BotCon 1996
From Transformers Wiki
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 This is as good as BotCon '96 got. This right here. | |||||||
| Date | July 12-14,1996 | ||||||
| City | Rosemont, IL | ||||||
| Venue | Radisson O'Hare Hotel | ||||||
BotCon 1996was held onJuly 12-14,1996, in Rosemont,Illinois.It was the only convention overseen byMen in BlackProductions, who inexplicably chose to infuse the convention with aPulp Fictiontheme. There were no guests aside fromHasbro/KennerrepresentativesGeorge BoznosandAnthony Gaud.
To celebrate the tenth anniversary ofThe Transformers: The Movie,MiB held a "birthday party" featuring a screening of the film on a wide-screen TV and a birthday cake. A verygenericbirthday cake. The sealed VHS copy ofThe Movie—opened just for the occasion—did not actually work, although MiB were somehow able to acquire another, functional copy from an attendee after several minutes. Unfortunately, that did not alleviate the fact they neglected to produce forks for the cake. Also, water was served as a drink out of a McDonald's keg (not even that cheap Hi-C orange drink they normally use).
The dealer room opened to the dealers for setup hours late, and was opened to "early bird" pass holders almost immediately afterwards.Dennis Bargerof Men in Black assured dealers that their wares would be safe in the convention hall overnight, as he would be sleeping in there to ensure nobody would intrude.
No lanyards were available to dealers or attendees. Identification was done via generic "HI MY NAME IS _______" stickers, which the staff ran out of by day two, resulting in people just waltzing in unchecked by the end of the show.
Needless to say, Men in Black was not brought back to participate inBotCon 1997.
Contents |
Merchandise
Convention-exclusive toys
- Onyx Primal,whose "bio" continued the unofficialPulp Fictionassociation of the event by being a slight rewording of a quote from the film. A "Dealer Exclusive" variant of Onyx (which was the same toy with "BOTCON '96 DEALER EXCLUSIVE" on its back) was also made available only to dealers; this would be the first andlasttime such a thing was attempted at BotCon.
Other merchandise
- A T-shirt with the program'sPulp Fictionparody art was also sold, black with gold ink.
Displays
The art room did feature many unreleased Transformers toys that have rarely or never been seen since (good thing they were photographed for theBotCon Legendsfanzine!). These prototypes were:
- One of theGeneration 1Unicron toys
- Two unproducedAction Master vehicles
- Anunproduced Micromaster base
- The "Double Pretenders",a gorilla-shell and spider-shell duo.
- A preliminary version of thePretenderGroundbreaker.
- Greasepitand theGo-Bots Racing Rig.
Kenner "panel"
Events
Friday
Friday was mainly for pre-registration check-in. However, those with a "dealer day pass" (an extra fee tagged on to the pre-registration fee) could enter the dealer room from 7pm to 9pm. As dealers had been let in late to begin with, this causedmuchchaos.
Other major events included...
- ATransformers: The Movie-themed "birthday party" (see above) at 9pm.
- A showing ofThe Transformers: The Movieat 9:30pm.
Saturday
Once again, a "Dealer Day Pass" was instituted, whereby pre-registrations who paid extra could get into the dealer room at 7am (as opposed to the 9am general opening). Other events included:
- A special showing of "Beast Wars (Part 1)"and"Beast Wars (Part 2)".
- A Kenner "presentation".
- A toy variations panel held byJonandKarl Hartman.
- A fanzine panel.
- Another showing ofThe Transformers: The Movie.
The dealer room was open until 6pm.
Sunday
No "Dealer Day Pass" was offered for this day. Events included:
- A "How to Repair YourTransformersToys "panel by Bob Bowman and Harry Tietjens.
- Another showing of theBeast Warspilot episodes.
- A "1997 International Transformers Convention" panel held by Dennis Barger and The Men-In-Black.
- A "Foreign Non-Toy Items" panel held byTony Preto.
- ATransformersQuiz Show, followed by an announcement of contest winners and prizes.
- AToys For Totscharity auction, which included several unreleasedGeneration 2Go-Bots,ATB Megatron/Starscream, and Combat Heroes Optimus Prime and Megatron. MiB raised over $5000 and donated 100 Onyx Primals to the charity as well.
The dealer room closed at 4pm, and the convention shut down entirely at 5pm.
Notes
- Men in Black Collectibles attempted to produce an original "Action Master-inspired "Arceefigure as the '96 convention exclusive. As the steel tooling required to produce plastic action figures costs in the tens of thousands of dollars, this idea never went anywhere, and it is unknown whether MiB had entered into any actual discussions to license the use of the character besides. This figure was presumably unrelated to the actual Action Master Arcee planned by Hasbro/Takara, whose concept sketches wouldn't be revealed to the general public until the publication ofTransformers Generations 2011 Volume 2.
