I'll definitely BE at BotCon.  There's no question about that.  But other than one year a decade ago, I've never had a dealer table there.  That one year I went home making more money than I'd spent, but it was a very miserable, cold experience, because I didn't get to see anybody or sit in on many panels 'cuz of the whole have-to-be-at-the-table thing.

But now that BotCon has this artist alley thing they're trying to cultivate, I'm tempted to try it out again.  Mind, I would absolutely not be at that table all day, every day, like I am at every other convention.  I'd have to close up shop, throw a bedsheet over everything, and buzz my way into panels I'd want to see.  I'm comfortable with this.  I'm selling paper goods, not MISB Overloads.  But would you guys who are going to BotCon and also interested in patronizing my wares, would me not actually being there 50% of the time be worth it to you?

Basically, what I'm asking is if whether I can at least sell, say, 12 books to cover the table and shipping costs.  Or 19 Dinobot posters.

I was gonna make a bigger post later on, but apparently they're, like, 50% sold out of Primus Package sets already. So, uh, yeah, Animated seems to be doing pretty well for Fun Publications.  Run over there and sign up for some expensive toys if you desire them, before it's all gone.

Me, I'm just really thankful I was able to get the Customization Class thing.  I've never tried to do it before, but the idea of an Animated character in toy form that I don't own sounds like a horrible thing that would destroy me.  (Okay, it could be a nonAnimated mold if there are any nonAnimated souvenir add-on sets, but that's much less likely, given the statistics.)

Glad I drove home early from C2E2.

BotCon's continued to roll out the exclusive toy previews.  Last week we got Breakdown, who is roughly the fifteen millionth Breakdown BotCon has done in its time.  But the first in G1 colors!  And the first that referenced his head design in the original cartoon, which was entirely different from the one his toy had.

But I've sort of hit Breakdown saturation, so I didn't blog about it.

This week, though, I'm excited again.  BotCon's revealed their third toy, Drag Strip, who's also in original Drag Strip colors.  ...as a girl.  Ha ha ha.  She's been female-ized!  There's only so many sports car molds in the Animated toyline, see, and Arcee happened to be one of them.  So this is a thing that has happened.

I'm actually all for it.  Arcee's a great mold, and the Transformers universe can use more chicks.  Especially yellow ones.  The BotCon Twitter feed seems to suggest she's characterized as Kill Bill's the Black Mamba, who was also a sword-wielding yellow chick.  Watch out for your eyes!

NOTE: No, you are not the first and/or only person to come here and make a HUR HUR DRAG AMIRITE?? joke.  They tire me.  They will be deleted.  If you want them, try every single other Transformers forum or blog on the face of the planet.

Man, earliest BotCon reveal ever, or what? Sure feels like it.

The theme for this year's BotCon convention figure set has been revealed, and everything's coming up Animated.  You thought it was all over, didn't you?  Ha!  Animated will never die!  It's like the bad guy in the horror film who always springs up that one last time after you thought he was dead, except in this case instead of a serial murderer or whatever, it's a beautiful person of the gender of your choice who will have sex with you all night long.

It looks like the box set is going to be strictly Animated-style Stunticons, and the first one we get to see is Dead End, who's a redeco of Animated Jazz.  He is, according to Animated character designer Derrick Wyatt, who was responsible for helping put this together, a "depressingly dour beat poet."  Which is pretty awesome.  And explains the facial hair he's rocking.

Guess we'll be seeing Motormaster, Drag Strip, Wildrider, and Breakdown some time soon.  (Man, we got a Breakdown last year, too...)  Now we get to speculate who's going to get made from whom.

This past year, it seems Hasbro's been doing its darnedest to do mainline retail versions of guys from the BotCon 2009 set.  I talked about Kup a few days ago, there's a Banzaitron in stores (which I didn't buy because I preferred the BotCon version), and now here's Generations Scourge.   There's also Dirge, Thrust, and (soon) Thundercracker in stores, which replaces a chunk of the BotCon 2007 set, but that stings a lot less, 'cuz, hey, I've had those for nearly five years by now.  It hurts more when BotCon toys get replaced in what feels like a few months.

But hey, that's why BotCon should probably stay away from popular guys who are undoubtedly going to get new toys at some point, like Kup and Scourge, and why BotCon 2010's set is more valuable to me personally.  Hasbro's probably not chomping at the bit to make Rapido or G2 Breakdown so much.

That said, I'm pretty okay with getting a new Scourge.  I never thought BotCon 2009's Scourge, which was Cybertron Sideways with a new head, worked well as him.  He was a space jet, but beyond that the similarities weren't really there.  It did help that BotCon also offered a set of Sweeps that year, which helped the illusion that this toy was Scourge, via sheer number, and I figger I'll keep using those Sweep toys even with my new Scourge that doesn't match.  Hey, they're the only real, actual Sweeps toys!  I mean, you COULD buy multiple Scourges, but...

