Starting with pictures, Click HERE to see photo galleries taken by Lukis Bros 2&3.
The first two (horizontal) rows are from the Hasbro display case, Robot Heros, Mini-con packs, Classics/Universe and Transformers Animated.
The first two pictures included the 3rd row are of the Voice Actor panel
Bumper Robinson: voice of Blitzwing, the news reporter and Bumblebee
David Kaye: Voice of TFA Optimus Prime and Grimlock
Tara Strong: Voice of Sari
The 4th picture in the 3rd row shows me and my brother J, talking with Marty Isenberg.
Remaining pictures are fairly self-explanatory, more pictures from the convention show floor, a few from the Casino Night Auction and us in Cincinatti.
Next up, let's talk about the Cartoon Network Panel. My laptop is usually quite reliable, but this time, for some bummer of a reason, it crashed mid-way through the panel. Although I lost a good deal of terrific notes, fortunately, I did get it back online in time to write some pretty choice pieces. Here are some excerpts:
Sitting in on this Transformers Animated (TFA) Panel were:
Derrick Wyatt, TFA Art Director
Marty Isenberg TFA lead writer
Matt Youngberg, Creative Director Cartoon Network
Q: Any chance we’ll see Unicron in Transformers Animated?
A: Matt: you can never do better than the original movie, so I wouldn’t want to do Unicron in TF: Animated
Q: Who are your favorite your favorite characters?
Marty Isenberg: I really liked Wreck-Gar, and I also really like writing Starscream
Matt: I love how Bumper does Bumblebee
Derrick: my favorite character not in show yet, but he’s voiced by Fred Williard. (Hm, now who could that be?!)
Q: When asked about Blackarachnia, having a helmet
A: Marty answered that it was art dept. creative license showing the Blackarachnia helmet aboard the Decepticon ship in “Along Came a Spider”
Q: What’s up with all the 1970’s styling! (We love it!)
A: Marty: In the 22nd centryry, retro 70’s is going to be the style. We started developing the visual style. Everything in Detroit and we just fell in love with the look. Well, that and
Derrick: I’m addicted to Game Show Network! With all their 1970’s classic re-runs… I started noticing all those crazy styles and just figure I had to find a way to work it in. Thus was born the “suit” of Promethius Black!
Q: About casting (of TF roles)
A: Marty: Cast was set before I became involved. I had no say in the beginning. Now we’ve developed this huge laundry list of characters want to use. Part of it is want op pay homage but also wanted to bring in new aspects and bring in the best from over the years.
Q: All the G1 references are GREAT! Who do we thank for doing all their homework?
A: Derrick did his homework! And a lot of it!
Q: Will other 2 dinobots ever be brought on board? Will Slag/Swoop ever get speaking lines?
A: Marty: probably not. For simplicity sake doubt we’ll see the others talk.
A: Derrick: My dream cast member for Slag would be Louis Anderson!
Q: Someone shouted, “you mean Snarl?”
A: Derrick: Hey, he’ll always be SLAG to me! (Crowd erupts w/ applause!)
Q: Is the Allspark case still going to be featured?
A: Marty: Hm, yes it’s a good carrying case for allspark fragments.
And finally, here are a few sample videos from the Transformers Animated, Voice Actor Panels. the first below shows Bumper Robinson doing Blitzwing. He was asked to recite some Blitzwing lines. He did a few (what he could remember) then said "If you want more, you'll have to watch the show!"
Then, here is David Kaye, acting out a golf game between Beast Wars Megatron and TF: Animated Optimus Prime Last but not least, my brother asked if the trio of voice actors could act out a scene where Blitzwing, Optimus and Bumblebee buy Sari an ice cream cone! This is sheer ad-lib comedy brilliance folks! :)
Botcon day one (which for us, which was Saturday) was busy and fun! If a picture is worth a thousand words then we've got 153,00 words to share, and that's just from day 1!
CLICK HERE for the photo gallery. Listed below are our summary of notes from the first very revealing Hasbro Panel.
