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[DarthFoozar]

I checked around and didn't see one like this, so I thought I would start one up.

I have been going to the SDCC for about 15 years now, and it is usually a great place to see a lot of up and coming stuff. Hasbro always has a big booth and a panel.

Anyway, any news and/or pics from the convention should be posted here for all to see, admire, and be jealous of.

Tonight is the preview night for those that bought four day passes, and I will post whatever interesting things I find.

[DarthFoozar]

Alright, so preview night was crazy. It keeps getting bigger and bigger every year. My main focus was to get to the Hasbro booth to see if I could acquire the exclusives for this year's SDCC. There were two of them: Alternator Rodimus GT and Titanium repaint Menasor (Rodimus).

They were passing out tickets in mob form. There was no line, just a crush of people, most of whom forgot the meaning of deoderant. I was one of the lucky few that got tickets for the second hour, but by that time they were sold out of Menasor. So I bought Rodimus and Pepsi Prime. Here they are:



I also got to see some of the display items. They have a new line coming out called "Timeline" and it has updated versions of some prior characters. Here is (left to right) Powerglide, an unknown to me red jet, Airazor, and Astrotrain. I am pretty sure that Astrotrain is a repaint of Powerlink Jetfire (I could be wrong), but he looked pretty good.



They also had some cool items that were Transformer related like Transformers Risk, Stratego, and Chess.



Finally, here is a picture of a huge statue of Movie Optimus Prime:



Friday there will be a panel for Transformers in general with Hasbro and IDW sharing the 90 minutes. I will be sure to attend that and pass along anything of interest.

[Bed Bugs]

Timelines isn't coming out. It's the banner that the Transformers Collectors Club releases their exclusive toys under.

Astrotrain is from year 1
Airazor is from year 2
The small jet is Breakaway, the free figure that all members get. This is the third free figure to be given away. The previous two were Skyfall and Landquake, repaints of Energon Terradive and Blight respectively. In two more years, another limb and torso will be made to complete a combiner of an unknown name.

Also, thanks for the pictures and the news about Titanium Menasor being sold out.

[DarthFoozar]

Thank you Fender Bender for the clarification on the toys.

I also need to clarify what I posted. Menasor was sold out for Thursday. Each day they have a limited number available to be sold (probably as much as they can fit in their little makeshift warehouse at their booth). This supply is restocked each day, but seeing as they were sold out for the day within the first hour, I can easily say that Menasor is this year's Alternator Nemesis Prime, maybe even worse.

I am going to try again tomorrow (Friday), but I do not like my chances.

Also, the IDW panel is Friday and the Hasbro panel is on Saturday. I will do my best to attend both, take notes and pics, and add to this thread as appropriate.

[Bed Bugs]

Alrighty DF, I updated the story to reflect your other tid-bits about daily limits on Hasbro's part.

[tom brokaw]

i wissh i could have gone

[Craven Knight]

Man... I want one of those Menasors so badly - I hope BBTS get me one.

[Optimist_Prime]

Man... I want one of those Menasors so badly - I hope BBTS get me one.

Why? It's a black and purple repaint of titanium rodimus. I think it looks like ass.

[Tigertrack]

Being a black and purple repaint is the reason I want him, for my black variant toys collection.

Not worried though. I knew there were limits, but some people will go many times to fulfill their needs for the orders.

[Wheeljack35]

Lucky you getting that alt Hot Rod

Is that the same Prime statue that was at Botcon?

[Tigertrack]

That is indeed the same Prime statue as at Botcon, the cases are the same, in fact, most of the HASBRO TF display is the SAME.

[Decatron]

Ugh I should really just have done a roadtrip down to SoCal... Anyway, thanks for the almost live coverage

[Skalor]

Here is an update on SDCC:

Well so far this year's comic-con for Transformers has been blah. There has not been one piece of new info or anything so far. Not like last year (the Cullen announcement). The displays are the same as Botcon, and the Hasbrotoyshop.com booth is as screwed up as ever.

