Botconocalypse 2010 Thursday: How I met your mother at Botcon (but you were already born)

And so Botcon 2010 began as usual with me showing up Thursday night to pick up my name tag and other special presents I get for "pre-registering", which is just a fancy way of saying I Respondezed-Si-Vous Plait. I waited so long to pre-reg that pretty much every living toy robots archaeologist did it before me, meaning the guys who paid attention when the call first went out for toy robots historians to come to Orlando got in line before me. My registration number was 2,101, which is so high it was literally off the charts-the email sent out telling people when to pick up their stuff ended with reg numbers up to 1,789. I thought I won some kind of Dio award for being last in line. So I just showed up at nine expecting huge lines and confusion because Pasadena was kind of like that last year. But it went really smooth! No Pasadenean four hour wait in line to pick up my registration packet or anything! The wait was reasonable like Botcons from a couple years ago but that didn't mean I was totally out of the woods. There was one very real and terrifying consequence to pre-registering as late as I did. I got lumped in with everybody else who registered late and 95% of those people are moms.

TOY ROBOTS TO THE LEFT OF ME SCALPER MOMS TO THE RIGHT

I was surrounded by moms and their pre-teen sons who wondered why I came to Botcon if I didn't know as much as they did about toy robots from the past ten years. For a second I felt totally outmatched by some kid I can only describe as Rainman of Cybertron. It's interesting to be told the unabridged galaxy spanning adventures of Optimus Prime and his transforming robot Volkswagen cohorts by some 13 year old filling me in on the past 4 million years in Transformer time starting after 1984 but I'm like dude I stopped paying attention in 1988 leave me alone. So far my most surreal Botcon experience has been when the kid's mom asked me for advice on scalping her box set and she got out the list of what the Botcon club store was selling and asked which of the attendee exclusive figures had the highest resale value potential on eBay. She was the embodiment of everything I think is wrong with the toy robots hobby today. If you have to sell the toys you buy at Botcon to recoup your expenses, then you cannot afford to go to Botcon. So just do the right thing and don't go and free up a slot for someone else who can afford it. I wish I would have told her to forget the con exclusives and invest heavily in Robot Heroes and Mister Potato head Bumble Spuds. I wish profiteering scalper moms would follow Dio's advice and don't talk to strangers. Most of all I wish I would have pre-regged earlier!

FlickrMacrocrania: The Botconocalypse 2010 Edition

I don't have much time to write photo descriptions but I'm dumping pictures at Flickr in a set called crazysteve at Botcon 2010. It's pretty much the same stuff you'll see at all the Thoroughly Informative Transformers Themed Internet Entertainment Sites, but with the added bonus of me obscuring said stuff by standing in front of it.

VINTAGE SPACE TOAST TOUR ORLANDO-If you're gonna die, die with your mouse on

Vintage Space Toast Tour 2010 continues as my toy robot hobby powers have once again managed to transform something that should be exciting and fun (a vacation at Disney World) into something mind numbingly boring and painful (a six hour visit to the library looking at microfilm reels). Unfortunately my old newspaper looking ended up being a colossal waste of time from a toy robots ads perspective and I was subjected to all the chaos and misery that is the news of the past but at least this time I didn't come across any puppy executions. To be fair I did find a lot of robot ads but after doing this for so long I've already seen most of them already. I guess the same could be said of all the bad news and tragedies that make the papers. When you've seen one front page photo featuring the twisted mangled lumps of wreckage that used to be cars, planes trains or other automobiles you've seen them all. But the usual misery and mayhem is almost balanced out by some special uplifting uniqueness of this land of Mickey Mouse and happy oranges. I don't know why, but while reading about plane crashes in any other city is rather depressing, there's something magical about them when they happen in the parking lot of Epcot Center.

Bargain Bonanza 11/29/84	Alltron Scientific 12/16/84

WE SPECIALIZE IN TRONS BUT ALSO CARRY SOME -TICONS AND A FEW -TOBOTS

I only got to sample a small portion of 1984 newspapers because it's all my time constraints and sanity would allow. While most of the ads I'd already seen, there were two particularly interesting ones that were not only new to me but kind of cool and/or mysterious unto themselves. I mean who doesn't love a Shockwave clone with original line art I've never seen before? And then there was this really crazy ad with a generic description of "Robots" from December of '84 that was notable for featuring line art of the Insecticon Kickback, who is generally regarded amongst toy robots historians as being a 1985 release. It's unusual line art that doesn't follow the usual pattern of being based off a photograph of the actual toy. Instead it's taken from the box art, which is intriguing because I wonder how they got that. If the store didn't have the product then how did they get this line art? It points to the Insecticons being late '84 releases that gradually attained wide release by early '85. The price point is correct for Insecticons and the art is consistent with official art so I'd totally believe anyone from Orlando who told me they remember the Insecticons being 1984 releases. I just wish the ad would be more straightforward and describe what exactly was for sale instead of being a generally worded solicitation for $4 robots.

YOU CAN TAKE THE ROBOT AD OUT OF 1984 BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE THE 1984 OUT OF YOUR HEAD

There wasn't much else by way of highlights during Vintage Space Toast Tour Orlando. I only looked through late November/early December of '84 and by that point my brain was fried. There were a couple honorable mentions like an ad for Robo Force vehicles with a picture of them in their boxes and a few clearer versions of ads I've already gotten. But really not much else. I think I'm reaching the point where I'm not interested in doing this much anymore, especially since Google makes it so much easier to find old robots and 25 year old bad news with their online newspaper archive. I'm starting to see that I don't really need to ruin any more vacations (or be in plane crashes) because I've got Google, which is the next best thing. Right now I've got a backlog of ads waiting for me when I get home that I'm not looking forward to and that's how I know I might need to take a long break from the hobby. I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to ruin perfectly good vacations that don't involve toy robots. Unfortunately I'm stuck in Disney World for the next three days and the only thing really going on around here is Botcon.