Greg Lambardo, Director of Marketing for Transformers began the presentation with discussion of the past year.
2007 was tremendous! Great year will lead to the ability do more projects the fans have been asking for!
• Movie gross sales over 700 million worldwide
• Transformers Movie DVD sales were #1 DVD in the USA
• Transformers toy line was the #1 Action figure toy brand
• Movie deluxe assortment won some toy industry board (whose name I wasn’t fast enough to type!) award for best boys action figure toy line
• We know how strong of a fan base Transformers has and “we want to want to thank all of you for your support,” a round of applause from Hasbro to us the #1 fans
“Now on to the good stuff!” He said they would skip most of what we seen, leaked on ebay and such
• Transformers Animated toys to hit the shelves be June 22, plus or minus a few weeks depending on location. full toy line starting by August
• Lots happening promotionally, Transformers Animated Season 1 released on DVD, coming soon!
• First slide was Sentinel Prime Deluxe 9/2008
• Deluxe Swoop: Blown away by how show accurate, Project was a Hasbro/Takara co-development project
• Deluxe Elite Guard Bumblebee! (toy was not on display) It was a redeco of the standard deluxe Bumblebee. Dark Brow on top car bronze bottom.
• Leader Ultra Magnus! Crowd applause erupts! :) Very show accurate, has hammer, absolutely awesome!
Transformers Universe product update:
• Originally line was it’s basically everything but animated and movie
• Classics Universe deluxe Ironhide. Very G1 inspired, very nice a SUV w/ front silver rollbar. Not an 80’s van, “this is our interpretation of what we think Ironhide would be in today’s modern times.”
• Classics Sideswipe: same car as sunstreaker, new redeco and new silohette. New head sculpt!
• Universe Ultra Silverbolt. A concord with sounds in jets and robot mode, with transformation form and other electronic sounds when flying
• Universe Storm Cloud is a Powerglide recolor. Dark color scheme, looks great
• Universe legends: Megatron and G1 inspired Jazz, Kickback vs Ironhide, BW Transmetal Megatron vs. BW Silverbolt, Thrust vs Blaster
Fall 2008 Exclusives:
• Comic Con Hasbro Nemesis Prime
• Titanium 6” War Within Skywarp.
• It is Hasbro’s intent to sell exclusives such as Comicon on Hasbro Toy shop July ‘08
• Walmart exclusives: Breakaway is a recolor of Cybertron Hotshot, Fracture is a red and white recolor of Mirage, Crankcase,
• Dirge and Roadbuster G1 color schemes look great. Each pack includes a deluxe and a voyager figure. They come with a comic featuring these characters! Roadbuster is a recolor of Cybertron Defefense Hotshot and Dirge is Voyager Starscream. Springer and Ratbat Springer is a green recolor of Cybertron Evac, ratbat is a purple and grey recolor of Sideways. Both look great.
Then the biggest news: TRU exclusive
• 6” titanum War Within Prowl!
• 6” titanium War Within Grimlock
• These are coming thanks to fan support and interest, (and because the molds were already made! Ha!)
25th Years of Transformers 1984 to 2009 SNEAK Peak. 25th anniversary of the brand
• Targeting Thanksgiving: G1 Optimus Prime Re issue, it’s original G1 OP includes digitally remasterd on DVD first 3 episodes with sound box of Cullen Quotes, and a re-print of issue marvel #1, Silver foil logo of 25th anniversary packaging
• Celebrating all lines he showed logos of many ‘core lines of Transformers: Energon, Armada, RID, Beast Machines, Beast Wars and G2…
• First showed Universe deluxe: Hound with with Ravage! As a cassette tape, very G1 style looking. Ravage looks pose-able. Here’s the great part, this Ravage will fit into the chest of G1 Soundwave!!!! Very cartoon accurate, colors pose-ablity CROWD GOES WILD!! :)
• Universe Cyclonus with Nightstick. VERY G1 cartoon accurate. VERY nice sculpT. G1 cartoon Look!
