While the BotCon convention will return in , BotCon as a place for fans to interact, to share stories, and to grab some new BotCon related memorabilia is here now! Check out our Facebook and Instagram pages and be sure to look at our official partners for official product and more great content! Botcon also allowed an opportunity to tell official comic stories with fan favorite characters in new worlds and situations. Some original Botcon characters have also been adapted to mainstream comic books and cartoon series.
These affiliate advertising programs are designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to those affiliated sites. All Rights Reserved. Established June Here's how! Thanks to the convention's own twitter , we have confirmation that the upcoming Pete's Robot Convention this summer will not only show the proposed toys for a Botcon - one that unfortunately will never happen - but will also give away what would have been the 5-piece set as a possible prize to anyone who pre-registers the convention, which you can do on their website - just make sure to do it by April 15th!
While the identities of the four other figures in the set are unknown - though four Sixshot silhouettes loom suspiciously in the background - the Twitter account has revealed the first figure to be Skyfall; the Action Master who achieved some infamy among the fandom through an IDW prose story! Made from the Titans Return Highbrow mold and using the Titan Master Apeface, he is a very faithful re-creation of his original toy's colour scheme. In addition to this extremely illustrious prize, we are also told that there will be a panel featuring the creative team behind many Botcon exclusive toys over the years, not to mention a look at some of the many unused concepts during their time on the job.
Take a look at the image posted to the convention's Twitter, be sure to visit their website , and tell us what you think of all this in the forums! Transformers Legacy Bulkhead and Skids Revealed 31, views. Cheetor Confirmed to be in Transformers Rise of the Beasts 29, views. Wu and More! From on, various toys have had new toolings added to them, most typically new heads. After the convention, exclusive toys often became valuable collector's items in the community, particularly among fans who missed the convention.
However as time went on and the sheer amount of available Transformers product on the market exploded this was less and less assured, and in fact by the end of BotCon's run, many exclusives from the entire history of the show had their secondary market values shrink considerably.
BotCon feature a single toy, Generation 2 Breakdown , which was originally developed for retail but canceled. The following year had two toys again, but this time sold individually. Over the next decade the number of toys per year grew steadily, coincidentally enough wink as the franchise's retail presence did.
In , the convention offered the first and only "hotel exclusive", Sunstreaker , which attendees could get by getting a room in the official block at the convention hotel. In with the changeover to Fun Publications, the number of toys made for the show took a massive jump from 's four exclusives to a whopping ten if you don't count " army-building " duplicates sold in multi-packs ; a main "box set" of toys, an "attendance freebie" available only to those directly attending the convention, and multiple additional souvenir sets.
Fun Publications had used this model for exclusives for their official G. Joe convention since The identity and design of the toys were originally kept a close secret until the opening of the convention, although in the later years of the convention the organizers often chose to reveal one or more of the exclusives ahead of time, due to repeated problems with stolen prototypes being sold on eBay, plus the need to hype the convention as awareness of Transformers grew.
Fun Publications revealed the identities of the box set toys months before the show, over the course of several weeks, while keeping its freebie and souvenirs a secret until the first day of the convention though factory thieves tend to get their hands on production samples and reveal them anyway. Through most of the 3H run, the toys were —for the most part— available in an "a la carte" method, with the attendee choosing which toys they wanted with their registration These toys were available only to attendees; people who couldn't make it were more or less relegated to having an attending friend pick up extras, or dealing with eBay.
BotCon Europe 's Rook would be the first convention toy made available to non-attendees, partially due to the sheer demand for him outside Europe, and partially because 3H had to order so many just to get the toy made that they were drowning in them.
A few other toys would follow suit for the same "overproduced" reason. The switchover to Fun Publications' model of a big box set that could not be broken up initially caused some contention in the fandom. However, they also offered the box set to non-attendees right out of the gate. In addition, the set also came in "bagged" form, with just the figures, accessories and bio cards, as an add-on to a boxed set.
The attendance freebie and souvenirs were for attendees only Any souvenirs unsold by the con's end were put on the Club store for members to purchase.
The attendance freebie, however, remained not-for-sale though Fun Publications has used them as prizes for online contests. Since then, the customization class exclusive was the rarest of each year's exclusive toys, limited to roughly 50 pieces. Most of these customization class exclusives were unpainted samples of production toys, which participants assembled themselves and apply a suggested paint job.
In , Generation 2 Sideswipe was the first customization class exclusive with entirely new plastic colors not found in previous releases of the mold, creating an instant "holy grail". For , in response to the fandom's ever-growing demand for Things They Can't Have, the toy was also offered as an add-on to normal attendees, unpainted but fully assembled as Hasbro is not super-keen to let unassembled Transformers out there willy-nilly.
Over the years, a wide variety of non-toy merchandise was made available as well. Almost every year featured an exclusive T-shirt, and in the last few years of the show, posters and prints became more common. The Fun Publications box sets each featured an exclusive pin, plus the first attending pre-registrants got another special pin. Quite a few other more esoteric pieces were made, including wristwatches, lollipops! A number of toys were planned over the years but never produced, for various reasons.
Note that some of these entries are essentially jokes from the organizers' brainstorming sessions, which they then later mentioned to other fans:.
Though Fun Publications lost the Transformers convention license after BotCon , an Action Master -themed, Titans Return -based "Action on Hydrus Four " boxset was planned for the potential BotCon that never came to be; the unreleased toys were concepts revealed through painted mock-ups at Pete's Robot Convention in
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