...and it's over.

Well, Botcon actually ended two days ago, but we didn't leave Florida until yesterday morning, and we actually went past home to my parents to visit with them last night, since they had my grandmother with them until this morning. So we didn't get home until lunch time or so today.

My first (and likely only) Botcon was pretty cool. Now I just need Air Shark's guns to straighten out. I really hate bendy plastic, and FP should have taken that into account and at least put them (and the loose Sky-Bytes) in cheap cardboard boxes or something.

Con Hauls and the Hall of Fame....

Ok, so Soundwave didn't win the Hall of Fame. I don't really know how, but it doesn't matter because he'll win next year or some other time int he near future. Dinobot won.

I should also share that I managed to trade a couple of Hard Hero statues for Botcon Banzai-Tron and Skyquake and BW Silverbolt (who I've been wanting for a while recently). I then managed to trade Skyquake (who is not a Seeker and really shouldn't have been done with that mold) for Universe Chevy Aveo Swerve! I never thought I'd own that figure, but he's pretty great. Wonderfully unique transformation.

Man...it's going to be a long day.

Well, after getting back to my cousin's, he and I stayed up until 2 am. Then my son wakes me up at 5:30, and I'm leaving to go back to the con in 30 min. I haven't even really had time to look at the toys - so far, I've only opened the Timelines Landquake and Breakaway I needed to complete Nexus Prime. They're actually pretty nice, particularly Breakaway.

Overall, I got the boxed set, a loose set, and 1 each of the souvenirs, giving me these toys to sell: all the loose stuff (Spark, Clench, Breakdown, Streetwise, Skybyte) and 2 of the Sharkticons and Scorch. I'm keeping everything else (at least for the short term - if I can suckers someone into trading me a SG Megatron for Double Punch or something like that, I'll totally part with some of these).

We're here!

Got here to my cousin's in Orlando around 4:30. Headed out to pick up in about 30 min!

Florida Invasion!....or Basement Convention, or something...

Well, in less than 24 hours, we'll be on our way to Botcon 2010 in Orlando! We're planning to leave at 8 AM, meet up with my wife's friend in a town about an hour away at about 9 AM, and then move on from there! A direct trip would be about 6.5 hours or so, but we'll be making at least two stops, so we'll probably arrive in the late afternoon. Which is fine; that should give me just enough time to get us settled in at my cousin's house, have dinner, and then hang out at the pool before going over for pick-up at 9pm (I can't believe that I can't get in line until then. Oh well; it gives me an "official" reason to stay up late). I'll probably make another post late tomorrow evening, if only to give a rough first impression of the toys.

Which, by the way, it seems we know most of the at-con exclusives now:

Gnaw/Sharkticon (Energon Sharkticon repaint, possibly a multi-pack)
Rapido (Universe Prowl repaint w/new head remold, as seen a few posts back)
Slicer/Shattered Glass Wheeljack (Energon Downshift repaint; the toy appears to be both characters)
Double Punch (Energon Scorponok repaint)
Scorch (Universe deluxe Hound repaint)
Shattered Glass Ravage (Universe Ravage repaint)
Cindersaur (BWX/Cybertron Megatron repaint; not definitively this character)

Pretty sure that's all of them...I'm most looking forward to Slicer/Wheeljack, Ravage, Rapido, Double Punch, and Cindersaur. Gnaw and Scorch are really the only unappealing ones.

I did not win the waiting game.

Back in March, I wrote about how I wanted the ROTF Walmart exclusives Beachcomber and Trenchmouth, but didn't want to pay full price for them since they came packed with two repaints that I didn't want, Slapdash and Deadlift. I reported that I'd totally jump on them if I saw them clearanced for $5 per pair, as I had seen reported online.

Well, 3 months later, I have never seen any kind of clearance on these toys. And lately, the only thing I'd really been hunting was HA Mudflap, hoping to use the Recon Ravage coupon on him. However, I really doubt that I'll find him at retail before July 1st (I'm banking on finding him at Botcon). With all that in mind, and not having gotten anything new in a while (save Dion), I decided to finally cave on these guys today. It wasn't so bad; between the coupon and a gift card I had gotten from a student last month, the 2 sets were about as cheap as they would have been on clearance anyway.

