I have finally gotten around to posting the gallery for Botcon 2010 on Orlando, Florida. Maybe sometime I’ll get to doing the gallery for 2009. Above you can see the obligatory group photo. Unfortunately, it was done very impromptu as Ernie and Rubin were trying to leave, so we couldn’t find Sam nor Robert in time to be in the photo.

There was lots to see this year. I took plenty of pictures of the display cases for upcoming product, the Transformers Hall of Fame and some random rare items found at various dealer booths. The image above is me holding one of the rarest items that was released at retail exclusively in Japan. That one, in particular, was on sale for US$1,000. Most of you don’t care about that though, so here is a picture of Sam ironing his shirt.

Next year will be back in Pasadena. Hopefully it won’t be quite so humid out.

I opened a new box of Cheerios today at work and to my surprise it contained a super-fast pull back racer inside. This is especially cool to me because as a child, I never ate much in the morning, nevermind a normal cereal that had free stuff inside. It came with a sticker sheet and directions for where to put the stickers. I spent the better part of an hour carefully applying each decal using a paperclip to properly align the design to its appropriate place on the car before permanently affixing it.

I might add, it is indeed super fast.

Revenge of the Fallen Wheelie

I did this entire video in rhyme in honor of the original Wheelie. I really liked the RotF Wheelie. I heard someone complain that he was too much like Joe Pesci, but honestly had they not made him like that, even more people would have complained because he was too cute or something along those lines. The video came together quite nicely considering I was hugely constrained on time once again. I did not get to start it until Saturday nor film it until Sunday. This is also one of my shortest videos. Mostly because I kept running out of things to rhyme with.

Hope you all enjoy. I’d say leave a comment, but I’m pretty sure those are still broken.

One thing at a time. I have not forgotten you, little blog!

In honor of Tax day, I wrote up a wonderful little retrospective on everyone’s favorite Decepticon Fuel Auditor, Ratbat. It was a fun little article to write. Given enough time, I’ll probably do more. Particularly if an appropriate occasion arises that warrants such an article. In this case, it was the sudden proliferation of Ratbat merchandise.

You can read the article here.

Well I got lots of packages and mail recently and my new Cross Ion Lunar Gray pen was included. Unfortunately, I had ordered two and there was only one in the package, yet 2 on the invoice. I’ve sent an email to the amazon reseller to try and get my second pen or a refund.

Initial impressions:

• The pen opens and retracts smoother than my old one.
• The keychain topper still fits over the writing end of the pen, so when you put the pen on your keyring, the ink drains to the top of the pen. This reduces the longevity of the ink refill.
• The rubber grip is a dust magnet
• This pen is not nearly the fingerprint magnet the old one was.
• Gel inks write smoothly and fluidly with little smudging because they dry so fast (great for lefties!)

So far so good. I haven’t really had a chance to use it for an extended writing session yet, but I expect that to change with work soon.

I picked up MOTUC He-Man and Beastman from MattyCollector.com when they went on sale last month. Only got around to opening them today. Much better figures than I had anticipated. Mattel has screwed the pooch promoting it, but the figures stand up for themselves. They’ve been getting glowing reviews and its no wonder. Skeletor goes on sale on January 15th. Definitely going to have to pick one up for myself.

I meant to film an entire episode of PowetToys today, but all I ended up doing was playing with the figures and making this stop motion animation video. Not bad considering I wasn’t completely focused on it. I bet I could do a much better one if I planned it out…

It took me a minute to figure it out, but note how both thighs open toward the right. Yep, both my left and right legs have right thighs. If you look closely inside the opening of the thigh, you note that both have markings that say R2.

Click To Enlarge

Foo.

Now I need to find someone who just wanted the Adam Warlock figure and doesn’t want their Rulk leg. Hopefully this is just a fluke and not common.

In my seemingly constant quest to unpack and sift through my things to try and make more room, I came across several items I did not think were still in my possession.

• A very incomplete Pocket Power article at VirtualToyChest.
• Amazon listing for Glo-Bones Pocket Power set
• A listing of a dozen dangerous toys in 1989
  

  In 1989 the consumer group, Americans for Democratic Action published a list of deadly toys. The “Bakers Dirty Dozen” was found to be particularly hazardous to young children. It is important for us to recognize and avoid their danger.

  7. Pocket Power Rapid Fire
  Hand-Held Multi-Shot Target Gun – Tyco Industries

Then I found this blog post. While it doesn’t provide much in the way of information it had two images for, which, I was looking.

Pocket Wave 1:

Pocket Wave 2:

It seemingly looks like a complete listing in the images, but then the virtual toy chest entry shows skateboarder, a submarine and a Ferrari racer. Where are those? When did that come out? There is also I set that I own that is not in the listing. Was there a third less publicized wave?

Among the cache of Pocket Powers I found were:
Thunderblade
Roadblaster
Glo-bones
TurboProp
Indy Racer
Baseball
Squirt Gun
Survival Kit
The set I found that is missing from the above images was a Bowling Alley set.

I will have to take some pictures of the sets I found. If I get a chance to go home sometime in the near future I will also have to take a look in my parents’ basement to see if I still have the back of the packaging. I bet if I had that I’d find a lot more information. Particularly if I can find the bowling alley set’s card back. I kept most of that stuff, much to the occasional chagrin of my parents.

My wonderful girlfriend linked me to a couple of pieces of art on DeviantArt. The artist took Transformers and tried to draw them as they would look if they were actually human. Some of them are spot on, others are just too generic to get who they are, but overall its a fun idea and neat to see the interpretations that translate really well.

Animated Characters in Color

G1 Decepticons in Color

G1 Character sketches in black and white

This actually reminds me of one of the episodes from the original series where Ultra Magnus, Arcee, Springer and I think one other had their minds switched with humans or something along those lines and the bodies they were put into were great human interpretations of the robots’ personalities.