Which stinks, as he's fun.
BotCon 2026 - July 10-12 at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Chicago, IL
- Thread starter Sabrblade
- Start date
I am like you.Well you could be like me just paying for one day admission at the doorIn a perfect world I'd have enough money to get a hotel room and buy all the goodies, but I'm going to be just happy to be there for a day. Either way I think it will be fun.
I got in an hour or so ago, going tomorrow, and leaving Sunday.
I think I saw you in line. I'm sorry that I didn't interact with you - I've always wanted to talk to a puppet on camera.
And expensive being that it's a third-party product.
I'm working on getting my pictures up. Here's the Facebook gallery if anyone's interested.
Please let me know if there are any issues with the link.
Please let me know if there are any issues with the link.
Pre-orders live for both the BotCon Yolopark 2-pack and the magazine (both unautographed and autographed):
www.agabyss.com
www.agabyss.com
www.agabyss.com
The 2-pack is also available in the Mystery Box:
www.agabyss.com
Quantities are VERY limited (I don't know exact numbers), so if anyone here has even an inkling of wanting any of these, pre-order NOW!
Agabyss > Transformers Masterpiece > Botcon 2026 Yolopark Sideburn VS Menasor Set
2-Pack Celebrating the Anniversary of Transformers RID. Model Kits Need Assembly.
www.agabyss.com
Agabyss > PRE-ORDERS > Botcon 2026 Unlimited #5
Missed the 'Con? Bring the joy of the show home to you with the Exclusive Comic Magazine!
www.agabyss.com
Agabyss > PRE-ORDERS > Botcon 2026 Unlimited #5 Signed by Sue Blu
Missed the 'Con? Bring the joy of the show home to you with the Exclusive Comic Magazine! This one is signed by Sue Blu, voice of G1 Arcee!
www.agabyss.com
The 2-pack is also available in the Mystery Box:
Agabyss > PRE-ORDERS > Botcon 2026 Mystery Box
Missed the 'Con? Bring the joy of the show home to you with the Mystery Box! Over $200 in retail value! Includes 1 Yolopark Sideburn VS Menasor 2 Pack 1 Metal Cardbot Action Figure Carefully curated surprise selection of goodies! Will be shipped in an outer box/shipper with no additional padding...
www.agabyss.com
Quantities are VERY limited (I don't know exact numbers), so if anyone here has even an inkling of wanting any of these, pre-order NOW!
BotCon 2026 report
From July 9 to July 12, BotCon 2026 was held at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in, where else, Schaumburg, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. I was in attendance this year and, if I thought last year was a busy weekend, then this year knocked me out cold. The dealer room was the biggest one in over a decade, with over a hundred booths for vendors, exhibitors, guests, and artists. It was crazy how big this year was. If I barely got to do all that I wanted to do last year, then this year doing everything I wanted to do was nigh-impossible.
---
Thursday, July 9
The first events started Thursday morning at 9:00am with the G1 Custom Class and the Art Contest Submissions. I did not attend either and wouldn't have been able to even I had wanted to, as my flight to Chicago did not land until after 1:30pm.
Those who did attend the custom class got to create a Marvel Comics version of G1 Soundwave made from the recent Walmart reissue of the G1 toy mold, complete with a new 3D-printed headsculpt to better resemble Marvel Soundwave's mouthed head. Also included in the set was the G1 Ramhorn mold as a brand new character named Headbanger.
Created by Shawn D. Tessman, Headbanger is described as "a 'book-on-tape' with the recording tab broken out, so he can't be used to record new information and therefore isn't deployed much by Soundwave. He is an intellectual that went undercover among the Decepticons and found that he enjoyed the destruction and chaos, so stayed as part of the faction."
The G2 Decepticon sticker was also an option in the class.
The custom class ran until 3:00pm while the Art Contest submissions closed at 11:00am.
---
At 10:30am was the Vendor Registration and Exhibitor Hall set-up.
---
From 2:00pm to 5:00pm were the Blokees Friday Custom Class and the sign-ups for both the Blokees Saturday Speed Assemble and the Energon Toss Tournament. I did not participate in any of these.
