Fun Publications
From Transformers Wiki
Fun Publications was already the organizer of the official G.I. Joe Collectors' Convention and club, which apparently impressed Hasbro enough for them to offer Fun Publications the Transformers convention and club in 2005. In 2017, Hasbro began organizing their own fan convention, with no replacement fan club currently planned.
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Changes
Name
Fun Pub's tenure overseeing BotCon began with a number of changes to the convention. Most visibly, the name "BotCon" itself was restored as the title of the official convention, consigning the often-lampooned OTFCC to the trash bin.
Dates
The date of the convention was changed, prompting howls of outrage from the fandom. BotCon/OTFCC had previously been set around the end of July. The first two BotCons run by Fun Publications were scheduled in the fall; BotCon 2007 was in mid-summer to align with the release of the live-action movie; BotCon 2008 and BotCon 2009 were scheduled for the spring.
Exclusives
Under Fun Publications, the number of convention-exclusive toys rose dramatically. The main toy offering became a multi-toy boxed set, rather than one to three individually boxed toys. These boxed sets tended to run around $250 each, prompting more howls of outrage from the fandom, even though the per-toy cost was virtually unchanged from the days of 3H's tenure. Additional toys were typically sold at the convention itself; and preregistered attendees received a bonus toy, often not revealed until the convention itself.
Other changes included pre-convention tours and activities in the host city and an expanded program of events at the convention itself, all of which were naturally met with howls of outrage by the fandom.
Problems
Fun Publications' greater financial resources and/or business model seem to have granted it a greater pull with Hasbro than 3H enjoyed; the seemingly endless delays, changes, missed deadlines and cancellations that plagued 3H's later years were far less common under Fun Publications' run, though the company was not immune to the vagaries of being a small licensee to a major multinational corporation.
In early 2008, a number of the exclusive toys for the upcoming BotCon 2008 were stolen from Fun Publications' production run. By April, many had appeared for sale on eBay; the thefts were beginning to eat significantly into the numbers required to ensure Fun Publications would receive enough toys to cover their needs. A copy of an emailed letter that Brian Savage sent privately to fans in possession of stolen BotCon toys was posted publicly by one of the recipients on a Hong Kong newsgroup. Savage threatened legal action if the product he paid for was not returned to him within two days, so that he could have enough to sell to BotCon attendees. This move was characterized by some fans as a "rampage" and an "unprofessional public display" on the part of Savage... even though it was not made public by him.[1]
But geez, he mighta run it through a spell-check first.
Following a problem with their website during the preordering process for Over-Run and Drift, it became apparent that many members of the club were experiencing credit card fraud and misuse of their membership login passwords (if that password was used elsewhere sensitive). On February 24, 2012, a series of emails from Fun Publications began addressing the issue, a new website system was promised, and on March 5, Hasbro released a statement of their own. [2]
Despite early promises to address the website issues, however, many of Fun Publications' online benefits and features remained unfixed and unavailable after several years. The club forum remained offline after the website problems from early 2012. Exclusive online fiction and bios were also unavailable for an extended period of time.
At BotCon 2013, Fun Publications announced the imminent return of online fiction, including a new prose story and an all-new updated website coming Fall 2013. The new prose story appeared to be a continuation of the dimension-hopping GoBots saga from "Withered Hope". Nearly two years later, a different new prose story, "Broken Windshields" was uploaded to the site in February 2015, beginning a chain of Beast Wars: Uprising stories. The Gobots story, "Spatiotemporal Challengers", was eventually begun in January 2016. The company's stories managed to come to their conclusions by the end of their license, with the last part of "Spatiotemporal Challengers" arriving at the literal 11th hour (just before midnight (EST) on New Year's Eve 2016, the last possible day).
Fun Publications would ultimately shut down in late 2018.
Conventions
Publications
- Official Transformers Collectors' Club
- Timelines - fiction in various formats including illustrated text, comics, and video