Despite being an entirely new toy designed to be Scourge from the start, Generations Scourge transforms into a very similar altmode to BotCon Scourge, albeit a more real-world approach than alien.  Either altmode is pretty different from the original Scourge's altmode, which was a flying bathtub.  I'll allow it.  The most important thing, I maintain, about this new altmode, is its undocumented feature.  In the original cartoon, Scourge could stick his head up out of the back of his flying bathtub form, an artifact of his preliminary design.  Well, dude, look who can really do that now?  And no, it's not just an accident.  His head pulls up an extra notch not needed for the transformation to robot mode, undoubtedly just to recreate this oddity. Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

There are a few annoyances with the transformation to robot mode.  Firstly, his wings like to pop off when you try to get them into the proper positioning.  There's a lot of friction back there with the parts surrounding his wings.  They're also kind of a bitch to put back on, since there's not much room given for the hinge to slip back into the socket.  The other annoyance is due to an opposite problem -- it's hard to get his feet pulled out of his legs.  There's no groove to get leverage, so you kind of have to try to wiggle them back and forth for a few minutes, hoping something gives.

Another undocumented feature from the instructions is that you can open his wings to create a more-accurate "caped" appearance.  Opening the wings also gives you a place to store his two guns in vehicle mode, which combine into a bigger gun via a C joint.  The combined gun looks a lot like Scourge's 1986 Targetmaster parter, Fracas, but it does not transform into him.  (Though since Universe Cyclonus's Targetmaster partner is basically Fracas already, and I have an extra, I can remedy Scourge's Nebulan-impairment pretty easily.)  The gun on Scourge's head is also C joint compatible so you can clip one of his handheld weapons onto it.

Overall, this Scourge is a much better companion for Universe Cyclonus than the BotCon version, which served as a helpful stopgap in the meantime.  I prefer the facial hair on my Transformers to be painted, after all, so you can see it better.

If you're fixing for a Scourge of  your own, TFSource has both the American and Japanese versions available for preorder.

I remember, long ago, when I dared to dream of a world where Action Master characters would be given new toys that can transform.  And not just, y'know, one or two, but a whole fleet of them, as if it were God's mission to give every single last untransformable guy a new transformable toy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, that world is now.

Axer was actually the first!  True to the circumstances of the time, he was just a random redeco with his name planted on it.  That's how it happened back then.  He was a black motorcycle.  Sort of fitting, since Axer was a nonstransformable robot who rode a transformable motorcycle, so it was close enough at the time.  But he was in the wrong colors and, judging by how the original toy's sculpt looked, actually transformed into some kind of automobile.

So, woo, hey, hell yeah.  About ten years later, Hasbro's given us our second Axer.  Okay, he's called Axor now.  And, being in the live-action film continuity, he's likely a different guy, though since the first Axer was a dimension-hopping fellow, I'm pretty okay pretending Axer and Axor are the same dude in my Personal Canon.  They're both ruthless bounty hunters, though Axor's now got some sort of stalky/fanboy thing going on about Lockdown.

Axor represents one of the first instances of Hasbro's new mandate for Transformers toys: they all have to have alternate heads (and/or other parts) planned out ahead of time and put into the original tooling.  That way, they can give more individuality to their redecoes, so that not every redeco shares the same noggin.

So Lockdown's tooling has not only his own head and his hook-arm, but also somewhere on the sprue there's a Axor head and an Axor axe.  Depending on what toy is being produced, one set of those is gonna be gated off.  (Or still produced and thrown back into the vat, who knows.)

Giving guys new heads used to be the territory of BotCon, but, whoops, now Hasbro does it constantly.  It's got to be getting pretty tough for Fun Publications, now that Hasbro's cranking out all this stuff that used to be their bread and butter.  Not even G2 is safe!  Not even Pretenders or obscure Victory guys or comic-only characters are safe!  Hasbro will scrape the bottom of the barrel long before FP even gets a chance!

So, yeah.  New head, new axe, new deco.  It's BotCon all year long now.

Transformers Collectors' Club

Hey, remember the BotFail! dudes?  The ones who got all pissy because BotCon wouldn't host their terrible Transformers panel?  The ones who couldn't TELL us why Beast Wars sucks because this very potent information was the heart and soul of their really super awesome panel which was the basis of their entire e-penis?

This is it, on YouTube.

Oh, hey, also I'm finally getting around to auctioning my BotCon 2010 bagged set!  It comes in a bag, and is bagged.  In the bag are five toys!  Even the toys are individually bagged.  There's a lot of baggage!

So if you want Pyro or Clench or Streetwise or Sky-Byte or Breakdown, you might want to check it out.  I was going to single out one of them as one you REALLY have to have, but that's basically all of them, because they're fantastic.  Well, maybe not Streetwise.  I mean, sure, he's Shaft, but he's not nearly as pretty as the others.

They are so pretty.

You should bid on them.