September 22 -- Graham, Jenni, David and I flew to Dallas, but sadly we flew out of Indianapolis instead of Columbus because we found that flying out of there would save us quite a bit on airfare. And, our flight was at 9 AM, so... we all woke up way too early on Thursday morning and I drove us west, starting well before sunrise. Once we made it to the airport we had a little breakfast by our gate. I was amused to see that the terminal had a restaurant called "Sausage Kingdom", and that just a couple stores down was "Smoothie King". I wondered if they ever had border disputes, or if perhaps the Smoothie King was in exile, taking refuge in the outskirts of Sausage Kingdom.

Once in Dallas, we took a cab to neighboring Frisco, where the convention was to be held. It was a half hour cab ride. Sort of annoying. But, aside from the distance from the airport, the location was quite good. The hotel was great, with a beautiful spacious lobby, suites instead of normal rooms, and a *real* free breakfast, not just continental breakfast. They had chefs there to cook eggs to order and everything.

Our first stop in Frisco was Graham and Jenni's hotel, where we dropped off our stuff. I was staying with David and some other people in the main hotel, but he had left David behind at the airport to wait for his girlfriend Maggie to arrive. So, until he checked in at the main hotel, I couldn't get into our room. Nate and Billy arrived short afterwards, and we drove around a little in the enormous shopping area nearby, which had a big fancy mall as well as a bunch of giant standalone stores (including a huge Super Target, which is apparently even bigger than a Target Greatland) and strip malls. We stopped at an EB/Gamestop sort of place where I FINALLY found a copy of "We [heart] Katamari" and picked it up. Of course, it was going to be at least four days before I'd get a chance to play it back at home, but, dammit I wanted that game. We then went to eat at the mall's food court, which is I think the only place I ate for the rest of the convention aside from hotel breakfasts and the Saturday night awards dinner.

Then we finally headed to the main hotel where we joined the already- growing mass of #wiigii! people in the lobby to hang out. At 6 PM the first batch of preregistrants were allowed to check in and pick up their toys and such, so we did that, then got some dinner, sat around in the lobby some more, and eventually went to the MSTF. This event, for those not in the know, is like "Mystery Science Theater 3000" with Transformers episodes. The jokes are scripted and performed by three guys on stage, just like the jokes on MST3K are done by a guy and two robot puppets. MSTF is a BotCon tradition, running nearly every year since 1997, and on top of that, the performers and writers are all friends of mine, so I always look forward to it. After the MSTF there was yet more hanging out in the lobby until bedtime.

September 23 -- On Friday the convention proper began, with the first panels being held and the dealer room opening up in the afternoon. I woke up just a bit too late to get any free breakfast, as they had closed down just fifteen minutes or so before I got downstairs. There was more largely nondescript hanging out with friends inbetween panels, and a bunch of panels (as described in my convention notes), and a lunch at the food court, and then finally we get to my first photos...

The dealer room opened up to preregistrants on Friday afternoon, and right at the entrance there was an elaborate diorama set up with the convention-exclusive toys. Fun Publications, the company now running BotCon, is coming to us from the GI Joe fandom, and apparently dioramas are big with Joe fans, so here they applied their expertise to a new franchise.

Aside from all the toys, the diorama also had a bog of water and seeping mist/smoke, and if you looked around back where the "hill" was cut away, there was even a "dead" and buried TF stuck in the dirt.

Wandering the dealer room, I was very surprised at how few dealers there seemed to be as compared to the last few years. I was also disappointed to see so little for sale that I was interested in. The main thing I've been buying in the last few years is storybooks to add to my book scans webpage, with just a few toys here and there. But this year I didn't see a single storybook for sale that I didn't already have, and there were no more than five or six different books to be seen anyway in the entire dealer room.

One thing I did find in the dealer room was exciting, though -- long-lost Transformers fan Kendrick Kerwin Chua! He had posted to ATT just before the 'con to say he would be there, so I knew to be on the lookout for him. He was there with his significant other, Brandie Tarvin (author of the Swindle story "Two For the Price of One" that appeared in the Transformers: Legends anthology book a year or two ago). We caught up a little bit before parting ways for the time, but got to talk to each other several times through the weekend.

After the dealer room, there was more lobby-sitting. Here, among other people, can be seen Trent Troop, Graham "LV!" Weaver, SwiftEagle, Doug Kern, and Quez. Also roughly 20% of Jackpot's head, and Jenni's backside.

