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BotCon 2008 - Hasbro designer panel
My Notes from BotCon 2008 - Sunday's Hasbro designer panel. This is probably elsewhere, but I thought I'd post it here. Panel members were Aaron Archer, and four other guys (one of whom was always referred to as "Big Daddy"). There were no pictures allowed, so I took some notes...
- Showed a picture of 3 Animated Seekers in G1 colors (Starscream, Skywarp, Thundercracker).
- They receive Day and Night colors from CN for models, so toys could be done in either color pallette.
- Slide showing 4/25/2005 with the title: "Transformers: Hero". Blitzwing's design was done.
- "Aaron the Archer". Aaron had no idea he was in it. Once he knew, he told them to enhance his left arm due to Aaron being left-handed in real life.
- Wreckage movie shot was shown but as we know he was cut-out from the movie. Original color was Army Camo Green, but for the toy they swapped it to Winter Camo.
- Midnighter(?) the Real Gear Robot has 7-26 "Seth" spelled upside down for the designer's brother's name and birthday.
- Longarm - "Mike Towing" in the movie, but changed to "Orson's Towing", which was Aaron's old screenname.
- Salvage redeco is one of the other designer's favorite... Red truck was done as a Sanford & Son homage (they showed a pic of both side-by-side)
- License Plates for the Alternators were all shown
- Megatron was supposed to be released as a Convertible Cadillac, but it never got released.
- Jetfire Armada... based on Michael Bay's Armageddon ship design.
- "5074" on the Hoist toy. There's a story that they only eluded to about the Hasbro guys at a Comic-Con that involved a construction site and some real-life equipment. The key is still hanging in their office apparently.
- New Classics Silverbolt markings: "25" is for 25 years of Transformers in 2009. Same with Galvatron.
- Deluxe Classics Astrotrain design picture shown, dated Dec. 3, 2005.
- New Storm Cloud (Classics Powerglide redeco) design picture shown, dated Jan. 16, 2008. Markings MM-89 are for Micromaster and 1989, the year he originally came out.
- Tidbit: if you open Classics Powerglide's chest, he has a heart in it.
- Classics Starscream shown, dated Dec. 12, 2005.
- Classics Megatron picture shown, dated Sept. 28, 2005.
- Mentioned about one designer/marketer(?) who loves Smokescreen. FAB Smokescreen was the example. There are sure to be more recolors for him if the molds fit.
Notes from the "Big Daddy" designer:
- Plasma Injection Energy "PIE" on Classics Mirage... due to fandom, Cheetor and pie.
- "F.P Racing" is one of his non-work/weekend hangout(?) group names.
- Recon Barricade's license plate SAGE2764 is screenname he used to post Alternator images
- His Thesis was a 1:24 scale Abrams tank Megatron.
- "Decepticon Air Command" logo is based on the Phillipeans Air Force Logo because he liked the look of it. This can be seen on Walmart Divebomb redeco.
Sneak peaks:
- A Perceptor TF:Animated cell render was shown. Dated April 2008.
- Asked "Walky" - big TF fan - to stand-up. Showed 25th Anniversary Hot Shot as a complete remake. Deluxe sized. Includes Jolt.
- Acid Storm (Green G1 seeker) due to TF Wiki's Matt(?). Tried names like Rainmaker. Acid Rain. Both denied by Trademark lookup group.
- Classics 2.0 - Silverstreak shown. Made at the same time as Prowl by changing the lights on Prowl's roof to have no lightbar. Easier for them to do changes like this for multiple characters at design time.
Last edited by chaingunsofdoom; 04-30-2008 at 05:24 PM.
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Must've been my hearing.
