Collectible Tech Specs

As part of the experience of Charticon, I wanted to introduce a "collectible" element to the show, some way to give attendees an opportunity to meet each other through the fun of collecting. After all, that's part of what brought me to this hobby to begin with.

After toying with a bunch of different ideas, I finally landed on creating three different sets of tech specs. Each attendee would get one set (for free with their preregistration package) and that way they could trade and swap throughout the weekend. And not just a couple. Sets would be of 10. Why? Who knows. Each set also included the red decoder 😜

That was the idea, at least. The execution may have not been there.

Still, I had a lot of fun putting these together. Not only did I get to create them from scratch, but for a lot of characters, I had the opportunity to flex my writing muscles as a lot of them had little to no characterization.

First up was a set of characters that had only been released in Japan and had never received a US toy, and thus, no US tech spec. I thought this was a great option for a series as it filled in some holes if anyone (like me) was a tech spec collector! And it was the easiest as I mostly just translated their existing bios into English.

The second set was meant to flesh out some of the more popular and less-recognized characters from the then-current IDW series. I knew doing characters from this comic would be a risk, because this was in the middle of the story and James Roberts definitely knew what he was doing by not revealing too much about certain prominent characters.

Still, I thought it was worth the risk and would be fun to explore a couple of new types of characters who maybe didn't fit into the binary Autobot/Decepticon mold. See if you can spot how I determined factions on a couple of these. 

Yes, if you're curious, the decoder still works with these. AND the Duobots and Duocons both have TWO lines on their respective specs, which was not easy. Then again, why would I make anything easy on myself, lol. I spent hours painstakingly scanning these images in, then shadowing out the backgrounds on each character to give them more of a spotlight. Since none of these figures had a toy, it wasn't as if I could use packaging art.

The third and final set of specs are my favorite. Characters from the 1986 Movie that never received a toy and thus, never had packaging for a tech spec to be printed. I knew straight from the beginning I'd be using some fan favorites here, but I also had a little bit of world building to do. Because as much as we know about the Quintessons, there's still a lot we DON'T know. And given this show was based around Sharkticons, I knew I needed to give them their due.

Enjoy.

I figured Unicron needed something special, so he's the only tech spec (to my knowledge) to be in reverse colors.

For the rest, I used screen caps from the '86 movie and put them against the sunburst that was common on the boxes for the 1986 line of toys. Most of their stats and blurbs came from TFwiki, but as I said, I filled a couple out on my own because this was my project after all, lol. Still, I hope I stayed within the "spirit" of the movie in doing this.

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