As of now, I've only actually opened/transformed Beachcomber and Trenchmouth (Who's Movieverse BW Inferno to me); I haven't decided if I'm going to keep Slapdash and Deadlift or try to trade/sell them next week at Botcon. For now, I'll add them to the inventory, but they may not stay long.

Oh, and Infernomouth is awesome. He actually has better quality control than Knock-Out/Wasp, something I didn't expect. This is mostly due to the fact that his waist really locks in place in bot mode. Oh, and he does look nice, too, not to mention appropriate as Inferno - even my son, without prompting, said he turned into an "ant-motorcycle" when looking at his packaging photos.

edit: And, wow, I now have 101 individually transforming ROTF toys. Granted, this includes stuff like Stratosphere's mini-Optimus and the individual Legendstator components, but man, that seems like a lot.

Reorganizing the Invasion, Part Deux

Last summer, I spent some time rearranging the toys downstairs, producing a display that has lasted for most of the last year. I've started rearranging it again, though.

On the chest-of-drawers, All the Optimus Prime toys have stayed, but everyone else (Ultra Magnuses, Primals, the Cybertron Prime candidates, etc) was moved up to where the Megatrons were.

It's actually the Megatron toys that precipitate this whole thing, since after Christmas, I couldn't fit both TM II and Megabolt Megatrons on the Megatron shelf. Now, they (and all Galvatrons, including the previously uninvited Universe Galvatron) all are on the chest-of-drawers opposing the Optimus toys.

The Starscreams are all still at the top (now unencumbered by TM II Megatron). The book shelf is going to change; it has mostly hosted Movie/ROTF toys for the last year; now, it will display characters who have many iterations from different toylines, such as the various Prowls, Ironhides, Seekers, Scorponoks, and so on.

Hot Shot Part Deux

We got back late last night from being out of town for several days. While on the road, I'd seen online that the TF Collector's Club had begun shipping out this year's "free" toy (that you get just for paying the membership fee), Elite Guard Dion. I was a bit worried, since I didn't know if he'd be shipped in a little box that would fit in the mailbox and could hide there until we got back. Luckily, that turned out to be the case, and he was waiting in the mailbox when I got home.

The figure itself looks great. The orange and blue, of course, got well together, and the white is a good choice for an accent color. Cop-Tur, his mini-con, also looks good; being mostly blue with some orange and silver apps. Overall, I think they both look better, color-wise, than both Hot Shot and Jolt (well, the Henkei versions, at least).

Of course, the toy(s) also share the same problems I have with the Japanese release. The toe joint is floppy, making Dion hard to stand up. The left lower leg pops off a bit too easily just below the knee. Cop-Tur doesn't lock into the spoiler like he's supposed to. The rear wheel back kibble can't get out of its own way unless Dion's arms stick straight out. Cop-Tur can't stand up without leaning far forward. Et cetera.

And then there's the fictional issues I have with the toy; I don't really know where to place him. He's intended to be part of the Wings of Honor Universe that the club is building on in this year's club comic. That universe is very similar to the G1 cartoon universe, but with some slight changes; one of those changes is that, after being severely wounded by Megatron (a la War Dawn), Dion's fate isn't unknown. Fans have speculated that cartoon Dion was rebuilt into either Ironhide or Ultra Magnus (I'm in the Magnus camp, myself). WoH Dion was rebuilt into...Dion. Who can apparently just up and join the Elite Guard immediately afterward. Oh, and he has an Earth car mode millions of years before cars will exist on Earth.

So you see my problem. It's confounded by the fact that I really don't like seeing UT molds (and yes, I consider this a UT mold. It's a UT character and has a minicon port) being utilized in other fictional universes. So I'm trying to figure out a way for this toy to simply be UT Dion, even though the UT doesn't have an Elite Guard and already has an Ultra Magnus.

Lastly, it's hard to shake the feeling that this toy is just Elite Guard Hot Shot. The color scheme isn't too far removed from being a plausible Hot Shot scheme (his Cybertron mold had a ton of blue, and orange is of course close to yellow). And, more importantly, this mold was specifically designed to be Armada Hot Shot. It's hard to look at him and not see the impetuous young Autobot.

But yeah, he does look great.

Rapido!

I'm officially excited for the convention now. This isn't the best pic, but his new head mold is great, and the colors scheme just works so well. This will probably be the best version of the mold that I'll own (and I'll own FIVE after the convention).