---
At 4:00pm, registration package pick-up opened for Premium and Premium+ attendees, with the BotCon Store opening for both at 4:15pm. But this year, it was more economical for me to go with Weekend registration, which didn't open up until 5:30pm. Nonetheless, I was able to get the three exclusives that I wanted, which were the BotCon Unlimited #5 convention program, the Yolopark "Battle Protocol" 2-pack of Side Burn vs. Menasor, and the SAMG Mini Force Rexkaiser Black Edition.
Those who registered as Premium and Premium+ received a special "BotCon Mystery Box" full of various goodies, which included:
Registration package pick-up and the BotCon Store closed at 9:00pm while the Exhibitor Hall set-up ended at 10:00pm. I spent the rest of the evening hanging out with fellow attendee and Allsparker, Agent X. We went to some room-to-room parts parties where he got a bargain on a big bin full of 2000s-era Transformers toys.
Afterward, I went back to my hotel, as I was staying offsite this year to save money.
---
Regarding the convention program/comic magazine, contained within its pages are three comic stories that advertise the Yolopark AMK Mini Series model kits of Ricochet, Avatar Megatron, and the 2-pack of Side Burn & Menasor. These are "Unpaid Bounty", "The Remnant", and "Battle Protocol". The first two are part of a hypothetical "Season 5" of the G1 cartoon continuing after the actual fifth season we got with Powermaster Optimus Prime telling stories of old to the young human boy Tommy Kennedy, while "Battle Protocol" is a story set in an alternate version of the Robots in Disguise (2001) cartoon that spins off into the OTFCC 2004 comic "Shell Game", with some additional G1 elements added in (the on-package story text goes more into this).
Of particular note for TFWiki purposes, the on-package story text found on the side of the Yolopark model kit boxes, as well as the character bios on the back of the boxes, are officially licensed media. The comics inside the convention program guide are… not licensed! I spoke to both Jesse Wittenrich and Pete Sinclair about these comics (and their "G1 Season 5" plans as a whole) and they were very careful to word the text inside the magazine describing what exactly these comics are, and that wording is "supplementary tie-in material". Meaning these comics provide additional context for understanding the stories printed on the toys' boxes, but are themselves not canon. They're "authorial intent", at best. In fact, Pete explicitly told me that these comics do not fall under the category of "Apocrypha"; he even looked it up to make sure.
These comics even do not use any of the official Transformers brand logos, only using Autobot/Decepticon symbols on the characters in the artwork and using official names/terms in the dialogue text, but no official symbols or logos in an out-of-universe marketing context. Jesse and Pete likened these comics to TFNation's "Trial & Error" comic or TFCon's "Bumble Prime" and "Mirror, Mirror" comics: unlicensed fanfiction that Hasbro has no qualms with so long as the content isn't doing any harm or damage to the image of the Transformers brand. Jesse even pointed out that while the "Battle Protocol" comic mentions "Nine Chaos Generals", the on-package bio for Menasor only mentions "nine generals", meaning the comic name of the group is not canon but the group's mere existence mentioned in the bio is canon.
Complete photographs of these comics, the on-package story text and character bios for the 2-pack, and two pages explaining the "G1 Season 5", can be found here.
Furthermore, there was originally going to be a pack-in comic included with Ricochet in his instructions, but there was a last-minute change that prevented that from happening. It was going to be the story of "Unpaid Bounty" in comic form, which is why the title is absent from the story text on the side of the box, similar to how the events of "A Cliffjumper's Tale" are described on Lady Cliffjumper's on-package story text without that story's title.
Conversely, they knew in advance that there would be no pack-in comic included with Avatar Megatron in his instructions, so they printed the title of "The Remnant" at the top of his on-package story text, which should be the format going forward for future on-package story texts for these Yolopark exclusives, and is what they would have done with Ricochet's story text if they had known ahead of time that they wouldn't be able to include a comic in his instructions.
As for the Side Burn vs. Menasor set, "Battle Protocol" is already printed on the front of the box as both the name of the set and its on-package story text, so there was no point in printing it on the side of the box too (much like how "The Sound of Science" doesn't have its title printed at the top of its on-package story text when its already printed on the front of the box).
---
Friday, July 10
Early-morning events for Friday started with vendor set-up and late sign-in for events at 8:00am.
