Requiem for a roBOT CONvention

This weekend is Last BotCon, they say.  One last go for the stalwart of the Transformers fandom.  As the great scribe William Joel once penned, “Stack the chairs on the table tops, hang the sheets on the chandeliers.” BotCon was life changing for me as I suspect it was for many of you.  The friends I have made, the places I’ve gone, the things I’ve done thanks to this convention — it’s astounding when I step back and think about it. I wasn’t at the first BotCon; no, silly me thought it was stupid to drive six hours to a

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BotCon 2014 Reveals Cybertronian Knight Ginrai

Wow. Is he ORANGE. Holy cow, my eyes are going to be seeing the afterimage for days. Normally I like the blue and orange combination (such as in Huffer) but in smaller doses. Holy crap, this is going to take some getting used to. He’s obviously decoed like Fire Guts God Ginrai, but with some blue accents for his windows and shield logo. Speaking of the shield, that does make him seem more like a knight as we know, and BotCon did tweet out that we’ll get swords in a souvenir pack, so I’m looking forward to that. Man. That’s…

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BotCon Reveals 2014 Figure – Decepticon Pirate Scorponok with Headmaster Olin Zarak

Well, to quote a spinach-eating sailor man, blow me down.  Or as I tweeted, Nobody expects 1) the unexpected; 2) the Spanish Inquisition; 3) a new Headmaster figure in 2014. http://t.co/FCDSeLDZfa @BotCon — ASM (@ASMzine) April 3, 2014 I’ve lamented that we weren’t getting Nightbeat as a Headmaster later this year.  I’ve wondered if we’d ever get a Headmaster figure again.  Looks like BotCon has answered my mostly-unheard request, because lo and behold, they just showed off Decepticon Pirate Scorponok with Headmaster Olin Zarak. Look at him.  Look at how glorious he is.  LOOK AT THAT HEAD.  It’s like it’s

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BotCon Reveals the Third 2014 Exclusive – Cybertronian Knight Devcon!

So, although I haven’t talked about the previous two exclusives (but I will soon), I figure that should change with the third reveal for BotCon 2014 – Devcon, the Cybertronian Knight! Some fans have been waiting for a Devcon toy for almost 30 years.  We almost had him twice — he was a potential toy for BotCon 2002 (a race car)and if 3H had kept the BotCon license, we might have had him for BotCon 2005 or later (a remold of Energon Slugslinger). They say anticipation makes the heart grow fonder.  I don’t know about that, but at least in

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BotCon Introduces Us To Tornado, the Decepticon Saboteur, and His Facebook Page

In a nice bit of pre-BotCon hype, the organizers of the 20th annual Transformers Convention have introduced us to Tornado, the Decepticon Saboteur, one the characters who will feature in this year’s “Pirates vs. Knights” set.  And they’ve done this not on their own website, but via a new Facebook Page.  By following Tornado, you’ll learn more about this saboteur via status updates as well as links to his personal logs (which are very handily stored as PDFs on Google Drive.  The Big G even gets used by Transformers.  Who knew?) Tornado also helpfully posted this artwork of himself. Very nice.

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Toy Review – BotCon 2010 Turbomaster (a/k/a Scorch)

BotCon 2010’s theme was “Generation 2: Redux”, a reimagining and extention of the nearly 20-year old (at the time) toy line.  One of the souvenirs was “Turbomaster”, which was a new version of the toy once known as “Scorch”.  A redeco of the Classics/Universe Hound mold, Turbomaster is yellow, orange and grey and comes with the nicest transforming jaguar you’ll ever meet.  But how good is Turbomaster?  Read on!

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Transformers Hall of Fame 2013 Winners Revealed at BotCon

Just moments ago, Hasbro revealed the 2013 entrees to the Transformers Hall of Fame. This year’s TRANSFORMERS Hall of Fame class, as entirely voted on by TRANSFORMERS fans online, consists of the following two characters: BEAST WARS MEGATRON An insane, hyper-intelligent criminal mastermind who led a group of renegade PREDACONS to Earth in search of the Energon they would need to conquer CYBERTRON, MEGATRON became so much more than a petty felon. When the search led to the discovery of alien artifacts, MEGATRON launched an assault on Time itself, seeking to change history to his benefit. He nearly destroyed CYBERTRON

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