What a pretty little package

Just thought I’d let you all now that I am doing a big sell-off of various Botcon toys, mostly 2012, but some old gems as well. Everything started at $.99 so get watching this stuff!

Autoballs

A new low – get your own made to order Transformers Ukulele! Nothing says hippie sac like this thing. Check it out on Etsy, or maybe soon on regretsy.

Don'tcha'll pull a fast one on me, ya hear?

I knew something wasn’t right when I saw Fall of Cybertron Sideswipe during the Hasbro panel at Botcon. It wasn’t completely obvious, but it is true: Sideswipe is a remold of Jazz with a huge ass gun instead of a pea-shooter.

So maybe before you start praising Sideswipe, make sure you weren’t one of the FOC Jazz haters, mmm kay?

Well, there you have it!

It’s been a rough year for the little toy company that could.  After a decade of not caring, someone at Hasbro has decided to flex some legal muscle.  Shutting down a Facebook page is not really serious business but it just shows what they can and are willing to do these days.  What’s next?  Transformers fan sites? =-O

This just in from 2012 Cybertroncon - Asia-only right? I'm calling bullshit brigade on that one.

So Botcon 2012 has come and gone and with it some surprising revelations. The most important of these I am listing below in no particular order:

• Transformers Collector Club subscription service starting soon with 6 exclusive figures available in the initial roll out.  This subscription service is expected to replace the usual 1 or 2 club exclusive figures that are available each year.  This will make for all intents and purposes a second boxed set of toys for fans and members of the TFCC.
• Transformers Generations will induct a new voyager class starting with War for Cybertron Soundwave, later being repainted to Soundblaster.  It can be expected that this is the size class for the all but confirmed Fall of Cybertron Grimlock figure to rival the giant Bruticus.  We might even see a reinvented Megatron or Optimus Prime in this size class.
• All the drama and fan rage over the mixmatched War for Cybertron Bruticus figures can be put to bed after the more video-game accurate paint-scheme will be available as a San Diego Comic Con exclusive set.  Also showing up at SDCC is the Zombie Cliffjumper figure that seemingly vanished after the reveal at Botcon 2011.
• MP10 will be released at Toys R Us with all accessories and a new paint job.  The only question now is the price…
• All the Cybertroncon Asia-market-only exclusives revealed a few months ago may not be as exclusive as everyone feared, however there was no official mention of this in any panels.  More below…

So after the Hasbro panel, I visited the display box where the employees were setting up the new figures.  There is a lock box at the bottom of the display where all the toys are kept prior to being revealed.  The staff had to do this while everyone was ganged around the front of the case.  I, however, mulled around in the back and caught glimpse of something that shocked me: a small green G1 legion-class Hoist.  It was right there, plain as day.  One was in robot mode, the other in vehicle.  The female Hasbro staff then rolled it back into a sheet of bubble wrap and placed it back in the bottom of the case while the other staff member prepared Airachnid for display.  I didn’t have time to take a photograph and there were too many people in the way, but it was there.

This is what I saw, and that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it

G1 Hoist as a cyberverse or legion class figure was revealed months earlier in mock-up stage (check the image up top) and during those reveals, everyone in the USA cringed or cried at the thought of all those toys being exclusive to Asia, requiring import prices.  Well guess what guys?  It’s time to wake up and realize that some if not all of those toys will be seen in the USA at some point.  Hasbro has enough trouble producing a full toyline at all, let a lone two toylines concurrently that would be cut off from larger sales numbers by being sold in the USA.

So purple, so refinded.

For the past few years, Botcon has offered the elusive Custom Class. I have been lucky enough to attend the class over the past two years and have reaped some incredibly benefits, like selling my Animated Minerva for an insane bag of cash. I won’t be selling this year’s figure though, oh no. I was able to create the very cool and clever Shattered Glass Longarm, which is a sort of bizarro classic-ized animated Shockwave.

So dark, so scary... so awesome!

I collect Shockwave figures, and indicated by the comically similar custom Shockblast I bought earlier this year. I cannot wait to photograph the two figures together.

The bag of plastic parts that all attendees of the class start with. There is a long road ahead of us!

Shawn Tessman and his crew outdid themselves this year with two custom parts – a resin Shockwave head and an arm gun. The parts came in white and purple versions with most people preferring the white, which was a little easier to paint.

These were the two possible custom parts that came with your custom figure. Both are resin piece, one a white set and the other a purple. The Purple gun arm was somewhat transluscent, but very rough.

When I first heard of Shattered Glass Longarm during my hungover stupor enroute to the hotel, I thought “WTF IS THIS CRAP!?” But then I realized the catch that it was just a roundabout way to make a Classics Shockwave, and I was very very pleased. Not only does Shockwave have a history with Jazz molds, this was a way to bring some canon from Animated back into the forefront. Longarm was the alternate persona for Animated Shockwave, the Decepticon spy. Now in the shattered Glass Universe, the tables have turned. Longarm is the evil Autobot posing as Shockwave, the benevolent Decepticon. He is also in the alternate persona’s colorscheme instead of his own, which would’ve been a sort of black, teal and gray. I love it.

This puts the arm in Shattered Glass Longarm

This figure was incredibly difficult to put together due to somewhat confusing instructions, and some last-minute changes at the factory in regard to the screws used to assemble the chest and hood to the body. Screws were replaced with pins, causing some headaches for everyone involved. I personally messed up about five times and had to disassemble the same parts over and over again. I broke for lunch to get a breather.

These are the official samples we were supposed to work from. Of course, it's your figure so you can paint it however you choose, but this example was quite good and I stuck to it as best as I could.

Problems aside, the figures turned out awesome. Everyone’s is a little different, and you get lots of choices in regards to how you want to display it. Gun arm? Longarm head? Shockwave head? Vehicle mode?

Time to put his foot down

I expect these figures to reach an inflated value of around $1500-$2000 based on the popularity of Shockwave. Do not forget that the number of figures is doubled this year to 120 versus last year’s 60. My friend’s was already up to $900 24 hours after completing the toy. Yikes!

They upped the attendance from 30 to 60 this year. Too bad the mold was unexpectedly difficult to assemble.

Grape ape has got some legs

Gettin' the paint on, instead of waiting in line to assemble everything for 2 hours

It's coming to life!!! Just needs da head!

In closing, the custom class is still one of the best events at Botcon. Some suggestions for next year would be perhaps 3 cyberverse-sized figures that are easier to assemble so that time can be focused on painting. I want to extend my thanks to the staff that put on this event and hope to see you again next year!!!

See Collecticon’s feature on the custom class from Botcon 2011 featuring Animated Minerva.

The finished product is logically awesome.