BotCon 2009 Exclusive Feature: Leozack

As an incentive to get people to actually come to BotCon, rather than just fork over the money for a non-attendee set or make arrangements to buy the figures on eBay, Fun Publications always includes one figure that is "free" with the main box set, but which is only given to people who actually attend the convention. This year, Leozack was that "attendee freebie." Leozack is an homage to a Japanese-only toy from 1989. 1989 Leozack was a member of the "Breastforce," which meant nothing more prurient than the fact that he had a breastplate that could transform into an animal (a lion, as perhaps indicated by Leozack's name) and then into a weapon. Kind of the "next evolution of Targetmaster," if you will.

BotCon Leozack avoids any of the potential of lascivious misunderstandings that have naturally arisen over the years via the concept of Transformers with removable breastplates (stop that! I mean it!) by making this toy a straight-up repaint of Energon Starscream.

That's not to say that Leozack doesn't have extra weapons. It's just that he comes with the same ones that came with Energon Starscream. Here, for example, we see how Leozack's wings can fold down to reveal missile launchers. Of course, by removing the very things that would keep Leozack in the air, I'm assuming that the designers intend this to be some kind of odd tank mode, or some such.

Recognizing Leozack's Japanese origins, the writers of this year's BotCon comic gave Leozack one of the most over-the-top personalities seen in a Transformer in recent years, as he displays a combination of Japanese anime stereotypes. For example, his Tech Spec bio card says that, due to the nature of his "experimental combat upgrades," Leozack actually has to shout out the nature of his weapons attacks before they can be activated.

Given the personality Leozack has been given, the ridiculously long sword he has (if you combine the two energon weapons that come with him, and really, they make more sense combined than not) makes perhaps even more sense on Leozack than it originally did with Energon Starscream. Here's a picture of Leozack with those energon weapons separated and his missile launchers deployed in robot mode, perhaps ready to employ his "Great Power Rocket Swarm Attack."

I've always argued that I often care more about the characterization behind the robots than the toys themselves, and by that standard, Leozack is a lot of fun. I hope the folks at Fun Publications can find more ways to use this character in the future.

BotCon 2009 Exclusive Feature: Scourge

Of the five figures in the "Wings of Honor" box set, Scourge is the lone Decepticon. Yet, he doesn't interact with any of the other characters represented by the other toys at all (at least, not at the ages they were at when they looked like the toy we're being given) in the comic that comes with the set. Instead, Scourge is featured in a "framing story" that gives old-guy Kup a reason to remember his time as a young 'un. I find this to be more than a little strange.

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a fan of the toy, which is a repaint of Cybertron Sideways. Although I know that not everyone agrees with me on this point, I actually think that the vehicle mode captures the essence of Scourge quite nicely. Granted, it's not a "flying soapdish" (as some have described the original Scourge's alternate mode), but if one accepts the idea that Scourge is somewhat of a vampire (he was created from the remains of dead Decepticons, after all. I confess that I'm not the first one to come across the "vampire" analogy), and one then remembers that this toy was also used for the recent Ratbat release, it all comes together.

All BotCon exclusives are repaints, and with the recent line of movie-related toys off-limits due to licensing issues, and the Animated line simply too recent to be viable for the long planning BotCon requires, and nearly all of the "Classics" molds used in previous conventions, Fun Publications had to use either Energon or Cybertron molds for pretty much every figure released at BotCon 2009. So, yet again, I have to mention that this mold comes with a "Cyber Key." Rather than causing a weapon to flip out, Scourge's "Cyber Key" causes an array of blades to pop out of Scourge's arm shield (the top of Scourge's vehicle mode, as seen here). Sadly, the faction changing gimmick created for Sideways (and used to nice effect on Ratbat) is eliminated entirely here. But there really wouldn't have been an appropriate way to use it, anyway.

In robot mode, we see that Scourge was given a remolded head appropriate to the character. It's a little small for Scourge's body, but it does capture the essence of the character quite nicely.

I wish that Scourge's character was featured more fully in the "Wings of Honor" comic. Not only does Scourge not feature in the flashback (which is appropriate, since Scourge is generally established as having been created by Unicron in the year 2005), he doesn't really do anything significant in the framing story besides having a weapon blow up in his face. Really, they could have given that job to anyone! Still, it gets us a pretty nice toy.