• Beast Wars g1 cartoon accurate Cheetor, totally new mold… totally new sculpte, pose-able, AWESOME!
Aaron archer joked, in this 25th Anniversary celebration, we’re even “celebrating variants” the eyes open and change from red to green color! The intent here is to make a toy that looks much more like the cartoon.
• Universe Legends Brawn and Beachcomber, look very G1 inspired Using legensds scal;e
• Robot Heroes BMach cheetor vs. Tankor, RID OP v. Megatron
Questions:
Q:Movie 2- Vehicles being driven around. Will we get redesigned versions of the Movie characters or the same.
A: Ongoing, It’s going well, We’re very happy. Product line; Wait and see! “We’ll look at releasing characters in other sizes.. Make them more movie accurate.”
Q: Masterpiece Thundercracker,
A: It’s on the short wish list.
Q: Off screen Animated characters? Blackout in Animated form?
A: Nope. Oilslick is the only one.
Q:More Attacktix?
A: No
Lukis Bro Question: “Thank you for featuring strong, kick butt female characters!... (Sari)” Any chance they’ll be producing humans coming into the line?
Aaron Archer: “When we say it’s at the top of our short (wish / want to produce) list… We mean really short list.”
Q: Titanim line:
A: Collector market liked them. But that’s about it. Not enough market to support
Q: Another round of questions about Arcce begging:
Greg Lambardo: answer: just because you haven’t seen it, doesn’t mean it’s not being worked on!
 Posted by: TriPredRavage Days 2 and 3 of Comic Con, here we go! Okay, so as I mentioned in Day 1's post, Transformers has a severely lacking presence at Comic Con. That said, there wasn't much to see, but what I saw you shall see now. I was lucky enough to find for the low low price of $20 the Beast Wars Rhinox Bust which you can see again here. I mentioned once before that there was an exclusive collectable bust available at Comic Con that was of Thundercracker, but it was about $60 and I was so not down... Anyway, There were a bunch of other busts available such as Prowl (boxed), Ironhide, Devastator (boxed), Starscream, Cliffjumper, Grimlock and of course, Unicron (which, fun fact there were only 1986 ever made; 2 points for who get the reference with that number). Now, up and coming bust are the part that I think is probably one of the most impacting parts of the convention on the Transformers community. Arcee and Rumble don't really do anything, BUT that one that you can see in the back is indeed SOUNDBLASTER. That's right, it is the first official release (that I know of) of the rebuilt and upgraded Soundwave that we all know and love from the Japanese exclusive series Headmasters. So who knows, maybe we can look forward to more future official releases of Japanese exclusive characters? Lastly, I got to see some awesome original pieces of art by Robert Shum. You can see his art here and you can see my AWESOME original Cheetor Sketch here.
Sooo.... that's about it. Like I said, not much a'do with TF, but enough to keep me excited for three days amongst all the other things going on. Happy Viewing Everybody!
Posted by: TriPredRavage
Yo everybody. Comic Con day one has taken place and it was a great time. Transformers didn't have a major turn out today, but there were some pretty awesome things to see still. There were a few memorable moments though, some of which were getting to see the Revoltech Figures on display... that we couldn't buy... I did however manage to find Optimus Prime and Megatron available else where and pick them up. They also had some of the TFA figures on display. There was also this wall scroll... thing... But here it is the glory of all events so far. If you were around in the days of Beast Wars, you had probably heard of ReBoot. Well, ReBoot co-creator Gavin Blair is at Comic Con this year due to the pending new series. I decided that because ReBoot and Beast Wars were so related of series from Mainframe, I figured he had to have had something to do with Beast Wars back in the day. Well it turns out, he is the guy who MADE the Cheetor character model used in Beast Wars! So I had to shake his hand simply because he created the character that honestly made me a fan of Transformers. So there it is! The first picture of me on Unicron.com... okay, so that's a little cheap, so here it is me with my new hero. Happy Viewing everybody. Hopefully I'll have more to report after tomorrow. Look forward to it!
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