BotCon 2014 Guest Announcement - Transformers Rescue Bots Cast

Va'al wrote:The official BotCon Twitter account has revealed a whole slew of guests for the 2014 convention, and they're all part of the Transformers: Rescue Bots cast! Joining the guest list, which you can find here, are Steve Blum (Heatwave and Prime Starscream), Parvesh Cheena (Blades), Jason Marsden (Kade Burns), Shannon McKain (Graham Burns), Elan Garfias (Cody Burns), Nicole Dubuc (Bumblebee, CAT, and writer for both Rescue Bots and Prime episodes), writers Greg Johnson and Brian Hohlfeld - bringing the guset count to seventeen!

Damn, no Lacey Chabert? That's to bad.

Time to think of more questions to ask the writers this year.

The official Transformers Facebook page have shared pages 3 and 4 of the BotCon exclusive comic, showing off charactes Ferak and Cannonball from the 2014 'Pirates vs Knights' theme! The two pages, mirrored below, are part of the 'Hoist the Flag' story, ideated by Marty Isenberg, scripted by Jesse Wittenrich, drawn by Hayato Sakamoto and coloured by Josh Burcham - check them out!

BotCon 2014 is coming to Pasadena, CA June 19th-22nd. For the full reveal of this year's 5-figure convention set and general information on the show, be sure to visit http://www.botcon.com. To see two of the exclusive characters in action (Cannonball and Ferak), we have an exclusive preview of pages 3 and 4 from this year's BotCon comic!

How many cameos do you spy? I see several:

Big Rescue Force
the potential combined from of the Motorvators
Armada Tidal Wave (really, FunPub? )
FoC Air Raid
Meanstreak
Power Master Ironhide

The last two are really toy-accurate in the locomotion department.

If that Tidal Wave ends up being a toy AND has that mast and sail, then they could bag up RotF Tuner Mudflaps in the other sets and I wouldn't care. Pirate ship Tidal Wave would make it all ok.

I'm liking the writing so far. Say what you will about The Club's lore, but it's usually well-written.

That whole last page made me smile.

Oh slag. They really did use the Armada Tidal Wave design for the ship. Though, they did give it a sail, which I wouldn't expect them to do at this point since they said that Scorponok ate up their remolding budget. So the jury's still out on whether or not they will or won't use that mold.

Anyway, something important to note is that the first of these two pages was actually already revealed in the last issue of the TCC magazine. So those who got the magazine and read are seeing it here for the second time.

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:How many cameos do you spy? I see several:

Big Rescue Force
the potential combined from of the Motorvators
Armada Tidal Wave (really, FunPub? )
FoC Air Raid
Meanstreak
Power Master Ironhide

The last two are really toy-accurate in the locomotion department.

Not counting the Tidal Wave, I see 12 bots/things in that pic.

Okay, upon closer inspection, I see (clockwise from top-right):

Scorponok in Jet Mode
An Easter-colored combiner form for the Motorvators
Big Rescue Force
Windmill
Under-3
Meanstreak
Some guy behind Meanstreak
Power Master Ironhide
A red Autoceptor
Bonaparte Tulcas
Some gray guy behind Ironhide
A redeco of FOC Fireflight (Generations Air Raid)
The Tidal Wave

I would kill for a pirate Tidalwave.

Sails on a spaceship is stuipd. I mean REALLY stupid. There is no wind in space. Not to mention it has rocket boosters.

Rated X wrote:Sails on a spaceship is stuipd. I mean REALLY stupid. There is no wind in space. Not to mention it has rocket boosters.

Two words: Solar Sails.

Lots of science fiction stories use them. They usually serve the function of an additional power source that absorbs solar radiation from stars, and aesthetically resemble sails for multiple reasons depending on the author(s).

tidal wave (as an attendee exclusive obviously) would be the icing on this delicious cake.

Sabrblade wrote:

Rated X wrote:Sails on a spaceship is stuipd. I mean REALLY stupid. There is no wind in space. Not to mention it has rocket boosters.

Two words: Solar Sails.

Lots of science fiction stories use them. They usually serve the function of an additional power source that absorbs solar radiation from stars, and aesthetically resemble sails for multiple reasons depending on the author(s).

While I see the logic you speak of, the fact that its only being done because they are pirates makes it too much. Just because they are space pirates doesnt mean they have to do everything human pirates do. Years of people begging for a broadside repaint of the tidalwave mold, and this is how funpub decides to use the mold ? I pray they dont do it...