Actually, it got us several nice toys, at least for those lucky enough to pick up the Sweeps 3-pack. I was allowed to purchase a set when I went through the Thursday night line, but that set was already promised to someone else, and they sold out before I could get to the club store after limits were lifted on Saturday morning, so you'll just have to make do with this picture taken at the convention. The Sweeps use the exact same mold as Scourge, but unlike the original Generation One Sweeps, which were identical in all respects (save, perhaps, sentience) these Sweeps are given a lighter blue color scheme, with transparent yellow plastic where Scourge had red. It really works quite nicely. These are the hardest-to-find figures of BotCon 2009, at only 1000 sets, and eBay auctions have them selling at a fairly high price. If you're able to find one (assuming you find a seller who's actually selling them singly, rather than bundled as a 3-pack, which is surprisingly uncommon) for a decent price, I recommend grabbing it.

BotCon 2009 Exclusive Feature: Kup

Of the four "Elite Guard" Autobots featured in the five-toy "Wings of Honor" box set, Kup is by far the best-known. His character was introduced in the 1986 animated movie, and is probably most easily described as "that old-guy Autobot." Seriously, being ancient was Kup's major defining trait. His scenes with the Dinobots in that movie convey the idea of an old guy sitting in a rocking chair telling stories of "how things used to be" to the neighborhood kids.

One major benefit of having an old-guy Autobot is that it implies the presence of a familiar character in an unfamiliar time. You can tell a story of times gone by while retaining someone that readers will still be somewhat familiar with, just by saying that this story takes place when that old-guy character was young. And so, with "Wings of Honor," we get a story of the beginning of the Cybertronian Civil War, when the Decepticons were only just beginning to make themselves known as a threat. Indeed, the story hammers that point home by having Kup be the youngest member of his crew.

Because of my previously-stated ignorance of car makes and models, I have to take other people's word for it that Kup (who, like all convention exclusive toys, is a recolor of a previously created toy, Cybertron Red Alert in this case, but with a new "Kup" head) transforms into a modified Dodge Magnum, which of course isn't the type of vehicle one would expect on an alien from roughly 9 million years ago. This kind of thing has happened before, and it's best not to think about it too hard.

As with all Cybertron-era molds, Kup features a "Cyber Key" which unlocks some feature or another. In this case, the feature is a couple of flip-out rifles that can be deployed in either vehicle or robot mode (although, in my opinion, they work in vehicle mode much better!).

One potential pitfall of having to use already existing molds to re-create well-known characters for whom the mold was not originally intended is having to find some plausible explanation for why the new toy has a feature not previously associated with the character (or doesn't have a feature one expects the character to have). The Red Alert from the Cybertron continuity was one of those rare characters (like Shockwave) that had a gun instead of a fist at the end of one arm. Red Alert would use this arm to attach various tools and gadgets, totally in keeping with his role as a doctor. But up until now, Kup has always had two hands, so the writers decided to say that he had a previously-unattested "manufacturing glitch" whereby he could detach and re-attach joints at will. This explains why Kup can use the claw and the hammer (as seen below), but honestly it makes him seem more like a Junkion than I think the writers intended.

Between the vehicle mode and the missing hand, a lot of folks argue that Kup should have been given a different mold, or (if the mold had to be used) that a different character should have been used altogether. Perhaps. I'm not able to look into some crystal ball and say what possible options that might have been chosen would have worked better. I can just comment on the ideas that I'm actually presented with. For better or worse, this is what we got. Honestly, I don't think it's a perfect fit, but its certainly close enough that I can accept it.

BotCon 2009 Exclusive Feature: Landshark

Not all of the figures in the "Wings of Honor" box set were homages to existing characters. Landshark is an all-new character. But, for those of you familiar with old Saturday Night Live sketches, you might guess that the name "Landshark" homages something else entirely. Rik Alvarez, who works behind the scenes with Hasbro and Fun Publications, wanted to do a character that homages comedian Chevy Chase, and as a result gave us a character with one of the most unusual origins ever seen in the Transformers franchise's 25-year history.

A repaint of Energon Landmine, Landshark is easily the largest toy in the box set. It doesn't exactly resemble any real-life Earth vehicle, but has elements of several different construction and/or demolition vehicles combined into one, with a missile launcher thrown in for good measure.

The vehicle actually splits apart into two components: a truck cab with plow and a tracked crane/missile vehicle. This tracked half can itself transform into a platform while the cab changes into Landshark's basic robot mode.