LET THE BOTCONOCALYPSE BEGIN!

I SHALL SEE YOU THERE MY FELLOW MACROCRANIANS!

The SuperConocalypse!

The eleventh seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse snaps, crackles and pops like I stuck my microphone in a bowl of rice crispies at a firecracker convention in this special Florida Supercon 2010 edition of the Podcastalypse! Thrill to the adventures of the Nostrodomatron as I walk the floor talking to myself for ten minutes about must have items I saw at FSC that every toy robot collector needs in their collection like terrible cardboard box Gundam costumes, very expensive drawings of old robots, some bootleg Botcon shirts and 12 inch tall Lynn Minmay dolls. Plus José Delbo talks to me about being the penciler on the old Marvel G1 Transformer comic from 1988 to 1990!


Or download it directly

THE DO-IT-YOURSELF roBOT CONvention

All the Familiar Faces!

I like to think every convention is what you make of it, and boy I tell you people were makin' stuff all over the place and most of it involved copyright infringement and lots of corrugated cardboard. While Supercon wasn't really a robot themed convention there was still tons of robot stuff to do. And by "tons of robot stuff to do" I mean I spent half my time at José Delbo's table having conversations with him about when he drew the Marvel Transformers comic from 1987-1990. The other half of my time was spent trying to drum up the courage to go to his table. Meeting Mr. Delbo was a huge deal to me and I tried to not be annoying but I may have come off a bit more starstruck with him than the average toy robots enthusiast. If I could have sat down with him all day I would have but I didn't want to be that annoying crazy fan that makes him want to go home and set all his Transformers art on fire. Ditto for Bill Sienkiewicz, who did the covers for the first issues of both Transformers and Starriors. Had those two been the only guests it would still have been a robotastic convention. I will choose to remember this convention as Botcon Miami, where Mr. Delbo and Mr. Sienkiewicz were the only guests and Tia Carrere, Yaya Han and Lion-O just happened to be there, too.

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• Meeting my robot heroes
• Not robots that turn into pencils-the other way around!
• Bad Gundam character design or homeless fan of Japanese robots?
• If I had a cardboard car I would totally use these
• What every bootleg robot cartoon DVD collector needs in their collection
• Remembering the Sturyorz
• A real Minmay Doll! (Not a Minmay real doll-that's something else)
• The Perceptor DaVinci pose from All Hail Perceptor
• Interview with José Delbo!

Supercon Day O (Where the "O" is for Lion-O)

FLORIDA SUPERCON FRIDAY RECAP

• Haven't seen any cosplayers in robot costumes yet.
• My robot heroes Delbo and Sienkewicz weren't there but that was cool because I forgot to put an SD card in my camera!
• One dealer had bootleg DVDs of Mighty Orbots, Japanese Transformers, Tranzor-Z and one that I think was called "The Best of GoBots"!
• Very little by way of robot figures on the dealer floor. Saw a Japanese reissue Smokescreen and some Revoltech Patlabors but that was it.
• One dealer has original art from Micronauts, ROM, Shogun Warriors and G1 Transformers comics. Pages from Transformers #43 and Transformers #55 were $95-$150 each, while he wanted $1,200 for the cover to Shogun Warriors #5!
• I congratulated Larry Kenny on landing that new Thundercats role-he said I was the first to mention it so far this weekend!
• HOLY CRAP I TALKED TO LION-O!!!!!

Yesterday's Heroes!

Florida Supercon kicks off today with tons of guests from all different facets of pop culture. They really do have something for everybody at this show and the level of celebrity in attendance is rather impressive. But while everyone else is clamoring to get the autographs of Leslie Nielsen, Shaft, The Iron Sheik, Tia Carrere, and the guy who played the "These aren't the droids we're looking for" Stormtrooper from Star Wars, I will be seeking out the guests with more roboplastilogical accomplishments.

ALL THE FAMILIAR PENCILS

In a robotastic stroke of luck, Supercon has landed two comic book artists who made huge contributions to the Transformers comic I grew up reading in the 80s. They'll have Bill Sienkiewicz who did the covers to the very first Transformers comic and all four issues of Starriors and also José Delbo, the man who drew most of the issues of Transformers from #36 through #67 during a span of three years from late '87 to early 1990. There were many milestones in that run including issue 50 where Starscream killed everybody, Bob Budiansky's departure as writer, Simon Furman's debut as writer in the U.S. and of course, my letter getting printed in issue #42. Delbo's run saw Transformers transition from a light hearted action adventure book to a more serious science fiction epic. It would be really incredible if he'd be willing to talk about his Transformer experiences but sometimes artists hardly remember what they did 20 years ago. Mr. Delbo also has numerous other accomplishments in comics for which he's highly regarded, like his 70s run on Wonder Woman and other DC titles. For some comic artists, working on toy robot books was just a job they did and it may not be exactly what they'd like to be remembered for. I guess we'll find out when I attempt to create the world's only copy of Transformers #42 signed by Bob Budiansky, José Delbo and Evil King Macrocranios.