Hey guys, this is Delicon from the boards. Here is my summary of the G1 Retro panel, which focused on the original cartoons made by Sunbow.

The panelists were Jack Angel (Ultra Magnus, Astrotrain, Smokescreen, Ramjet, Breakdown and more), Hal Rayle (Shrapnel, Pipes, Slag, etc), Michael McConnohie (Tracks and Cosmos from G1 and Hotshot and Ironhide from RID) and Samantha Newark (Ariel from G1 and Jem from Jem and the Holograms.) Susan Blu and Morgan Lofting did not attend.

There was little intro and questions were taken from the start. Here are a few highlights.

As expected, each actor did a voice or two during the panel. At one point Samantha Newark said "Hi, I'm Jem...and these are not my Holograms!" Hal Rayle did his Shrapnel voice and did the famous echo effect. For reasons unexplained, Jack Angel even did some Grimlock (a character he did not originally voice.)

The actors were asked about their work on other shows. Michael McConnohie mentioned accidentally punching Roscoe Lee Browne while trying to deliver a line for the Visionaries series.

They talked about how fun the ensemble style recording sessions were. Wally Burr's unique directing style was discussed as was Frank Welker's tendency to play practical jokes with his voice. Welker loved to imitate sounds such as sliding doors and white noise and fooled Wally with those sometimes.

Casey Kasem was brought up. Jack Angel spoke of their many years they worked together on shows, including Super Friends. Hal Rayle mentioned how his wife (then around 30) told Casey she had loved him since she was a little girl to which Casey responded "Well, you're not a little girl now!"

Jack Angel said he had actually played Jem's father on Jem and the Holograms and joked about being Samantha's dad. He also told a story about how he at one point had been #4 on the list of actors with the most $100 million grossing films but had since been passed by Samuel L Jackson. Jackson had mentioned to Howard Stern that Angel and Welker (#1) weren't "real actors" to which Angel responded with challenging Jackson to get in the studio with him and Welker.

Michael McConnohie said that Cosmos had his voiced loosely based on horror icon Peter Laurie but that he was told to sound like "a very bad Peter Laurie."

The highlight of the panel was a fan who brought up original audition casting sheets (for Angel, Rayle and McConnohie) that he had purchased in an auction from Wally Burr. We learned that on the sketch sheet for Cosmos that there was a rocket instead of a flying saucer. Each actor read lines as their characters from the sheets - Jack Angel as Ramjet, McConnohie as Tracks and Rayle as Pipes and Shrapnel. It was revealed that Wally had crossed out some of the writer's dialogue and come up with his own lines.

Overall it was a very fun panel. All the speakers seemed to really enjoy themselves and interacted nicely with the fans. Other than the script reading, it was probably the lightest and fastest moving panel at BotCon 2014.