Being a heroic Autobot, one can safely assume that Landshark doesn't devour unsuspecting women like his SNL namesake (Decepticons might not be quite so safe...), but the character is seen in the "Wings of Honor" comic book (which comes with the box set) as having certain elements of Chevy Chase's trademark humor and his penchant for not always respecting authority. Since the Fun Publications folks promised us that they've got plans for more "Elite Guard" stories, we can perhaps expect to see this personality played up even more in the future.

Robot and platform can combine again to form Landshark's "brute mode" (borrowing the term from Landmine. I haven't actually seen it used anywhere for Landshark). I have to apologize for the dark picture, especially as his head is hard to see properly. The missile launcher and that crane really get in the way! The more prominent feature of this mode, however, the claws, are still pretty easy to see. According to Landshark's bio, these things enable him to "cling onto or climb up almost any structure." Does that make Landshark Spider-Man, too? I don't think Chevy Chase has ever played him!

BotCon 2009 Exclusive Feature: Flak

The five figures in the BotCon 2009 box set tried to balance out new figures with different kinds of homages. Whereas Thunderclash homages a toy that was exclusive to the United Kingdom, Flak is a new version of a Micromaster that was widely available in the United States in 1989. The original Flak was a member of the Micromaster Battle Patrol.

Like his Micromaster counterpart, BotCon 2009 Flak (a repaint of Cybertron Defense Scattorshot from 2006) turns into a mobile artillery system with multiple missile battery. Here you can see the two Flaks side-by-side for comparison. The two have rather different color schemes. It's sometimes said that an earlier CD Scattorshot repaint available in wide release, Overload, was created as a G1 Flak homage. It certainly has a color scheme that more closely reflects Flak's Micromaster form. It appears that when Fun Publications opted to do Flak, Overload wasn't yet on store shelves, but they learned of Hasbro's plans in time to at least ensure that the BotCon version didn't just look like a copy of the wide release toy.

Fun Publications went a step further than that, giving their version of Flak a remolded head that, although in different colors, is a clear homage to the original.

Often, when Fun Publications creates a toy that is clearly an homage to a Generation One character, it is intended to be the same character previously seen, but in a new body. The truth for Flak is a bit muddier. Besides the fact that the "Wings of Honor" story takes place millions of years before the stories we're more familiar with, the story--while definitely "cartoon-esque" (in the words of Pete Sinclair)--is not set in any particular continuity. So there's no clear reason to assume that this Flak becomes a Micromaster in a few million years, anymore than one would assume that any particular Generation One Optimus Prime should become Armada Optimus Prime. They're different continuities.

Being a repaint of a Cybertron figure, Flak comes with a "Cyber Key," which in this case has been painted to include an "Elite Guard" logo. Inserting this key into either of the batteries on Flak's arms opens it up to reveal additional weaponry. One presumes that Decepticons would just as soon not find themselves faced with Flak unless they're very well shielded!

BotCon 2009 Exclusive Feature: Thunderclash

Exclusive toys have always been among the main attractions of BotCon. This year, the set was based around the "Elite Guard" concept that originated in the Transformers: Animated series, although this "Elite Guard" was placed in a G1 setting. Those who pre-registered for the convention could do so while ordering a set of five figures, four of which were the members of this continuity's Elite Guard. Thunderclash is their leader.

Thunderclash is a repaint of the Energon Rodimus mold (although it has been noted that the plastic colors used are nearly identical to Checkpoint, which was released later in the Energon line), and transforms into a truck cab of indeterminate type. The character's inspiration was a 1992 toy named Thunder Clash (note the space between the words) that was released in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe. The original Thunder Clash is perhaps best known for two things: 1) the mold was later used for Machine Wars Optimus Prime, and 2) the toy's garish color scheme. The BotCon 2009 version attempts to duplicate at least some of that garishness, although I find it interesting to note that most of this is done through paint applications, rather than through plastic colors. None of the reddish colors, for example, are plastic. That's all paint!

Those reddish hues really come out in robot mode, where nearly half of the mode uses the color. Still, because of the ways that the plastic sprues are broken down (and I actually know this from experience for this particular toy!), to use that color of plastic would have required that the wheels and forearms (for example) be reddish (and covered with black paint) or the torso would have had to be that color (then covered with white paint). All things considered, I'd say that they made a good choice.

As I've already mentioned, this was the mold that was used in last week's customizing class, and although the toys are absolutely identical, in terms of the molds and plastic colors used, having different paint applications (and stickers, in the case of the customization class toy) really can make quite a difference. Here is a shot of the two toys side-by-side.

