Omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod omigod!

It's Ironfist!  He was the attendee exclusive figure!  If you bought a BotCon box set and came to the convention, he was yours for free!  Oh my lord!  Oh holy crap!

He's Autotrooper, but in orange and teal!  AND HE'S IRONFIST.  Who knew that Autotrooper's head painted up differently was like the perfect Ironfist!  Seriously, mo'fo'in' Ironfist!

IRONFIST.

Like, Last Stand of the Wreckers style!  ANIMATED LAST STAND OF THE WRECKERS IRONFIST.

Never has a more beautiful set of words been strung together.  Never ever.  This toy is my pride and joy.

Excuse me while I go change my pants.

Shattered Glass Megatron was my favorite toy from BotCon's Shattered Glass year.  And because BotCon simultaneously hates me while loving me with great booth real estate, here comes a toy to replace him.  Curses!  I don't want to replace my Megatron!  My Megatron is great!  That is a dumb idea!

But, see, a while ago Fun Publications scribe Jesse Wittenrich painted up his War Within Springer to be Galvatron, and it really really worked.  It was a pretty amazing idea that you have to see to believe, because, dude, who'd believe it otherwise?  A helicopter guy?  Meh!  But it does work.  And I guess it was such a great idea they decided to off Megatron and bring him back as that Galvatron design.  And now there's a toy of it.  A toy of it that came with something I really wanted, Shattered Glass Thundercracker, so it's not like there's any skipping it.

So here he is!  Galvatron's admittedly a very pretty toy, but his prettiness isn't my problem, it's the kicking of Megatron's toy the curb that's my problem.  Evac's always been a good toy, no matter who he's been redecoed into, and Galvatron's no exception.  Galvatron's probably even the prettiest of all of them.

(It's been noted that SG Megatron's Rumbler tank arm cannon thing can still attach to Galvatron's arm.  There's a 5mm peg on Galvatron's right arm and a 5mm screw hole on the underside of Rumbler.  So there's that continuity of arm-cannons going on as well in Galvatron's favor.)

So what I think I'm gonna do, since I'm not prepared to put my Megatron away, is use SG Galvatron as... Galvatron.  The "real" one.  Universe Galvatron's way too tiny and Energon Galvatron, the guy who I'd been repurposing as G1 Galvatron before, is way too big.  SG Galvatron's the right colors (sans the eyes) and he strikes the middle ground, size-wise.  He's neither a midget nor a giant.

Thus, I have not wasted my money, nor have I spurned one of my favorite toys.  Everyone's happy!  Kind of!

I've always wanted to do one of the annual BotCon customization classes, but never had before due to needing to fly in a day or two early.  I've got comics to draw!  But when this year's BotCon theme was revealed to be Transformers Animated, I had to ensure that I got in.  The customization toy is almost always a mold from that year's toy set, and I wasn't gonna miss a potential new Transformers Animated character.

And, hey, whaddya know.  Animated Minerva.  She's a white and red redeco of Animated Arcee (also used for Animated Drag Strip that year in the box set) with a new part that gives her antenna.  The piece doesn't alter the toy itself, rather, you place it inbetween the front and back halves of her head when you screw them together.  It's a very fragile piece, since it involves two thin stalks of resin, so I'm gonna have to be careful with her.  For the trip home, I folded her up into car mode and shoved her in the box set's foam insert area for Drag Strip.  Like hell was I gonna wad her up in my suitcase!

There's two classes, Wednesday and Thursday, with about 25 people per, and each participant is given a tray, tools, a booklet, and a big bag of unassembled parts, screws, and rivets.  The toy parts are all still on their plastic sprues.

The booklet outlines all of the tools you're gonna use, plus identifies each of the toy parts as being part of the torso, head, right arm, etc.   The first step is removing all of the plastic toy parts from the sprues and organizing them by these groups.  This, like basically everything in the class, is more difficult than one would imagine.  Very few of the parts come free cleanly.  Most you have to sand or knife away the excess residue.  But some you have to take, like, scissors to, because the connection point to the piece and the sprue is really thick.  Clamp down hard as you can, finally the piece gives way, it goes flying across the room...  and then you get to sand or cut away what's left of the sprue attachment point.