Menasor officially sold out this morning. So did the GI Joe Destro exclusive (both before I managed to get in line I might add ). On preview night, the limit per badge was four each per exclusives. Now it's one Rodimus per badge, for the entire show (Sorry kirbenvost). The only glimmer is that the Transformers panel has yet to come on Saturday, and according to Hasbro rep, they may be unvailing some of the toys from the upcoming cartoon. That's it from San Diego.

Oh yeh, a hasbrotoyshop.com rep told me 10:00 EST on Monday for the toys to be available on their website. I will be checking earlier though...

[DarthFoozar]

Well as was already stated, Menasor was sold out for Friday. There will be a limited amount for Saturday and perhaps Sunday. They made a crucial error when they had a limit of 4 per badge. I asked one of the exhibitors if they knew that this basically catered to eBay jerks that had no intention of doing anything except screwing collectors, and his only response was that they "hoped to learn from their mistakes". So now all of the exclusives are one per person. Hopefully, they will maintain this policy next year so that some of us average Joe's can get a chance.

Here is someone that was dressed up in an awesome costume. I asked him if it was a Robotech costume of perhaps the Jetfire toy. He smartly replied that it would depend on who was asking. I will go with Jetfire:



And here is the first time I have actually seen the Star Wars Transformer Death Star/Darth Vader:



Ok, then it was on to the IDW panel. That was horribly lame. All they did was basically announce titles and release dates. Apparently they are saving all of the longer explanations and new announcements for the Hasbro booth tomorrow. I am sure most of you already know the tidbits they did tell us, but I will share it anyway:

•Transformers: Devastation - 6 Issues - September 2007
They mentioned it would be a very fast moving series,
more so than previous ones.
•Transformers: Beast Wars: The Ascending - August 2007
I don't know if it was just me, but it looked like the
character spread included BWII characters and was drawn
to resemble the Japanese cartoon series.
•Spotlight: Ranmjet - November 2007
•Transformers Movie: Search for Starscream - October 2007
They said that they were going to start infusing more
characters that did not appear specifically in the
movie. Arcee was mentioned.
•New TF Movie Prequel - TBD

That is all for right now, but I will be sure to say more as soon as I get home tomorrow.

[Skalor]

Well as was already stated, Menasor was sold out for Friday. There will be a limited amount for Saturday and perhaps Sunday.

Actually, Menasor is completely sold out and won't be available at the con anymore. As for "learning from their mistakes..." I don't believe they ever will, this is the same crap that happened last year with Nemesis Prime. At least this year they took the toyshop booth out of the display area .

[Wheeljack35]

I was watching G4's coverage of Comicon and that Jetfire was in the background most of the time in back of Olivia

Kevin referred to him as a card board Gundum

Wow his feet are cool they have to be extra song to hold him up

[Liege Evilmus]

WOW, not that I wanted him, but WOW still!

[DarthFoozar]

Well as lame as yesterday's IDW panel was, the Transformers panel today was pretty awesome.

They started with IDW, and though there was no visual presentation, Simon Furman was on hand to go over some cool things.

Galvatron and Optimus Prime Spotlights lead through Escalation and into "Devastation". He promised it would live up to its name and bring in "new" characters like the Reapers and Sixshot.

Ramjet makes his first appearance in the Avengers crossover and gets his own Spotlight that they considered to be "Issue 5" from the crossover in its significance.

Simon and Dan Figueroa were currently working on the new Beast Wars comic Ascension, which was a mix of BW and BWII.

There will be more stories coming up that will center on post-movie events such as "The Search for Megatron" and a prequel will be packaged with the Target exclusive version of the Movie DVD. It will focus on the Decepticons and their journey to Earth.

[DarthFoozar]

Hasbro Like last year's panel, this one featured the chief designer and they went over some new additions to several lines.