BotCon 2009: Saturday and Sunday Overview

The first order of business on Saturday morning was to get "Weird Al" Yankovic's autograph. Because "Weird Al" is well-known outside of the Transformers fanbase, and because this is the first time he's ever been to a Transformers convention, I knew that the line for this one would be long, so I arranged to arrive about an hour and a half before signing was actually scheduled to start. Even so, there was a considerable number of people who were in line before me (a process made more difficult because there was no readily-visible signage to determine which of three BotCon lines already formed by this time were for the "Weird Al" autographs, and the one I wanted was on the opposite end of the Convention Center!).

Still, once signing actually started, the line moved along at a respectable clip. This was, of course, because the convention organizers set a rule saying that no posed photos could be taken with "Weird Al" after each autograph. Basically, you could shake his hand, say "hi" and give him the item (they also had a "one item only" rule) to be signed. It was okay to take pictures while "Weird Al" was signing, though. Here he is just having completed the autograph on my Animated Wreck-Gar toy.

Once that was done, I was able to get back into the dealer room, where I verified that the rumors I'd been hearing were true: the 3 Sweep exclusive set (the only one I didn't already manage to snag for myself, having committed to giving a club member the one I was able to get on my own package) was already sold out. Indeed, they may have been gone by the end of the day Friday. I haven't heard for sure.

One aspect of the dealer room I neglected to mention last time was the art display. Fans who contributed models and artwork for the convention contest had these items on display in the corner of the dealer room. This "Shattered Glass" Soundwave (Earth version) was part of a larger set, but I liked it enough to want to take a picture of it on its own! You can find other examples of art from these displays here.

Every year, there are a number of fans who dress up in costume. I am always amazed at the creativity and quality of the costumes worn by fans, and felt that this year's costumes were as good as any I've seen any year. Here's a link to pictures of folks in costume at BotCon.

Saturday night was capped off with the party on the Paramount Studios lot. I've got lots of pictures of this, featuring the concert, the actors, the vehicles used for movie Ironhide and Ratchet, and the lot itself, but this is the one I have to include here. We couldn't pose for photos with "Weird Al" at the signing, but it was fair game at the party! This is what I paid that extra "party" fee for! (Oh, yeah, we got to see a couple of short movie clips introduced by Michael Bay.)

Once attendance was opened up to Walk-In guests (I've joked a bit about the long lines, but these folks had the longest lines of all, from what I could tell), there were lots of kids to be seen at the convention (real troopers, if they had to wait in those lines!). It's all sorts of fun to see kids getting excited about seeing the Optimus Prime statue, and playing with Transformers toys (especially when you can tell that the toy they're playing with so enthusiastically is one from the original era. I'm guessing most of those kids have no idea that the toy they're playing with is more than 3 times older than they are!). This is what Transformers are all about, folks!

There's not too much to add that's specific to Sunday. More panels, more Walk-Ins, more kids. That's not to say it's "more of the same," exactly, but it's just harder to talk about Sunday in a separate way from the rest of the weekend without retreading ground. Sunday had the Hasbro Designers panel, which didn't allow pictures because they revealed a few toys set for release within the next year or so. Animated fans will be glad to know that there are still some new toys on the way, including Animated Arcee and Animated Rodimus. I was particularly interested to learn that Hasbro will be re-issuing the G1 Insecticons and G1 Perceptor. If the price isn't too unreasonable on those, I'll almost certainly be picking them up in due course. Also, Brian Savage drew the two winners of a free trip to next year's BotCon, but although both winners were apparently local, I wasn't one of them. In any event, I really do recommend checking out the news sites (such as TFW2005. I was able to chat with a few of the folks who run that site while waiting in line to get on the bus for the Paramount party. They're nice guys) for news, and the tons of other pictures I've got posted at Photobucket (photos have since been moved), where I've been trying to fill in captions to describe what's going on to provide some context. You can also see images of the convention (broken up by day) at BotCon.com. Here's one they took with me in it (I'm on the far left).

*Whew!* Although this was my fourth BotCon, this was easily the one in which I was the most involved in going to all the various activities. I was doing BotCon-related activity for five consecutive days, and was on my feet for most of that time! I'm back at work now, more than a little tired, but very happy to have taken the time to enjoy what BotCon had to offer. Starting tomorrow, I'll get to work on featuring each of the convention exclusive toys. I'll handle each toy separately, with the exception of the Sweeps set, which are just repaints of Scourge, which I will do a full feature on. I'll include the Sweeps when talking about him at the end of the week.