Another angle revealing Quez, Greg "M Sipher" Sepelak, Nate/Forky, and Matt/Thylacine2000.

The lobby, as well as the dining area, were in a giant atrium that took up most of the interior space of the hotel. The suites all ran around the outside edge of the building.

A slightly lower angle. I think this photo is more visually interesting, but it doesn't include the skylight so you can't tell exactly how tall the atrium is.

After sitting a bit we went back to the food court to get dinner. The mall food court, which is on the second floor, for some reason has a carosel. It was pretty inexpensive, so Graham insisted that we ride it after eating, and we did. Twenty or so #wiigii! people all on the mall carosel together. There was at least one non-#wiigii!er riding, a young girl, and she seemed a little perplexed by the horde of men in their mid-to-late twenties who were getting on with her.

After the ride, we went back to the hotel and gathered in the area of the "Casino Night" room to wait for it to open up. While we sat there, M Sipher took out a few of his more recent repainted Heroes of Cybertron figurines.

Then he took out a few more... and a few more. Everyone was admiring his work and having fun figuring out what obscure versions of the characters he had painted them to look like. Note: In this photo, you also get a great view of Sipher's armpit hair!

Some of the prettiest of the figures, in my opinion, was the three "rainmakers", Decepticon jets who appeared in the episode "Divide and Conquer".

This one was sort of striking, too. Zazorigan: a red version of G1 Scorponok that was part of one of Takara's "Brave" toylines. Or, well, part of one of the stories, I guess. Sipher says the toy never came out.

So many! And this is just the ones that he hadn't put up on his website yet. You can see closeup pictures of them all on M Sipher's site. For the moment, all these ones are in the "quick shots" section, but eventually they will probably get devoted pages like the older figures.

Who are those guys admiring Sipher's work? Why, it's YOKE Hikeaki and Aaron Archer, the head honchos of Transformers for Takara and Hasbro! Also in the background is Transformers marketer Joe Lombardo. In the foreground, renowned Transfan translator Doug Dlin is showing one of the figurines to Yoke and explaining it in Japanese. Many of the figures are painted to look like pre-release versions of the toys or versions that were released in Japan before they were merged into the Transformers toyline, so Yoke would have been familiar with a lot of the color schemes. (Also, fan Bill/Lodril is on the far left. I don't actually know him, aside from seeing him around at BotCons, but he ended up in two of my pictures.)

As the excitement over the HoC repaints died down, I eventually decided to give the Casino Night a try. It had seemed like a really dumb idea to me at first, but I warmed up to it. They combined the traditional charity auction with the casino such that you could only bid on items with your casino winnings, and further, the casino winnings were worthless aside from their potential use in the auction. All preregistrants got 1000 free "dollars" of chips, and more chips could be purchased at 1000 per $20. (When purchasing chips you also had a chance to win more chips in a randomized fashion.) Unlike in a normal auction where the money for charity is based on how much people bid on the merchandise, this way the money is based on how much people are enjoying playing the games, and then even if the bids on the merchandise are low, the money is already there because people are bidding with valueless chips.

I found a table where all the players were people I knew, so I sat down and had them (and the dealer) teach me the game -- it was Texas Hold'em. After getting the hang of it I did alright. I had to buy more chips once near the beginning, but by the end of the hour or two that I played I'd come out with a moderate net gain. Of course, it wasn't real money, and I wasn't all that interested in anything from the auction anyway, aside from the packets of TF concept art that Aaron Archer had contributed. When we cashed out at the end of the gambling session, I pooled my winnings with Phil Zeman's to give him a better chance of getting something from the auction. Because of the way pooling money was restricted -- it had to be done before the auction started -- this actually made a difference and Phil got one of the art packets. Yay!

When I came out of the casino room I found that the #wiigii! gathering had increased, and was just finishing a game of Paper Telephone, which Graham had introduced to us at the 2004 TF convention. As the game ended, some of the group left to find a karaoke place, and I went with Graham, Jenni, and somebody else... Nate, probably, to try to find a store that was still open that late at night where Graham could buy some cough syrup for his sore throat. We failed, but we did walk around some in the previously-mentioned massive shopping zone.

September 24 -- The first thing I did on Saturday, after eating breakfast, was attend the finals of the voice tryout contest. Jenni was one of the finalists, as seen above.

The judges for the conest were fan advisory board members and Wally Burr, the voice director from the original TF cartoon, as well as scores of other cartoon series. The four foreground heads here are Pete Sinclair, Rik Alverez, Wally Burr, and Ben Yee.

