Stampy (1999)

It's Easter time! What Transformer could be more appropriate to feature than the one that turns into a bunny rabbit? To the best of my knowledge, only one Transformer has been created in the 30+ years of the franchise with this distinction.^* Therefore, I bring you "Stampy."

Micromaster Battle Patrol (1989)

Although there is a substantial portion of the Transformers fandom that fondly remembers the original (retroactively called "Generation One") era of the franchise, the latter half of the line—the portion from about 1988-1991—is often all-but forgotten. While concepts like the Micromasters do indeed show up in the form of Mini-Cons today, the term "Micromaster" is seldom, if ever, invoked, and Micromaster characters themselves are seldom homaged at all.

Transformers Hall of Fame 2016 Choices

So it's that time of year again. In preparation for BotCon 2016, Hasbro has asked the various fan sites, message boards, and other online media to nominate choices for the "Transformers Hall of Fame."

This year, fans are asked to select winners in each of three categories (parentheticals and quotation marks are mine, based on clarifications from Hasbro. Also, note that any characters or persons already inducted into the Hall of Fame in previous years are ineligible for nomination this year):

• Favorite Transformers (robot) character
• Favorite "Underrated" Transformers (robot) character
• Favorite Transformers-associated musical act

There are several points of confusion or concern about the ways that these polls are conducted. "Underrated" has not been well-defined (and, honestly, I don't see any way to define it well, especially not such that a character so characterized would be able to win what is, inevitably, a popularity contest), and there so few musical acts associated with Transformers (especially after removing people already inducted into the Hall of Fame in previous years, whether or not voted on for this specific category) that I don't think that particular category has any business being a part of the Hall of Fame to start with.

But, that said, here are my choices for the two character-related categories:

Favorite (not already inducted) character: Sky-Byte

Favorite "underrated" character: Scrounge

BotCon 2005 Chromia (Moonracer)

Going through my oldest Fun Publications exclusives in recent months has given me an opportunity to discover long-standing errors on The Unofficial Transformers Club and Convention Exclusive Data Pages that had thus far escaped my attention. Chromia represents one of these. For some reason, I had previously only acknowledged the new heads given to Deathsaurus and Ironhide. But the fact is that Chromia also has a head that was also created especially for the BotCon 2005 convention.

BotCon 2005 Fallback

At the time that Fun Publications first obtained the license to do official Transformers conventions in 2005, their predecessor had revealed a number of concepts left undone, and despite outspoken requests for FunPub to go ahead with those concepts, FunPub made it clear that they had ideas of their own that they wanted to do instead. Oddly enough, at least two of the toys that were actually included in the seven-figure box set for BotCon 2005 used the same molds as those unproduced concepts. One of these was Deathsaurus (which used the same mold as a Beast Wars Megatron concept... which might yet come out at BotCon 2016). The other was Fallback.

BotCon 2005 Deathsaurus

I have recently come to realize that this blog (or, more properly, its predecessor, Transforming Seminarian) has existed for the entirety of the time that Fun Publications has been running BotCon. Despite several behind-the-scenes attempts, I've never gotten around to featuring what is arguably their first major exclusive toy: Deathsaurus from the 2005 BotCon box set (although, as the mention of the box set implies, Deathsaurus did not come out all on its own, it was certainly the centerpiece of that set). Some of the reasons for this delay will become clear as I proceed to showcase the figure.

Generations Arcee

Way back in 2009, when doing a feature on Energon Arcee, I commented that "to this day" (that is, from the start of the Transformers franchise in 1984 to the then-present of 2009) no mainstream toy of Generation One Arcee had ever been created. I wasn't counting a Binaltech figure that had come out the previous year in Japan, although I probably should have done, as it was technically the correct character, even if it wasn't available here in the US and bore little resemblance to the character's iconic form. That said, it took another five years before Hasbro finally got around to doing Generation One Arcee as she was always meant to be, with the 2014 Generations figure.