Once everything's removed and separated, you put the thing together piece by piece.  Most things are relatively easy to put together, but some things, like where the rivets go in, are difficult to work with.  There's rivets of various size, and the only difference between them is a millimeter or two.  (That's why you get a ruler!)  Once the correct rivet is sorted out, you have to try to get it through the joint you're trying to create.  This usually involved pliers.

As the toy's being assembled, it's probably smart to paint some things as you go.  The red on the top of her torso, for example, was something a lot of people airbrushed.  This involves taping around the sides of her torso piece so that the red doesn't go where you don't want it to.  I tried this out myself, but I ended up with a goopy red thing because I don't know what I'm doing.  So, woo, I ended up dumping the torso in the glass of delicious-looking clear blue thinner, sanding off what didn't wash off, and hand-painting the red instead.

After several hours, you're done.

It's rough, but very rewarding!  I feel very strong ownership over my Animated Minerva.  I made her!  I'm like her daddy!  AND NO DON'T TOUCH HER OH MY GOD THE ANTENNA.

Waspinator won the Fans Choice Transformers Hall of Fame thingy. You can't blame me for it this year!

UPDATE: I has a table. Look for Bumblebee!

So I'm not gonna have a table at BotCon.  I sent in my California sales permit form weeks ago, and it never came in the mail.  So after getting turned away at registration, I figger, okay, after putting together my customization class figure, I'll travel all the way across LA to Van Nuys to get the form in person.  No big.  Well, SORT of a big.  The trip requires three trains and a bus and then half an hour of walking to get to the office.  So of course after undertaking this FOUR HOUR TRIP, you get to the office and they laugh at you because the place is only open for a half hour more and they require ten more minutes than that to process your form!

I also asked about the form I faxed in weeks ago, wondering, hey, it might already be processed and I can just pick it up.  Ha ha ha, no.  It is not processed yet.  Obviously, California does not want my sales tax money.  I wonder why this state is friggin' broke.

So you go home, time wasted.

And I sure as hell ain't doing it again tomorrow morning.  I got crap I gotta do!

So, I guess, I am not meant to have a table at BotCon.  Things will apparently proceed as they have in years past.  You find me, obvious luau-shirt-wearing self that I am (it's red this year, not orange), and then if you want a book or a poster, I'll have them on me.  In my backpack.  It is the Shortpacked! booth express! I will also be happy to just say hello.

I apologize for the last minute switcheroo.  But unless Fun Pub says "ha ha just kidding you can have your table without the bullcrap form that the state doesn't want to give you ever ever," I'm not gonna be at a table.  (And judging by the sheer number of artist alley folks who ALSO don't have the form, it's going to be a very friggin' empty artist alley indeed.)

Sitting at an airport and everything!

I have a table for a limited portion of the convention, since there are things at BotCon that I want to do, but even when I'm not at my table I'm pretty easy to spot.  I'll be the guy in the red and yellow luau shirt!  (Not the old orange-and-blue, that's been retired.)  I will even be able to process credit cards from my backpack.  That is how much the future this is.

It will be marvelous.

Look, I really have no idea why I picked this guy up.  Of all of my Dark of the Moon streetdate purchases, this is probably the one I can least rationalize.  Barricade's not in a new body.  Barricade hasn't even been seen since the first film, even though they cut out his death so he could show up in the second one.  And there's been no inclination he's showing up in the third, either.  Plus I have a Barricade!  And that Barricade comes with friggin' Frenzy!  This Barricade comes with a stupid oversized gun/claw.

But... new Deluxe Class Barricade!

And so he was added to the pile.  There are aspects of him that I really like.  For example, I like that he's Barricade.  Police cars are awesome.  I like that he's got his stumpy legs and long-ass arms.  I like that this one's head can turn.  I like that Frenzy's absence means the innards of his chest can be dedicated to other things, even if not having Frenzy is lame.  Instead of having the hood try to compress into his robot mode chest, there's just a bit of detail at the front that flips around on a barrel, Battle Armor He-Man style.

What I don't like is his friggin' feet.  They're on reeeeally shallow hinges, so if you push his ankles just a millimeter the wrong direction, they pop right out.  This happens constantly, and it happens even more when you're trying to figure out his leg positioning.  It's kind of really stupid.

And less stupid, but still sort of annoying, is how his feet get shoved into the middle of him on the way back into car mode.  It's a very very tight fit.  Excessive force may be required.