Late registration package pick-up and the Blokees Custom Build/Design Class opened at 9:00am. I did not attend the Blokees class.
Walk-up registration for those who did not pre-register opened at 10:00am.
---
The day began in earnest at a surprisingly late time in the day at 11:00am, with the dealer room opening for Premium and Premium+ attendees. Weekend attendees like myself were allowed entry at 11:30am.
Also at 11:00am was the qualifying rounds for the Energon bag toss tournament.
---
General admission opened at 12:00pm. Again, unsually late in the day for an event like this.
Also at 12:00pm was the first panel of the day, a YouTuber panel. I did not attend this one as I wanted to keep exploring the massive dealer room.
---
1:00pm was to have been a preview for a special Blokees event, hosted by Jon Bailey, but it had to be postponed until the next day since Bailey hadn't arrived yet. This was good for me as it gave me even more time in the dealer room (the room was so big that it took me the whole day to explore it all while also going to the panels I wanted to go to).
---
2:00pm was the Beast Wars 30th Anniversary panel with David Sobolov and Sue Blu. I took some notes on this panel and gleaned the following information:
3:00pm was another YouTuber panel, for a group called Marauders. I skipped this one to head back into the dealer room. But if you're interested, it was live-streamed by YouTuber and guest-panel host, Bot Vs Con:
Also at this time was the Blokees Custom Build/Design Class, which ran from 3:00pm to 5:00pm. and which I did not sign up for.
---
Continued below...
From July 9 to July 12, BotCon 2026 was held at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in, where else, Schaumburg, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. I was in attendance this year and, if I thought last year was a busy weekend, then this year knocked me out cold. The dealer room was the biggest one in over a decade, with over a hundred booths for vendors, exhibitors, guests, and artists. It was crazy how big this year was. If I barely got to do all that I wanted to do last year, then this year doing everything I wanted to do was nigh-impossible.
---
Thursday, July 9
The first events started Thursday morning at 9:00am with the G1 Custom Class and the Art Contest Submissions. I did not attend either and wouldn't have been able to even I had wanted to, as my flight to Chicago did not land until after 1:30pm.
Those who did attend the custom class got to create a Marvel Comics version of G1 Soundwave made from the recent Walmart reissue of the G1 toy mold, complete with a new 3D-printed headsculpt to better resemble Marvel Soundwave's mouthed head. Also included in the set was the G1 Ramhorn mold as a brand new character named Headbanger.
Created by Shawn D. Tessman, Headbanger is described as "a 'book-on-tape' with the recording tab broken out, so he can't be used to record new information and therefore isn't deployed much by Soundwave. He is an intellectual that went undercover among the Decepticons and found that he enjoyed the destruction and chaos, so stayed as part of the faction."
The G2 Decepticon sticker was also an option in the class.
The custom class ran until 3:00pm while the Art Contest submissions closed at 11:00am.
---
At 10:30am was the Vendor Registration and Exhibitor Hall set-up.
---
From 2:00pm to 5:00pm were the Blokees Friday Custom Class and the sign-ups for both the Blokees Saturday Speed Assemble and the Energon Toss Tournament. I did not participate in any of these.
---
At 4:00pm, registration package pick-up opened for Premium and Premium+ attendees, with the BotCon Store opening for both at 4:15pm. But this year, it was more economical for me to go with Weekend registration, which didn't open up until 5:30pm. Nonetheless, I was able to get the three exclusives that I wanted, which were the BotCon Unlimited #5 convention program, the Yolopark "Battle Protocol" 2-pack of Side Burn vs. Menasor, and the SAMG Mini Force Rexkaiser Black Edition.
Those who registered as Premium and Premium+ received a special "BotCon Mystery Box" full of various goodies, which included:
- This year's Yolopark 2-pack
- The convention comic magazine
- One of this year's cloisonne pins
- A BotCon 2026 T-shirt
- One random Metal Cardbot toy (Deluxe or Mega size)
- Assorted random Blokees Transformers toys (Defender, Galaxy, and Shining)
- Assorted past BotCon fiction (many got random TCC magazine issues, the 2016 Animated storybook "The Return of Blurr", and especially the BotCon 2009 convention program comic "Wings of Honor")
- Assorted past BotCon toys (either random stuff from the late Fun Pub years or BeastBox toys from 2022, mostly BeastBox from what I saw)
Registration package pick-up and the BotCon Store closed at 9:00pm while the Exhibitor Hall set-up ended at 10:00pm. I spent the rest of the evening hanging out with fellow attendee and Allsparker, Agent X. We went to some room-to-room parts parties where he got a bargain on a big bin full of 2000s-era Transformers toys.