Rated X wrote:Years of people begging for a broadside repaint of the tidalwave mold, and this is how funpub decides to use the mold ? I pray they dont do it...

Well, it is still up in the air as to whether or not they will actually use that mold. Much less remold it to have sails since the Club admitted on their Twitter that, after Cannonball and Devcon, their remold budget was all used up by Scorponok's new tooling.

There's also the possibility of this mold being so old that it might not be available for them to use.

And those colors it has in that page (or what little of them that we can see since most of the ship is cast in shadow) don't look too different from the toy's original Armada colors, so it's possible that it isn't a redeco and just a repurposing of the original toy as it is (for those who already own it). Which would sensible thing to do as it would let people use that mold with the BotCon toys without the Club having to spend more money on an 11-year-old mold of that large size.

Personally, I'm still a bit skeptical about them actually using the Tidal Wave mold and am not expecting them to (and certainly not expecting it to have newly molded sails), but I wouldn't mind them using it as it would be a pleasant surprise.

Sabrblade wrote:

Rated X wrote:Years of people begging for a broadside repaint of the tidalwave mold, and this is how funpub decides to use the mold ? I pray they dont do it...

Well, it is still up in the air as to whether or not they will actually use that mold. Much less remold it to have sails since the Club admitted on their Twitter that, after Cannonball and Devcon, their remold budget was all used up by Scorponok's new tooling.

There's also the possibility of this mold being so old that it might not be available for them to use.

And those colors it has in that page (or what little of them that we can see since most of the ship is cast in shadow) don't look too different from the toy's original Armada colors, so it's possible that it isn't a redeco and just a repurposing of the original toy as it is (for those who already own it). Which would sensible thing to do as it would let people use that mold with the BotCon toys without the Club having to spend more money on an 11-year-old mold of that large size.

Personally, I'm still a bit skeptical about them actually using the Tidal Wave mold and am not expecting them to (and certainly not expecting it to have newly molded sails), but I wouldn't mind them using it as it would be a pleasant surprise.

I have the crazy white and translucent green tidalwave. Isnt that the energon version ? I thought the armada version was black and purple ? The black in the comic drawing appears to be a shadow to me and the top is painted white. Also im so sick of hearing about funpubs retool budget. Why cant they just spend more and get more ? Or why not have someone do resin heads like they did with the custom class longarm ? Every botcon figure should have a new head. Did they not learn from megaplex ? Did they pretend those renderform megaplex heads didnt exist ?

I can't speak for the Club about their budget since I lack the proper info regarding it, so I'll just address what I can:

Rated X wrote:I have the crazy white and translucent green tidalwave. Isnt that the energon version ? I thought the armada version was black and purple ? The black in the comic drawing appears to be a shadow to me and the top is painted white.

Yours does sound like the Energon one, yes.

And, like I said, it is difficult to tell what the ship's full colors look like, what with all that shadow we see. But what we can see are some green in the placements where green is found on both the Armada and Energon versions (green hands and green side bows), and what looks like some light gray on the ship's front (the aircraft carrier part).

Now, looking at the latter on both the Armada and Energon versions, the Armada one has a light gray aircraft carrier part, while the Energon one has a dark gray aircraft carrier part (really do wish there was a simpler term for this part, lol). Since this part is lighter on both the Armada version and the ship in this comic, that's a point in favor of the Armada deco.

Then again, pretty much everything in these images look washed out and faded, anyway. ^_^'

but, as we said, it is too tough for us to tell for sure at this point based on this single shadowed picture. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what's what.


For reference, here are the two versions of Tidal Wave we mentioned (Armada on top, Energon under it), along with the comic page.

You know... assuming the mold was available for use...

Troop builder 3 pack?

Yeah, I believe it would be a troop-builder 3-pack, with the 3 components in separate baggies.

Also, a remolding isn't really necessary for the figure, just a repainting. They can produce the mast-and-sail set and just find a good place to attach on/stick on the existing mold of Tidal Wave. From the positioning of the mast in the comic, it looks like it's stuck on the Mini-Con peg on his chest. So all it really needs is a hollow mast section.

Rodimus Prime wrote:Yeah, I believe it would be a troop-builder 3-pack, with the 3 components in separate baggies.

Also, a remolding isn't really necessary for the figure, just a repainting. They can produce the mast-and-sail set and just find a good place to attach on/stick on the existing mold of Tidal Wave. From the positioning of the mast in the comic, it looks like it's stuck on the Mini-Con peg on his chest. So all it really needs is a hollow mast section.

And a new identity for Ramjet.