BotCon Aftermath

BotCon, the official Transformers convention, has come and gone. As I indicated earlier, I did not go. Both the cost and the timing made it impossible. However, I have been able to keep up with most of the news via several Transformers news and message boards. For the most part, it seems that the convention was fairly well run, but the general feeling I get from many of the fans who attended is "they really don't get us."

By way of background, Fun Productions (henceforth referred to as "FP"), the current organizers of BotCon, have been running the GI Joe convention for nearly a decade. This is the first year that FP has organized the Transformers convention, and so they largely adapted the model for toy conventions that they know: that of the Joe convention. It was largely understood by everybody that this was the best way to do the convention in a short span of time (9 months after getting the license), and that while not everything would work as well for Transformers as they did for Joes, it was better do it this way than the reinvent the wheel with untried (or previously tried and failed) methods. Even though FP often took a "trust us, we know what we're doing" attitude that largely alienated Transformers fans with legitimate criticisms, many of us decided that it was best to wait until after this convention was over and allow FP the benefit of the doubt.

So, did they know what they were doing? In large part, yes. However, the dealer room was quite a bit smaller than usual. The art room was decimated to the point where all the entries fit on a small table, and the expensive exclusive toys were produced in such small numbers that no one who wasn't there will ever be able to afford any on the secondhand market unless they have tons of disposable income. Perhaps this web comic explains some of the feelings the best.

But probably the most telling sign that FP doesn't understand Transformers fans was the dinner. I found this statement at the Allspark forums:

The dinner was a perfectly good beef meal. For everyone. There was no spot on our prereg forms to specify if we wanted a different meal. Can't eat beef due to religious or medical reasons? Allergic to one of the other items on your plate? You're gonna have to send it back, and you're gonna have to wait up to half an hour for something else. Real American Heroes don't have such pissant concerns.

Mr. Savage made absolutely no effort to cater to vegetarians, or anybody who might not want to eat beef. This might work fine for Joe fans (who, as a commenter has observed, are a more "Republican" group. Not suprising for fans of a military toy line), but Transformers fans are a more diverse bunch, and people might not want a "red-blooded-American meal" for a variety of reasons: personal, health, religious, etc. While non-beef eaters were eventually given other options, it was only after they sent back their steak and complained, and then they had to wait half an hour. Even worse was this story, which tells of a person who can't eat mushrooms, who turned in his steak with mushrooms only to recieve chicken with mushrooms!

But even more disturbing was the fact the Mr. Savage interrupted the meal for a prayer. I first learned about this through a throwaway comment on Walky's blog, but this paragraph after what I just quoted from Allspark says it much better:

About 10 minutes into dinner, Savage came over the PA to lead us in saying grace. Maybe this goes over okay with the Joe fans. We're not the Joe fans. Everyone with an interest in saying a Christian prayer over their meal had already done so, with their own families around their own table, well before Savage chimed in. Everyone else was embarrassed or offended. But it's okay, because Jews and other undesirables aren't Real American Heroes.

Mr. Savage not only alienated a lot of non-Christian Transformers fans (which, I'm sad to say, is probably the majority of Transformers fans), but he embarrased most of the Christians, who (as was already noted) had already said grace if they were so inclined.

I have to admit to being rather torn on this one. As an evangelical Christian, I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that Christians should not be afraid to demonstrate their faith, even in secular, public forums. But this crosses a line for me. Mr. Savage wasn't just demonstrating his faith, he was forcing everyone else to participate in it. While I do believe that Christianity is the "one, true, way" (even though I'm not willing to be any more specific as regards any Christian denomination), I do not believe that one should force someone to participate in a Christian act of worship. A person comes to Christ themselves (or more properly, through an act of God), if at all. They cannot be forced into it. The prayer at the BotCon dinner was totally bad form.

So, the end verdict? Lots of style, but the substance leaves a lot to be desired. Time will tell if FP has learned from the experience.

Transformers Reviews for Non-Transformers People: Bumblebee

While most of my friends tend not to be Transformers fans themselves, they're generally kind enough to show a general interest, if only because they care about me and know that I'm a Transformers fan. They don't really understand my own interest, but they'd like to understand a "little bit," in order to better understand me. I'm grateful that they care enough to try.

In that vein, I'll try here to give a little bit of background on one of the main characters. The Autobot known as Bumblebee.

Now, the first thing you need to know, when I use the term "Autobot," I'm referring to the "good guy" faction of Transformers. There are a few others, most notably the "Decepticons," who are the usual "bad guys." Now that we're clear on that, on to Bumblebee himself....

