Saturday, April 14, 2007

Dairycon 2007 Report

UNICRON.COM REPORT:
DAIRYCON 2007

by: Sean Lorensen, aka Knightwing

Dairycon 2007 was put on buy the Dairyland Transfans Club. This is seventh year the club has put on their own show. The organizers are Fred (pic 63), Jack (pic 64), and Shawn (pic 65).

You can go to www.Dairycon.com to read some orignal stories about thier own twisted 'con exclusives. This years exclusives included Washout a repaint of the BMach Tank Drone, Nachos Belgrande a repaint of g1 brawn, and Checkers (pic 62) a repaint of a g2 go-bot. All attendees received Checkers. The other figures as well as some other orignal posters, and one page comic were raffled at the end of the day.

Checkers comes in a custom box with a g1 style character profile card. It reads: "Listens to right-wing political talk-radio. Views can border on the extreme. Openly campaings for political candidateds by attaching ads to his vechile-mode roof. Can monitor all radio, infrared, and microwave frequencies, including secret police and millitary channels. Vehicle form isn't particularly fast or durable. His roof light is permanently stuck in the "off duty" position." You can go to www.Dairycon.com to see more club exclusives profiles. (pic 30 is of all previous club ex)

Checkers profile very much gives you a sign of how the day was going to go. The Dairland Transfans put on a great show especially considering how relitively small a group they have to orginaze with. That said the profile of Checkers was the first of many laughs too come. Fred, Shawn, and Jack worked very hard to put this show on, but most important to them was that it be fun and light hearted.

The ball room at the Ramada opened at 10 am for attendees. From 10-1 it was time to trade, sell, buy, or just plain hang out with other fans and chat. I personally made out pretty well here. I found a number of fairly minor toys I've been wanting. I have also been looking for a Botcon '06 Optimus & Megatron recently. I found them at Defensis Primes table (pic 29). Unfortuntly, I didn't plan properly. I didn't think about the fact that the dealers on hand would likely not take credit cards. After a little chating Defensis allowed me to use Crow's, (pic 45) another dealer, laptop and make payment via paypal. Crow had a rather cool Autobot emblem on his laptop (pic 39). My great personal thanks to Defensis and Crow both. I'll bring a lot more cash next year.

Another dealer had a "TF Head Hat" (p67). It was a hat covered in old junk transformer heads which had been sewn.

At 1pm there was an assemble your own tf contest. In this contest all the contestants get a bag of parts the first person to completly assemble correctly their figure wins. I competed. Beleive me when I say,"it sounds easier than it is." This year we had to assemble a Cyberton Scrapmetal and several of the parts are very simalar. To make this contest more fun, every bag except one had extra parts. The last bag was short all the extra parts and was called the "Advanced Bag." The real benefit to getting the advanced bag was it contained extra rafle tickets for latter in the day. Here (pic 47) is me in the Unicron.com t-shirt. Here are more pics of the assemble your own tf contest. (pics 49-55)

At 2pm there was the Jumpstarter Races. This was an equally straight forward compitition in which the person who got their jumpstarter to go the farthest and stand wins. This agian sounds easier than it is. The race was done on a table that had a very rough surface. After about 4 heats there was a winner. These races were actually very entertaining. (pics 56 &57)

At 3pm the winners of the art contest were announced. Here are some of the entries. p 31-38 & 44 The winners of the art contest won what attendees put in the vairous prize boxes.

At 4 pm was the raffle for the rest of the exclusives. This was preceeded by a game of "I'm Thinking of a Transformer." It was 20 questions where the answer was a tf of somekind. This, like so much of the rest of the day, was a very engaging game.

While I didn't win anything in the raffle, I did win the title for who traveled the farthist to the show. That's right I drove five and a half hours to the show. What do I win for this feat of fandom? Braging Rights! Here's a better pic of me (p 66).

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