Looks like other than RoboCon, I finally have a place for stuff like this. So... BotCon 2016 was originally a non-combiner set but the brand team wanted Combiner Wars. This set was pretty much scrapped and we started over, kept the BW Uprising theme though.
That’s not to say that there were not additional options. The most intriguing was they offered us the opportunity to release Build King from Devastaror, complete with 6 new head sculpts. At the time we thought it would cost too much. In hindsight though???
That said. Odds are we would have eventually released Build King through the TCC subscription service. Anyway, we settled on A Box Set with Predacus and Megatron.
Souvenirs would have been pretty cool as well. We had an Optimal Optimus w/ Under-3 (who would still get a deluxe version in the final set as Unit-3).
One of the biggest regrets from the second proposal was not getting to release the two RID toys. We thought these were pretty inspired. But we were told market research showed purple toys do not sell. So that was the end of Fangry, and by association Bugbite aka Arctic Bumblebee.
So there you go. We actually spotlighted the progression of the BotCon 2011 boxed set in the BotCon Beyond Guidebook
https://nightshiningllc.com/collections/frontpage/products/botcon-beyond-the-convention-the-ultimate-product-guide-volume-1-pre-order. But, couldn’t do that for every set. Though I’m sure we’ll be talking more about stuff like this at RoboCon 2021 this summer.
p.s. Should not have scrapped the Beast Wars Uprising story theme for the set. That decision was made so we could release through IDW. Trying to work those characters into another pre-Beast Wars story just did not work. Glad we used them in BWU prose:
http://www.transformersclub.com/TCCprose.cfmp.s.s. Just noticed in that 1st tweet, I used the wrong boxed set image. That was the version before the original ‘final’. We traded out Scorponok for the Vehicon Jetstorm. Had I known at the time the future of BotCon w/ Hasbro, Jetstorm (new head/leg sculpts) would’ve been made!
Ok. p.s.s.s. This is what happens when you just tweet on the fly. Megatron was taken out of the boxed set, and moved to Souvies. That’s why Optimal Optimus got the boot! The idea of featuring the Unit-3 character ended up replacing Razorbeast. Was a good call.