BotCon 2008
54 pictures

Movie Scout-class Arcee makes a good Chromia.

Because the actual Chromia is colored like Moonracer. Whee!

Robert Powers is having a good time.

A very very good time.

Look away!

Jackpot and Mike are wild and crazy guys!

Photo by Steve-o.

On Thursday night, Jack (actual name Matt, but who the hell calls him Matt?) and Mike were asked to fill in for a local improv group at a nearby location. They were totally awesome.

9:45am Friday, into the buses!

Photo by Steve-o!

We got an entire bus to ourselves the morning of the Hasbro tour. The perks of being last in line! The tour guides Hasbro hired tossed us some Transformers movie inflatable balls to bop around. Maggie snagged one, but I won it from her through means I will not detail.

The hallowed halls of Hasbro!

Don't let anyone know, but I was there for the Baby Alive.

Everyone was broken up into groups of about 25 and passed around from station to station, where an employee would give us the lowdown on a certain area of production. You can see one such station at the cloth-covered table half-way down the hallway, and another next to the black cases to the right. Another was inside one of the conference rooms on the left.

Toys in various states of undress!

The station at the cloth-covered table mentioned above is shown here. We were shown toys at several stages of production, ranging from loose test shots to near-final toys to final toys in test packaging.

WHA-CHOW!

At the end of the hallway, Hasbro had "Photo Op Alley," if I can recall its name precisely. It was basically a bunch of giant display pieces for, you know, photo opportunities. Here I am testing out the giant Spider-Man Origins packaging.

I hate my stupid monkey blood.

Titaniums is cancelled, apparently.

Here's two toys that got the axe, Cybertronic-body Bumblebee and "Classics" Cosmos.

And two more!

G1 Arcee and Shockwave are two more Titaniums that died along with their toyline.

Movie design progressions

Aaron Archer manned this station, which featured several boards full of the Transformers' movie design process. He pointed out the stage at which he visited ILM and made them make them look more like the original characters. For example, Prime didn't have any antenna at first, and so Archer went all hollerin' and now he does.

The horror.

Nothing to see here, moving on...

"Nice of you to finally notice. And no, I'm NOT okay."

Friday night was the tenth annual MSTF, which, like always, involved M Sipher, Doug Dlin, and Phil Zeman sitting in front of a screen making fun of Transformers. This year we snarked the 1986 movie (again). In one of the intermission skits, I played myself as a stab victim.

Gray Robot Heroes prototypes of movie designs!

The second wave, seen here, features:
Protoform Prime vs Starscream
Bonecrusher vs Bumblebee with All Spark cube
Brawl vs Ironhide
Scorponok vs Prime with sword

RH Scorponok is really the best thing ever.

Leader-class Brawl!

He's huge and he's coming.

...that came out wrong.

Payload

Payload is a Decepticon drone from the video game who transforms into an armored truck. He seems pretty damn tiny for his size class.

Longarm

Based on a nontransforming tow truck seen in the movie, Longarm's vehicle mode says "ORSON'S TOWING" on the side, a nod to Aaron Archer's old screen name.

Judging by Longarm's head, I'd be unsurprised to see him redecoed as Hoist eventually.

Dropkick

Another video game drone! Now this guy is fuckin' awesome. It's hard to decipher in my crappy photography, but he really clicks for me. That, and his vehicle mode (a pickup truck) has a giant Decepticon symbol across the top of it. Probably the biggest symbol-to-surface ratio on a TF toy ever!

Rescue Ratchet

Here's a redeco of Movie Ratchet in white and red as original G1 Ratchet. See that red helmet? That's my fault. I nagged the deco artist until he agreed to give him his Marvel Comics colors instead of the cartoon's.

Hasbro's Materpiece Starscream

Yep, they're bringing him over and he's in G1 colors. A Wal-mart exclusive, apparently!

I already got the one I want, though. This one's kinda an eyesore, to me.

The sales floor!

A giant Movie Prime statue was the centerpiece of the room.