Movie 2007
This line would be expanded under a new subline called "AllSpark Power" and is focusing on redecos and new molds. Names were Landmine (new) *sorry for the no pic*, Stockade (new), CLIFFJUMPER (Bumblebee recolor), Incinerator (new), FIRST STRIKE OPTIMUS PRIME (slight remold made to look more like G1 Optimus), Evac (new), Desert Attack Brawl (recolor), Nightwatch Optimus Prime (dark Ultra Magnus-ish recolor of Nightwatch Prime). Pics (help with an album?):









Robot Heroes
The focus on this line will continue to focus on G1 and will also use Beast Wars figures as well (sorry for the blurred pic).



Transformers Universe (Classic Line Expansion)
This was pretty exciting. They are currently working on new molds to be used for Sunstreaker and Sideswipe. They looked very awesome with a slightly different chest piece for the famous brothers.



They also had a new triplechanger, Octane!



They said they would have 8 new deluxe size TFs and 3-4 new ultra sized ones. Pretty exciting stuff!!!

[DarthFoozar]

OK, now was the part that most were either excited or nervous about. But I can say that I am pretty damn excited about it.

Transformers: Animated Series
A lot of you had expressed dislike of the new designs, but they made it clear that while the movie and comics were geared towards and older audience, the cartoon was expressly intended for ages 6-11. That might explain some things. There is a definite similarity to the "Star Wars: Clone Wars" cartoon as the producer is also the same for this one.

This will be a US focused cartoon since the Japanese thought to take a break from making cartoons for now and let the US take it for a while. There was direct collaboration between US and Japanese artists and Hasbro toy designers (more on that in the next post). This is apparently the very first time that has ever taken place to make a TF cartoon.

The style is inteded to be more humanistic and organic as opposed to robotic and blocky. They mentioned that the most difficult TF to design was Prowl.

We were treated to the opening animation as well as a few short teasers of scenes from the cartoon. (I am sure that Youtube will have it all soon, though I did not take it). My reflections:

•The music was extremely close to the G1 theme
•The transformations, except for Prowls (sort of just a blur), reminded me of the Japanese types where they get their own miniscene to transform. However, there were later times where they transformed in the context of the scene, so that was refreshing.
•Optimus has lips (ugh)
•Starscream was AWESOME. They even have a voice reminiscent of his G1 voice and the scene where he spoke was hilarious. He was giving one of his overly patronizing "almighty Megatron" speeches with Megs in the foreground.
•Dinobots are back!!! They looked great.
•Though I am not familiar with it, they mentioned there was a strong influence from the "Mighty Orbots" series?
•I thought it was awesome, and while I have not been too excited about the last four Japanese series, this one left me wanting to see it.
•Lockdown, the consensus favorite character, is like a Boba Fett type character and is voiced by Lance Henrikksen (sp?)

[DarthFoozar]

Now onto something I was not expecting...

Transformers: Animated Series TOYS
As I stated in my previous post, there was a collaboration with the animators and the toy designers from day one, just to make sure that the toys and their animated counterparts were as close to being the same as possible.

Optimus Prime (Left pic is his Cybertron mode and Right is Earth mode)


Bumblebee and Bulkhead


Prowl and Ratchet


DINOBOTS Slag and Grimlock


Megatron and Starscream


Lugnut and Blitzwing


The soon-to-be popular Lockdown


Black Arachnia and Soundwave (The guitar transforms into Laserbeak!!!)


And here are the toys live. While the panel was on they were switching them into the display cases at the Hasbro booth. Nice!!!

Starscream and Prowl


Prime, Bumblebee, and Bulkhead


The toys have a matte finish as opposed to more ard surfaces. This is to reflect their more organic nature. The characters will change throughout the show with different modes depending on where they are (as was seen with Prime).

Overall they looked fantastic!!! I am really looking forward to this series. The most I have since I don't know when. Enjoy!

[DarthFoozar]

Well that wraps up my 2007 SDCC Tranformers "blog". I hope you enjoyed it and that it was informative in some way. I had a great time, so next year try to make it out!!