Afterward, I went back to my hotel, as I was staying offsite this year to save money.
---
Regarding the convention program/comic magazine, contained within its pages are three comic stories that advertise the Yolopark AMK Mini Series model kits of Ricochet, Avatar Megatron, and the 2-pack of Side Burn & Menasor. These are "Unpaid Bounty", "The Remnant", and "Battle Protocol". The first two are part of a hypothetical "Season 5" of the G1 cartoon continuing after the actual fifth season we got with Powermaster Optimus Prime telling stories of old to the young human boy Tommy Kennedy, while "Battle Protocol" is a story set in an alternate version of the Robots in Disguise (2001) cartoon that spins off into the OTFCC 2004 comic "Shell Game", with some additional G1 elements added in (the on-package story text goes more into this).
Of particular note for TFWiki purposes, the on-package story text found on the side of the Yolopark model kit boxes, as well as the character bios on the back of the boxes, are officially licensed media. The comics inside the convention program guide are… not licensed! I spoke to both Jesse Wittenrich and Pete Sinclair about these comics (and their "G1 Season 5" plans as a whole) and they were very careful to word the text inside the magazine describing what exactly these comics are, and that wording is "supplementary tie-in material". Meaning these comics provide additional context for understanding the stories printed on the toys' boxes, but are themselves not canon. They're "authorial intent", at best. In fact, Pete explicitly told me that these comics do not fall under the category of "Apocrypha"; he even looked it up to make sure.
These comics even do not use any of the official Transformers brand logos, only using Autobot/Decepticon symbols on the characters in the artwork and using official names/terms in the dialogue text, but no official symbols or logos in an out-of-universe marketing context. Jesse and Pete likened these comics to TFNation's "Trial & Error" comic or TFCon's "Bumble Prime" and "Mirror, Mirror" comics: unlicensed fanfiction that Hasbro has no qualms with so long as the content isn't doing any harm or damage to the image of the Transformers brand. Jesse even pointed out that while the "Battle Protocol" comic mentions "Nine Chaos Generals", the on-package bio for Menasor only mentions "nine generals", meaning the comic name of the group is not canon but the group's mere existence mentioned in the bio is canon.
Complete photographs of these comics, the on-package story text and character bios for the 2-pack, and two pages explaining the "G1 Season 5", can be found here.
Furthermore, there was originally going to be a pack-in comic included with Ricochet in his instructions, but there was a last-minute change that prevented that from happening. It was going to be the story of "Unpaid Bounty" in comic form, which is why the title is absent from the story text on the side of the box, similar to how the events of "A Cliffjumper's Tale" are described on Lady Cliffjumper's on-package story text without that story's title.
Conversely, they knew in advance that there would be no pack-in comic included with Avatar Megatron in his instructions, so they printed the title of "The Remnant" at the top of his on-package story text, which should be the format going forward for future on-package story texts for these Yolopark exclusives, and is what they would have done with Ricochet's story text if they had known ahead of time that they wouldn't be able to include a comic in his instructions.
As for the Side Burn vs. Menasor set, "Battle Protocol" is already printed on the front of the box as both the name of the set and its on-package story text, so there was no point in printing it on the side of the box too (much like how "The Sound of Science" doesn't have its title printed at the top of its on-package story text when its already printed on the front of the box).
---
Friday, July 10
Early-morning events for Friday started with vendor set-up and late sign-in for events at 8:00am.
Late registration package pick-up and the Blokees Custom Build/Design Class opened at 9:00am. I did not attend the Blokees class.
Walk-up registration for those who did not pre-register opened at 10:00am.
---
The day began in earnest at a surprisingly late time in the day at 11:00am, with the dealer room opening for Premium and Premium+ attendees. Weekend attendees like myself were allowed entry at 11:30am.
Also at 11:00am was the qualifying rounds for the Energon bag toss tournament.
