraid that questions would be disconnected (ie. all for one show or the other).

As it turned out, the only problem with the voice actors panel was that too many people from the last color group wanted autographs. That caused the voice actors' panel to be delayed by over half-hour, which allowed me to take several pictures, such as two of the botanical garden and one of the theater where the TFTM aired in 2000.

I ran around taking a few stray pictures and finished up the last of the Saturday purchases instead of waiting in the room. Every once in a while I'd check back. By 36 minutes into the hour it still hadn't quite started yet IIRC, but it had started by the next 'peek'.

I greatly enjoyed the voice actors panel and it was almost as if these actors hadn't all worked together on the same show (versus two different shows). I was especially interested to hear that the recording sessions for G1 were indeed filmed as a crowd, versus the RiD dubs where everyone was separate.

I almost didn't get a chance to ask my question (After I raised my hand, no one else raised a hand. Five minutes later the microphone moderator had said, "This will be the last one" to the person before of me, but the voice actors were nice enough to take mine too.).

Mine was something like "I've seen on behind-the-scenes Disney animated films that animation studios sometimes videotape the voice actors while they're recording the voices. I was wondering if any of you had been in a project where that was done." (I'd thought about that question a few weeks ago.)

One of the voice actors proceeded to explain to the crowd about what I meant and why studios did such a thing (He also added that it was sometimes done with sucessful projects--like Shrek to have something to add to the DVD. ) The only one who said he'd had that happen was the voice actor who'd done Tracks and those were apparently personally-recorded video tapes that he wouldn't want to be shared. He didn't say what project/cartoon said tapes were connected with (which means it likely wasn't TFs).