Also in the finals was Kendrick! I thought he put a lot of character into his performance, but unfortunately the direction he took it was not what Wally was looking for in the role. I don't know who the woman up there with him is... I know I've seen her at previous BotCons but I've never identified her. Although Kendrick and Jenni didn't win, Brandie did, so she got to participate in the script reading at the Saturday night dinner along with the professional voice actor guests.

Later in the day the costume contest was held, and there were a lone two entries! How disappointing. There have never been more than a handful of costumes at previous BotCons, but I hoped that since they were having a special contest for them this year we might see more. Alas. Perhaps the low attendance overall was a factor.

Of course, there were two most costumed convention goers, even though they were not in the contest (for reasons that weren't clear to me). Here are Brandie and Kendrick dressed as Mega and Giga, the Destron Godmaster leaders from "Masterforce".

Back in the dealer room, Hasbro had put out some new toys in their display case. They changed up the displays at least once a day during the whole weekend so we got to see a lot of stuff. Here is one of the Star Wars Transformers -- General Grievous from "Revenge of the Sith".

I thought the packaging for the Star Wars Transformers was pretty nice, but my picture turned out blurry. This is the Darth Vader toy, which turns into Vader's custom TIE Fighter.

Another blurry picture showing two more SWTFs: A Jedi Starfighter that turns into (sort of) Obi-Wan and an X-Wing that turns into Luke.

Lunchtime at the food court. Nearly all of #wiigii! was here, but as there's a good three dozen of us or more, and we came in small batches, we were spread out over quite a few different parts of the court. Here you can see, going from right to left, Gabe/Recharge, Chris/McFly, Rob Powers at the head of the table, Matt/Thy, Bill/Fangwing, and Bill's boyfriend, whose name I never caught. Also, Scylla is directly behind McFly, but you can barely see any of her.

I hurried back from lunch so I could attend the G1 voices panel, which featured Wally Burr (mentioned previously) and Michael Chain, who played Powerglide, Red Alert, and Hoist in the original series. Here they are up at the front table.

After the Burr panel was the "Transformers Club Roundtable", which was a question and answer session with the organizers of the convention and fan club. Brian Savage, the head honcho, is the one looking my way. Also there was his webmaster Lanny Lathem, and three members of the advisory board (Ben, Alverez, and Pete Sinclair). I believe the hand in the foreground belongs to SwiftEagle... it's a very Swift-ish gesture. (Especially since he was one of my friends who was upset by this panel.)

After the roundtable, I stuck around for Paul Hitchens' TF:TM panel, and then went back out to the dealer room, where I found #wiigii! surrounding the Hasbro booth, and Aaron Archer drawing character portraits for fans. I noticed a lightning bolt on Aaron's ring, and asked him if he keeps his Flash costume inside it. He said "no", but I'm not so sure.

As the dealer room was getting ready to close, the portrait requests died down, and Aaron began to spontaneously do a new picture. It was BATMAN! Batman is a source of much mirth in #wiigii!, so this pleased us all. When finished, he gave the picture to Windy.

As a little bonus I also took a short movie of Aaron drawing Sureshock for McFly. Windy plays with her new Scourge to the right.

A couple hours after the dealer room closing, it was time for the awards dinner. Although the dress code this year was merely "business casual", many of us dressed a bit above that, as we're used to the dinner being "semi-formal". Here are Jenni and Graham! Aww. It's like they have affection for each other or something.

Some of the people at my dinner table: Nate/Forky, my roommate David/Walky, and his lady, Maggie/CrazieSunshine. To my right, between me and Maggie, was Chris/McFly, although he doesn't appear here.

Also at the table were Kendrick and Brandie! And, Alan/Mousepad was sitting just to my left, but I guess he's not in the pictures, aside from his right hand there.

Ben Yee and Kendrick, together again at last! And both wearing maroon shirts! (And Bill/Lodril again!)

The dinner was pretty good overall, although there were a few flaws. Most seriously, there was never a point where they asked anybody what they would like to eat. Normally at these things you pick a meal ahead of time, or a server comes around and gives you two or three options. Not so this time. The food all suited me anyway, and was pretty tasty, so I was okay, but anybody who had food allergies, or eats only kosher, or is vegetarian, or any of a million other restrictions...? There seemed to have been no forethought for such things. Maggie doesn't eat beef, and the meal was steak, so she had to ask the server if there was anything else as the steak was being served to us. She arranged to get a chicken dish, which then took at least twenty minutes to arrive. We were all eating our desert by the time her main course arrived. Very poor planning.

