OTFCC 2004 - Soundblaster

Once again I am sorely disappointed in this convention that truly has great potential as a fan get together. I have nothing bad to say about the dealers in the room, and am very happy with the purchases I made at the convention. All the dealers should be commended with their attitudes and the camaraderie that they have always shown us in the fan community, but now on to the fun stuff...

This years convention friends was once again in the Rosemont suburb of Chicago, a mere 20 minute drive for me from my oh so happy home. I have this terrible tendency to wake up at the crack of noon everyday, so the fact that I arrived late for the convention on Saturday was a surprise to no one especially me. Another thing that did not at least surprise me, was the fact that OTFCC once again did not start on time. It wasn't even a little late, it was over a half hour late, a half hour that well others couldn't buy toys, or see the Hasbro display.

This year following my despise over the toy exclusives at last years convention and knowing that the choices for toys for this years convention would be limited to the Armada line, I did not pre-register for this years convention, Thank God! After the fiascos that happened with the hotel and the convention center, and the toy exclusives being dropped from 3 to 2 I was just as happy to walk in for the convention instead of finding out what promise would be the next one broken.

Considering I was a walk-in and I arrived late for the supposed start of the convention the large number of fans standing in the lobby made movement difficult. However what made moving around even worse was the fact that the only signs in the lobby for OTFCC were for pre-registration pick ups. The large lighted booth with the large signs saying TICKETS were for another convention taking place in the building on another floor of this huge convention center. At least they were able to tell me were the small, very small, table was hidden in the corner on the other side of the escalators were the walk-in badges were being sold. I thought it was very nice that the one page map that they gave us when we bought our tickets told us to look on page 2 for the map of the dealers tables.

Let's talk some more about the lack of signs shall we? After spending a few hours in the dealer rooms renewing old acquaintances with dealers and friends attending the show, as is my want I went looking for the Art room to see what my fellow trans fans had made of themselves this year. After asking three different people, and consulting the nice one page-shoulda-been-two map that we were given, we finally found the sign for the art room. It was on the floor being made right in front of me with a cut cardboard box and a black sharpie. Hmmm $20 dollars for a walk in ticket, multiplied by at least thousand people I saw there smart enough to not pay pre-registration prices, and the other thousand who pre-registered and paid around a hundred for the experience. Now if you add it all up, I would have expected that there would have been enough money for the guy to go to Kinko's and have some signs made up. Silly me. Hell I have this nice thing I use every day called a computer. I think it may have even been possible to make the signs right from it. Hmmm, something to think about for another year maybe.

I won't go into the panels, autograph sessions, or art room, because that is something that really depends on the participants and the audience. For the most part they follow a simple formula. First a small presentation, followed by a question and answer period where someone always asks a voice actor to order fries at a drive thru in a certain characters voice. Once you've heard Ironhide say, "Well that's just Prahme", when he's asked if he wants fries with that it just starts getting stale, very like the fries.

The Hasbro booth had some nice surprises, like the fact that the Tracks Alternator will actually be blue, and the Meister Binaltech looks really sweet, I'm still rather put out with the fact that the Swindle Alternator is just a repaint Hound. Mainly cause I want to see what these people could do with a gestalt team. Yeah Yeah, I know...Dream on. Some of the other things still piss me off, toys that aren't even out yet are already getting recolors and repaints, why? I don't even know if I'm going to like the first version. Just because its a variation, Hasbro seems to think we serious collectors are going to throw good money after bad. I am a serious collector, but if I come across a bad toy I will only buy one. Oh now it comes in *gasp* blue, or in the case of the Viper sisters that OTFCC had the gall to call remolds, which if you stop and think any deeper than "tee hee look pink lips" you start to wonder why the HELL does the Decepticon one have an Autobot symbol on its arm....Remold my ass.

My favorite moment of the convention was climbing into my car and realizing that the 11 bucks I paid for parking does not go into the pockets of Glen or his 3H Productions.