In the Transformers cartoon, Bumblebee is most familiar as the Transformer who spent all his spare time running around with the main human character, Spike. Because of Bumblebee's comparative small size, he was able to interact more easily with humans, and he had a very warm and likeable personality.

Bumblebee was able to transform into a small, yellow, Volkswagen Beetle. While not quite as ubiquitous as "Herbie" back in the early '80s, this made him instantly recognizable.

The original toy version of Bumblebee was one of the less expensive Transformers available back when the line first came out, which no doubt added to his popularity. His transformation was very simple: push the arms in, fold the feet down and push the legs up, fold the head over, and you're done!

This character was so popular, in fact, that three other toy versions of Bumblebee were made available by the time the original line ended in 1990, representing six of those seven years (1988 seems to be the odd year out) making Bumblebee the most readily-available character of the original Transformers toy line!

Exclusivity

If there's one thing that Transformers fans can agree on, it's that we like to argue a lot. Is Rumble red and Frenzy blue (as the toys had it), or is it the other way around (closer to the cartoon's interpretation)? Could (giant-planet eating Transformer) Unicron destroy the Death Star? Was the former "Official Transformers Collector's Convention" owner a crooked businessman, or was he just in over his head?

Now that the convention (and the official fan club) has passed on to a "more legitimate" business, fans have been disecting the offerings of the convention to see if they come up to snuff. There has been a lot of debate about whether or not exclusives are even a good idea. Some fans think it's little more than an excuse for some fans to say "Look! I'm better than you! I have the exclusive!" But most debate has centered on how these exclusives measure up to exclusives of the past. Today, the folks behind the convention just announced the full set of 7 boxed exclusives available for pre-order. While I haven't seen the comments now that the last two of these have been officially revealed. I've seen enough of the previous comments (and predictions on these two which have turned out to be correct) to guess the verdict: they don't measure up well at all.

Now, to be fair, I've had my own criticisms on this set. And I still stand by many of them. $265 is far too much for me to be spending on Transformers toys. Especially now that we know that 5 of the 7 are "basics" (generally accepted as the smallest size, although this isn't technically true), and 1 is a repaint of another one within this set, and that another is misnamed for the character it's intended to represent. But, also to be fair, the $265 price tag isn't really intended to be the price of these toys. It's intended to be the price of the convention and the toys. The toys are intended to make up (roughly) about $120 of that cost. The fact that the toys are offered for pre-order to people who can't or won't attend the convention is actually something of a bonus.

But the sheer amount of vitriol expended on these things is really ridiculous. Okay, so they're all repaints of toys that have been available before. That's nothing new, and in fact it's likely to always be that way. So they're repaints of less than impressive molds, some of which are actually still warming shelves in stores right now. I grant that. So being forced to pay for all 7 of the toys, rather than picking one or two we like, is a burden we've not had to deal with before. I agree. So the recolors, especially for Ironhide, seem less than inspired. Yes, perhaps they could have done more. Some fans have even gone so far as to complain that Ironhide was too obvious and "fanwanky" a choice. Well, duh! The mold has always looked like a good fit for this classic character, and if you can't do "fanwanky" at the offical fan convention, then where can you do it?

The fact is that, because of the former convention runner's bankruptcy and loss of the convention (and club) license, this new group had to be brought on board fairly late in the game, and it's understandable that they would use the business model (including selling all 7 of the exclusives as a set, rather than allowing fans to buy just the ones they want) that has worked for them for nearly a decade (for the GI Joe convention), since the only other model that's been tried before for this kind of a convention clearly didn't work. I'm certainly not happy with all of the choices, and I've felt free to say so. But I hope that I've kept my criticisms of the convention constructive. And they'll certainly have the opportunity to make changes next year.

But face it, Transfans. The exclusives for this year are set. They're not going to change. If you don't want to buy them, don't. If you're still going to the convention, but don't want the toys, it's only $9 per day to get in at the door, and you can still buy whatever loose toys the vendors wish to sell. If you're not going to the convention, but have paid for the non-attendee package, ask for your money back! Surely the $25 (so I hear) non-refundable part pales in comparison to the extra $240 you could be spending on toys you actually like. For those who haven't already paid yet, but you only like one or two, you can almost certainly get that one or two off of eBay for less than the cost of the whole package, even at eBay's generally inflated prices. Even better for those who did pay for the whole set, but like only one or two: you can sell the ones you don't like, and possibly end up making more money than you spent!