And even less stupid, and mostly ignorable, is how his MechTech weapon doesn't fit very well into his hand.  His hand is articulated at the palm, so it's rough to get the palm to securely hold onto the 5mm peg.  Also, the MechTech weapon is kind of dumb (a claw), but that's why this is mostly ignorable.

That sounds like a lot of negatives versus the positives, but it's harder to enumerate the ways that he looks pretty cool.  And he's Barricade.

I was just about to open with something about how all of Sideswipe's toys seem to be pretty awesome, but then I remembered the Human Alliance version.  Clearly my intended assertion is not true.  But still, a pretty good percentage of movie Sideswipe toys are pretty awesome!  I really liked the Revenge of the Fallen Deluxe Class toy, I don't own Sidearm Sideswipe, but I hear he's pretty good, and I like this new Dark of the Moon version of Sideswipe as well.

One of the reasons I picked him up is that he's in a new body this go-round.  Well, his robot mode might not be any different, but now he's (as I understand) the actual production version of the new Corvette Stingray, rather than just the concept.  And he's a convertible!  The convertibleness is probably one of the reasons why I'm so smitten with this new form.  Since he's got no roof, he's got something approximating a detailed interior.  He's got seats, a dashboard, a steering wheel... all really cool things that add visual interest.  Not many Transformers cars are convertibles.

What Sideswipe doesn't have, though, are floorboards.  You can look right through him from the top, peeking at the ground in between his seats.  He's a Flintstones car!  This tickles me.

Unlike the previous movie Sideswipes, this one doesn't have a silver paint job.  That's kind of disappointing.  Instead, he's a flat matte French gray-ish thing.  Not a dealbreaker, but it's something he's lost from his older iterations.

Sideswipe is known for his giant arm-mounted blades.  You know, the ones with which he cut Sideways in two!  Poor Sideways.  And because two arm-mounted blades that can easily bisect any Decepticon just isn't enough, his MechTech cannon also auto-converts into yet another blade that he can carry around in his hand.

That's kind of overkill, Sideswipe.

Despite my still huge backlog of first- and second-wave Dark of the Moon toys, I'm talking about a third wave guy I picked up today.  That's just how I roll sometimes.

(You'll note a pretty mundane word is being auto-censored right now.  It's an experiment I'm doing.  Ad revenue from one of my adservers is oddly down this month, and this is also the month that, because of writing the phrase "Dark of the Moon" all the damn time, I'm suddenly classified as an "asssstronomy" site.  I'm usually classified as a film site, because ... I don't know.  But I was wondering if I ditched all the Lunar references and got myself back into the film category revenue would increase, because I'm a curious nerd like that.  (A curious nerd who likes money.)  Also, I changed all of the "dark of the moon" tags to "transformers 3."  Anyway.)

At some point in the past few years, I've started to really enjoy movie Starscream's design.  I don't know if I like it as Starscream, per se, but I enjoy it regardless.  Why these things happen is hard to discern.  Starscream's not from a particular design philosophy that I usually enshrine.  Perhaps it's rooted in how much I really like Leader Class Starscream from the previous movie's toyline.  And so a current attempt at that same design in a smaller size caught my attention, I guess?  But I had force myself to pass up Deluxe Class Starscream himself.  I had the perfect Starscream already.  But this guy, Thundercracker, isn't Starscream!  I don't have a movie Thundercracker.  There've been movie Thundercrackers, but I don't own any of them.  And, woo, such a pretty blue.  Yes.

Yes, I shall buy a Thundercracker.

And he's a pretty great toy, all things considered, once you get past the whole relative scale thing.  He's certainly not clear of robot mode parts on his jet mode underside, but he's no boat, either.  I'd say he has amazingly small amounts of robot mode parts silhouette for being a smaller Deluxe Class toy that looks as much like the movie's design in robot mode.Everything smooshes and folds up and compacts pretty well, even though sometimes that means it's compacting up against the undersides of the wings.

Getting him in and out of both modes isn't a frustration party, either.

Thundercracker comes with a blue version of Roadbuster's okayish chainsaw.  He also comes with a sword which I am guessing is the top half of the MechTech weapon that came with Starscream's Deluxe Class toy.  There's a notch at the bottom of the sword that looks like it connects to something else.  Hmmm.

And nearly most importantly, Thundercracker is a very attractive blue.  I almost picked him off the peg with my mouth instead of my hand.