---
General admission opened at 12:00pm. Again, unsually late in the day for an event like this.
Also at 12:00pm was the first panel of the day, a YouTuber panel. I did not attend this one as I wanted to keep exploring the massive dealer room.
---
1:00pm was to have been a preview for a special Blokees event, hosted by Jon Bailey, but it had to be postponed until the next day since Bailey hadn't arrived yet. This was good for me as it gave me even more time in the dealer room (the room was so big that it took me the whole day to explore it all while also going to the panels I wanted to go to).
---
2:00pm was the Beast Wars 30th Anniversary panel with David Sobolov and Sue Blu. I took some notes on this panel and gleaned the following information:
- David never got to audition for Beast Wars when it first started because he was in Australia at the time.
- Sue said that, had David been there to audition for the start of the show, he might have voiced Megatron or Optimus.
- David's audition for Depth Charge was the longest audition of his entire career, 40 minutes long, because Sue was so particular and committed to getting the audition just right.
- David's performance as Depth Charge was mainly based on Clint Eastwood.
- Sue considers AI a real threat to actors and has genuine concerns about what it might mean for the future of acting.
- Depth Charge was the first big role for David. He considers it the start of his career.
- What was the most difficult character for Sue to direct? The most difficulty she had was separating the voices for Optimus and Megatron because they spoke in such similar pitches and registers. At first, the question seemed to be about Beast Wars, but she spoke about Peter Cullen and Frank Welker in the 1986 movie, so it's ambiguous as to which one she meant.
- Favorite type of character to play? David loves playing "deliciously evil villains", the kind that are so hard to beat and take forever to kill. Sue wants to play a really "strong heroine".
- What was the creative process for David in voicing TF: Prime Shockwave? "It was RoboCop if you take away all of his emotion and make him a meme." A full tech villain.
- Sue loved how Beast Wars was both for kids and for parents. A balance of seriousness, emotion, and good messages.
- Last question for both: Favorite Transformers characters they've played? Both: They love them all; it's like choosing a favorite child.
3:00pm was another YouTuber panel, for a group called Marauders. I skipped this one to head back into the dealer room. But if you're interested, it was live-streamed by YouTuber and guest-panel host, Bot Vs Con:
Also at this time was the Blokees Custom Build/Design Class, which ran from 3:00pm to 5:00pm. and which I did not sign up for.
---
Continued below...
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At 4:00pm was the final and arguably biggest panel of the day, the Transformers: The Movie 40th Anniversary panel with Victor Caroli, Sue Blu, John Moschitta, and Neil Ross. The entire panel was recorded by Toy Spotlite:
Like with the Beast Wars panel, I attended this one and took notes:
The dealer room remained open until at 6:00pm, allowing some down time before the final event of the night at 8:00pm. During this time, I met back up with Agent X and fellow Allsparker Echowarrior, and we headed up to Agent X's room to hang out in the meantime.
---
At 8:00pm was a screening of The Transformers: The Movie, with humorous commentary provided by one of the Cosplay Contest hosts. We in the audience were encouraged to have fun with this screening by singing along with the songs, quoting the famous lines, cheering whenever a new character appeared onscreen, and calling out the characters' names (either their actual names or jokey ones like calling Galvatron "Spock" or Unicron "Citizen Kane"). It wasn't quite like Mystery Science Theater 3000, but it was very casual and everyone seemed to get that this was anything but a serious event.
The movie was scheduled to end at 10:00pm but wrapped up closer to 9:30pm. After which myself, Echowarrior, and Agent X all went back up to the latter's room to hang out and help him with his own parts party. One of the people who showed up to Agent X's parts party was YouTuber dumbjake, whom I got to have a very brief chat with.
I eventually went back to my hotel late that night.
---
Saturday, July 11
The biggest day of the weekend started with more dealer-room set-up for vendors at 9:00am, and opened up for all registered attendees at a more appropriate time of 10:00am, with general admission at 10:30am.
Also at 10:00am was the second round of the Energon Bag Toss Tournament and the Art Room opened with drawing classes and activities for kids.