But could we have an end to the cursing, name-calling, and general hate that's going on out there? Constructive criticism is one thing, but what I've been seeing lately is something rather different altogether.

P.S. I actually think the box is quite nice-looking....

The Transformers Creation Debate

People who have not followed the various forms of Transformers fiction over the past 20+ years will no doubt be surprised to learn that there's been a long-standing debate within the fandom over how the Transformers were created, often with religious implications. This has arisen because the various forms of fiction (cartoon, comic book, toy packaging, and others) were often created independently of each other, and so often came up with conflicting accounts of parallel events.

For example, the 1980's comic book version of The Transformers followed up on threads from Transformers: The Movie by making the movie's giant planet-eating Transformer, Unicron, into a "dark god," necessitating the creation of a counterpart to fight him. This counterpart was called "Primus," and the comic says that Primus created the Transformers (and their planet, Cybertron) to fight Unicron.

The 1980's cartoon ignored Primus completely, but said instead that the Transformers were created by a race of aliens called the "Quintessons," semi-robotic creatures with five faces that rotated around their single head to depict various emotional states. According to the cartoon, the Transformers were created as robotic tools that eventually developed sentience and rebelled against their creators. Unicron had nothing to do with this origin, but it is established in the cartoon that he was similarly created by a kind of "mad scientist" named "Primacron" for reasons of his own, but that Unicron also got out of control.

Fans of the Quintesson origin decry the establishment of "religion" in the Transformers fiction, often arguing that their version is more "believable" than the "god origin" and often suggest that the Primus/Unicron story goes too far toward the hyperbole of making the Transformers "the absolute most important beings in the entire universe." Primus fans, on the other hand, not only don't have a problem with religious elements in the story, but exhalt the depth that such a religion brings to the characterization of the Transformers, often noting that not all Transformers are "followers of Primus," and in fact multiple religions and interpretations have nonetheless surfaced.

As is often the case with long-standing fictional universes with apparent contradictions, there have been attempts to meld the two origin stories together in recent years. Primus, in one version, created the Transformers, but the Quintessons occupied the planet Cybertron and used the not-yet-sapient Transformers for their own purposes, aiding in their creation. But these are almost all (with one possible exception) merely fan attempts to weave a coherent continuity, and are not generally considered "official."

But what really intrigues me is the question of why science fiction fans (of which Transformers fans have a right to consider themselves a part) seem to find it so much more believable to suggest that Transformers (or humans, depending on the genre) might have been "created" by some alien visitors from outer space than by any kind divine being. While this tendency is by no means universal (as has already been demonstrated), it seems to me that the idea that humans were "planted" by an alien race (see Stargate SG-1, an excellent program, for an example of this) requires at least as much suspension of disbelief as the idea that God created us. Especially when one considers the question of where the aliens originally came from! This, of course, does not enter into the "creation vs. evolution" debate, which is also touched upon in great detail in science fiction, but which is beyond my purposes here. Here I'm merely talking about creation (be it evolutionary or otherwise) as "engineered" by some other entity, be that entity alien or god.

I've probably already made my own bias for the "Primus origin" clear. I've really never cared much for the Quintessons as characters. I found them far too ineffectual to be viable "Transformer progenitors." Probably my own belief in the existence of a God (big "G") makes the fictional version of a Transformers god (small "g") more plausible.

The debate continues....

Returning to the Final Frontier

This morning, I was able to experience something I haven't felt for over fifteen years. While driving to work, I was able to hear, live on the radio, the launch of the space shuttle Discovery.

As is well-known by now, this is the first launch of a US space shuttle since the destruction of the Columbia about 2 and a half years ago. The wait between launches compares to the extended delay following the destruction of Challenger in 1986 which, coincidentally, also ended with a Discovery launch. While the launch of the space shuttle in the early '80s was always a major event, accessible via substantial news coverage, shuttle launches quickly became more "routine" and less of an "event" not long after the recovery from the Challenger disaster.

It may be that shuttle launches fall back into this "routine" pattern again within a few months, provided, of course, that this mission is a success and there are no further catastrophes in the near future. However, given the current administration's push toward a return to the moon, with the intension of eventually traveling to Mars, it may be the era of "routine" orbital flights is tapering off, and future launches from NASA will, again, become major events.

Time will tell.

