The Loyal Subjects X The Transformers

This is an odd purchase for me, I usually don't go for off-the-wall stuff like this, but I was in a local bookstore the other day and these happened to catch my eye. And because I'm such a G1 nerd I couldn't help but purchase one.

Charticon Exclusive Baleful Head Upgrade

The final Charticon exclusive I want to cover was one that almost didn't happen at all. Originally I wanted to do something special for the wonderful committee of people I had working on the convention with me. Eventually I decided a "staff exclusive" head upgrade might be a good idea and I was originally going to keep it a surprise for everyone. But obviously that didn't pan out as I expected.

Charticon Aftershock, A Personal Look

Let me preface this by saying I know Flywheels is planning on doing a review of this figure if he hasn't already. Because I don't want to go over the exact same things I decided to make this post about my personal experience in creating this figure over the past ten months. This thing has been my "baby" and I am very proud to have such a nice finished product.

It is hard to even know where to start. When we first set up the idea of this convention there was no doubt in my mind that we were going to do an exclusive. And because I am very passionate about transformer toys in general, I decided I wanted to do an exclusive that would exceed all expectations, something that would literally be the best of the best. Did I achieve that?

Charticon Exclusive Tech Specs

Whew, it feels like I've been gone forever. Charticon took up so much of my time I barely had room for anything else (which I know my wife didn't appreciate, lol). But now I've got my time back and since we aren't going to have another show until 2015, I have some time to get back to the blogging community I love! It is amazing what six months away will do, especially to your stats! I was running around 5-6K visitors per month in December and then when I got super busy it dropped dramatically back down to 2-3K per month. But that doesn't really matter that much, I just missed talking about my favorite hobby!

So I thought the first couple of "return to the land of the living" posts should be about some things we did for the show, and this initial one is a doozy!

The End of an Era

It took me over three years and I don't even want to know how much money, but I have finally completed my US Tech Spec collection, including all gift set gestalts and targetmaster/legends variants.

Mail Call! Big bunch of Tech Specs!

Thanks to a recent sale by Wheeljackslab on eBay I was able to get almost all of the rest of the tech specs I needed for my collection. I daresay now I am only missing four. I've been working on my tech specs for a long time now and I had never seen any of these come up before, so it was really great to get all these knocked out in one fell swoop.

Tech Specs:

Sky High
Legend/Kmart Grimlock
Action Master Wheeljack
Hot Rod Patrol
Missile Launcher
Snarler
Crankcase
Military Patrol
Gutcruncher
Roadblock
Action Master Shockwave

And I'm only down to one Instruction booklet: Fort Max. I just don't know if I want to drop $100 on it, that is a lot of coin!

What's that? More Tech Specs in a dead Tech Spec market?

The past few months have been really dry in the tech spec arena. The driest that I have encountered recently. It seemed like in the beginning of the year there was tons of stuff to choose from but lately there hasn't been anything! It also doesn't help that I am only 27 specs away from completing my collection; so naturally there aren't as many to buy. And of course all the ones I need are from the final two years of G1 which are the hardest to find.

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel! An independent company called Atomic Laser has begun reproducing all the tech specs from G1, starting with 1984. However they aren't just reproducing them, they are fixing all the errors, standardizing all the text and prettying up the pictures so they all look nice and similar. As a bonus they are starting to create tech specs for figures that never received them in the past, such as the Omnibots and the Powerdashers. Since I already have all of the original tech specs they have created, I was only interested in their new ones, which I promptly ordered.

Upon receiving these in the mail I can certainly understand why they've decided to do this. Each spec is very nicely printed on glossy cardstock, and looks very professional. When I lined them up with my existing specs they fit in very nicely. So for $16 I was able to get 9 previously unavailable tech specs that I could add to my collection which is certainly worth the price (since most vintage ones cost at least $5 apiece). Hopefully Atomic Laser will continue to make specs for characters that never got them originally, I will definitely be the first in line.

I am One Lucky Duck (Mail Call)

Got this in the mail yesterday:

All the uncut tech specs from the back of the Menasor boxset!!! These are extremely rare and I got them all for less than $20! Someone really missed out on this; but everyone's loss is my gain! These giftset tech specs are very difficult to find since many people don't cut up the back of the boxsets. Although Devastator and Superion aren't that hard to find. So now I only need Defensor, Computron and Piranacon (yeah right!).

Yay, sometimes eBay does work!

Transformers Animated Tech Specs!

As you probably already know from the flurry of posts recently I was pretty excited about Botcon this year mostly due to the fact that the exclusives were themed from the Transformers: Animated show. So imagine my surprise upon arrival in Pasadena at the two exclusive lithographs this year: Animated Tech Specs in the G1 style! Naturally one for Autobots and the other for Decepticons.

Usually the annual Lithographs don't excite me very much, but this was completely different. The team at Fun Publications (who runs Botcon) had partnered with Art Director Derrick J. Wyatt and Writer/Story Editor Marty Isenberg for the Transformers: Animated Television Show to expand the Animated Universe even further. What is great about these sets is they include all of the Animated Tech Specs that had been shown in the Transformers Collector's Club Magazine in prior years. I had been upset when these specs were produced exclusively in the Magazine and had resolved myself to eventually scan the pages and reprint them for myself. Now, I don't have to!

Additionally, we get a lot of new characters, including techs for all the Animated figures exclusive to this year's convention. Not only that, but the creators opened up a whole new can of worms with four of the 'Con' specs: Shattered Glass Animated. I believe this was done because two of the exclusive toys this year were from the 'regular' Shattered Glass Universe: Galvatron and Thundercracker. However we now have specs for Shattered Glass Optimus Prime (complete with goatee), Bumblebee, Sumdac and Sari. This provides a jumping-off point for future Animated storylines and gives us a whole new universe to consider. I fully expect some intrepid customizer to provide us with real-life examples of these characters sometime in the near future.

As you can see, I cut my lithographs up into the individual techs so I can place them in my tech spec books right behind the Beast Wars. I certainly hope that FunPub continues to produce these in the future as I really like seeing the old G1 style with new characters as well as the expansion of the Animated Universe.