There was also some strangeness in that before we ate, Savage led the entire room in saying grace. This didn't actually *bother* me, although I thought it was kind of weird to do in such mixed company. There are a lot of non-Christians among my Transformers friends, even if you discount all the atheists. Perhaps the rest of the BotCon-going crowd is more uniformly Christian, but I would sort of guess not. We're a much geekier crowd than the Joe fandom, and agnosticism/atheism seems to be pretty common among educated and hardcore sci-fi and anime fans.

After the food was done, awards for the art contest were handed out. Sadly, like the dealer room, the art contest was very small this year. It was quite a disappointment to see how few entries there had been. Following the awards, it was time for the script reading. The reading was done like a radio variety program, with a few segments to it, and even "ads" in between pieces. It started with a very obtuse rewrite of part of "The Merchant of Venice" with Transformers words inserted into it. It was almost impossible to understand. Shakespeare is hard enough to follow when it's just being read aloud to you rather than you reading it yourself or seeing it performed, but when words are switched around to make it TF-related it's even harder. There was also a segment written by Ben Yee that was a followup story to the convention comic book (which he also wrote). There were also a couple songs done by the performers, again with some of the normal words being replaced by Transformers terms. All in all, the script reading was a painful experience. I liked the ads well enough, and I sort of liked Ben's story (although it was a little confusing as a script reading because it involved characters in disguise, posing as other people), but the rest of it was a disappointment.

After the dinner ended, we again retired to the lobby, and ended up playing "Apples to Apples", which I had brought with me. And actually, since we had so many people interested in learning/playing, we split the group (and the cards) up into three or four groups and played parallel games.

September 25 -- Sunday, the last day of the convention, started for me with the Dobson Brothers' panel. I then sat through the TF:TM panel again, as Paul had said he would be showing slightly different things the second time through. It was mostly the same, though, and I probably would have been better off getting lunch at that point. Next was the third and final Hasbro presentation of the weekend, a two-hour panel about the toy design process.

Here is Hasbro's lead TF designer, Eric Siebenaler, preparing for the design panel. With him is a GI Joe they had been calling "Little Jerry", who represented in-absentia Hasbro employee Jerry Jivoin.

As before, after the Hasbro panel, Hasbro rearranged their display cases in the dealer room. Here is a prototype for Alternators Mirage.

Packaging for the Beast Wars 10th Anniversary toys. These will sell for $15 and include a deluxe sized toy, a DVD with an episode of the BW TV series, and a piece of a Transmutate figure that you can complete by buying all six of the first-wave anniversary toys.

Anniversary Waspinator, with slight deco changes from his original release to make him look more like the TV show version.

The upcoming Primus toy was also on display.

A test shot prototype of CYB Menasor, one of the characters from Giant Planet.

Another Giant Planet toy: Quickmix.

And, finally, CYB Soundwave, a pretty good homage to the original considering he has a completely different alternate mode.

The famed Taco Bell napkin on which Aaron wrote the original story idea for "Transformers Cybertron". The original name he had for the series was "Supercross".

The other side of the Supercross Napkin. Aaron told us that he keeps it under the glass of his desk at work.

Eventually, we were kicked out of the dealer room so it could close for the last time, and reconvened in the lobby. Here are Rob and Windy looking way too cool with their awesome sunglasses.

During the drawing session on Saturday, I had Aaron do a picture of EN Scorponok for me, as he's one of my favorite designs from the last few years of toys. Here's the drawing, along with my Scorponok toy, on my desk back home in Columbus.

After a little more lobby time, those of us from Columbus had to get ready to depart, as our flight back to Indianapolis was only a few hours away. We got a ride to the airport from Billy in his rental car, so we didn't have to pay for a cab this time. I slept (or tried to) for most of the flight, and then upon arriving in Indianapolis, I got to drive us all home. About three hours later, and dead tired, we were back. Thankfully I didn't have to be at school until late morning.

Despite having misgivings about Brian Savage, and despite still thinking that he hasn't gotten a good handle on what we are looking for from BotCon, I was pretty happy with this convention overall. It ran very smoothly, the facilities were great, and the panels were very enjoyable as well. I was especially happy to have three panels with Hasbro instead of the usual one, as their panel is normally the highlight of the show for me. It may take another year before Savage is able to get the convention aligned the way I think it should be, but I'm feeling optimistic that it will happen.