Other Voices

The Transformers message board I most often visit practically exploded after the interview with one of the producers of the upcoming Transformers movie in which, asked about whether the voice actors from the 20-year-old Transformers cartoon would reprise their roles, had this to say:

"No, I don't believe that is going to happen, I don't know why you would want the original voice over actors."

Many Transformers fans took this remark as an insult, and have begun a bitter debate on the message board (no doubt echoed elsewhere on the web) about how, if Peter Cullen and Frank Welker (Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively) aren't doing their character voices, these fans won't go see the movie. Moreover, they insist that, as fans who have (in some cases) supported the Transformers franchise over the entirety of its 20+ year history, they are entitled to have the actors they remember from their childhood play these parts again in the upcoming movie. These are, they insist, the definitive voices, and to use anyone else would fail to capture the characters they've grown to love.

To borrow a response from William Shatner's famous SNL sketch: "Get a life!"

To paraphrase a response from another Transformers fan, nearly a year ago (when the first news of a proposed Transformers movie came out): "It's not being made for you."

Seriously. It's not. While long-time fans of the Transformers are, at least in part, responsible for keeping the franchise alive for so many years, the producers of this movie would be idiots to listen to half of what the fan base wants. If they did so, they'd possibly create a movie that Transformers fans would love, but they'd alienate the vast majority of people out there who may remember Transformers from when they were kids, but haven't followed up on the franchise much since then.

And to be fair, the producers of the new movie have been extremely open to listening to fan comments. Transformers fans will not be forgotten when this movie is made. But movie producers generally have a better idea of what will make a good movie than Transformers fans do, and they're generally smart enough to know when to go with what will work, and drop the ideas that simply aren't practical.

That's not to say that I expect the producers to make all the "right" decisions. However, I am reminded of when Tim Burton directed his first Batman movie so many years ago. A lot of fans were furious that Adam West (Batman from the 60's TV series) wasn't even being considered for the role. (West himself declined to do a cameo, he was so upset.) The casting of Michael Keaton, previously known best for such comedies as Beetlejuice and Mr. Mom, did little to assuage fan fears. As it turned out, Keaton was perfectly capable of taking the role into the darker realms that had already started to become (to some fans, admittedly not the same ones rooting for West, I expect) the expected norm for all Batman franchises to follow.

Let's give the producers a chance to explore their vision of what the Transformers should become. If they hold open auditions, who's to say whether Cullen and Welker might even prove able to do exactly what they're looking for? But there's no reason we should expect this. For all the support we've given the Transformers franchise over the past 20 years, we have no right to dictate to movie professionals how they should make movies.

If you cut Optimus Prime off in traffic, would he honk at you?

During a sermon preached in the church in which I grew up, the pastor mused about the nature of time. Among other things, he noted that "the shortest interval is between the time the light changes green and when the car behind you honks at you."

I often feel that I am an oddity in Southern California, in that I don't use my horn very much. Certainly, I'm glad it's there. It is an important safety feature of a car. If someone in front of me appears to not be paying attention to the task of driving, I think it's perfectly appropriate to use the horn to "wake them up," for example.

But most of the time, it seems to me that people use their horn to express anger or impatience, and I don't think this is so appropriate. For example, when driving down a heavily trafficked lane, a car clearly wanted to turn left from the opposing lane into the restaurant immediately to my right. Traffic was backed up enough that, if I had driven to the back of the car in front of me, I would have effectively blocked the turning car from being able to get into the restaurant. So I slowed down and stopped so that the car could complete it's turn. While the car was still in front of me, the car behind me honked. How rude! Does this person expect me to plow straight through the turning vehicle? I find the same thing happens often at turns where pedestrians are trying to cross. Any car who is patient enough not to cut the pedestrian off is rewarded with angry horns from other drivers.

And it's usually not a simple "honk," either, but a long, loud, sitting-on-the-horn kind of sound that, so far as I can tell, serves no practical purpose whatsoever except to serve as a vent for the driver's anger and frustration. This is not the purpose for which the car horn was invented.

I don't claim perfection in my driving, nor in my ability to remain patient when other people are walking/driving/etc too slowly for my convenience. I'd rather be spending my time at whatever destination I'm driving to, rather than doing the task of driving itself. All I really can do is try to be polite myself (and it is an effort sometimes!), and hope that other drivers will pass the favor on to others. I know that people appreciate it when I make the effort to be polite, often because I see a grateful wave "thank you" in response. I have no idea if they remember when a situation might call for them to respond in kind to another driver or pedestrian, but I like to think that, maybe, the culture of anger that seems to permeate Southern California drivers can be turned around.