---
At 11:00am was the first panel of the day, a Robots in Disguise (2001) 25th Anniversary panel hosted by Daniel Riordan and YouTuber Captain Kyle of Toy Spotlite. I attended this panel and took these notes:
12:00pm was a panel for a fan group called Realm of Collectors. I skipped this one to head back into the dealer room.
---
1:00pm was both the Blokees Speed Build and the next panel, which was for Stern Pinball's new Transformers pinball machines. I went to this panel and was surprised to find that it began with the preview for the Blokees special event that was supposed to be held the day before. Jon Bailey and Travis Artz hosted this preview before the folks of Stern Pinball took over to resume their panel properly.
I made a recording of this panel and shared it with Transformers media archivist Walruslaw of TFRaw, who uploaded to his YouTube channel for all to see:
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1:30pm was the top 16 of the Energon Bag Toss Tournament. I was still at the Stern Pinball panel during this time.
---
2:00pm was the Cosplay Contest. I went back into the dealer room during this time.
---
3:00pm was this year's script reading starring Sue Blu, John Moschitta, Neil Ross, Daniel Riordan, David Sobolov, Jon Bailey, and Victor Caroli. Like last year, the story was another "Season 5" story set in the G1 cartoon universe at some point after "The Rebirth" featuring some 1988 toy characters like Quickswitch, Joyride, Dogfight, Override, Crankcase, and Grotusque. The name of the story is "The Quick and the Deactivated", written by Jesse Wittenrich (from a story concept by Pete Sinclair). This is "Episode 27" of the Season 5 stories listed in the convention program/comic magazine.
The entire reading and Q&A session afterward was recorded by Daltinian95:
I asked Jesse about the possibility of this story being turned into either a comic or a Yolopark box story like "Unpaid Bounty", but he said that the latter possibility is entirely up to Yolopark, if they decide to do a toy of a character from this story, so I wouldn't expect this script reading to get adapted into a licensed story form.
---
3:00pm was also the top 8 of the Energon Bag Toss Tournament. I was at the script reading instead.
---
4:00pm was another session of the Blokees Speed Build, as well as a Metal Cardbot panel. I went to the panel.
It was a very informal event and no representatives from SAMG Entertainment could be in attendance, so it was instead hosted by Hany Agaby, Jesse Wittenrich, and Pete Sinclair. Nothing really new was revealed here. It was mostly just a casual Q&A between the panelists and the fans of Metal Cardbot in the audience, and there certainly were a lot of Metal Cardbot fans and experts in the audience. Some were even children and teenagers with a ton of Metal Cardbot knowledge about the toys and fiction, who asked some very impressive questions.
---
5:00pm was the final 4 of the Energon Bag Toss Tournament and the final panel of the day with the biggest news of the weekend: The Special Blokees Event. What's the big news? We're getting a new Transformers Blokees cartoon coming to YouTube in 2027!!!!!
I recorded this panel, too, and Walruslaw put it on YouTube. A trailer for the cartoon, complete with an absolutely massive voice cast reveal, is at the beginning of the panel:
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Continued below...
Like with the Beast Wars panel, I attended this one and took notes:
- John was called in to play "a fast-talking, comedy relief" character (that being Blurr) and they didn't even have a picture of him at the time yet when he did the lines for Blurr.
- Sue got a call to play "the only female role in the film". Wally Burr said to her, "It's a pink robot."
- Sue ran into Orson Welles at the recording just as he was walking out, and he wanted nothing to do with anyone at the time.
- Neil has no memory of auditioning for Springer, suggesting he was just given the role. He only remembers his audition for Shipwreck from G.I. Joe.
- Victor remembers his original audition for the first toy commercials at Griffin-Bacal in New York City, and he later got calls to do narration for both the cartoon and the movie.
- The music of the movie is what inspired Victor's thought process for coming up with the way he spoke the narration.
- Victor never met any of the other voice actors until about five years ago, because he was based in New York when he recorded the narration while the others were in Los Angeles doing the voice acting.
- John was sent on a press tour with Robert Stack to promote the movie back in 1986, where they hammered in the notion that "It's a family movie! Bring the kids! The little ones'll love it!" And then John saw how violent the movie was and was like "Oh, no! What have we done?!!" (LOL)
- John was in the 30th anniversary stop-motion shorts. Flint Dille wrote for those and John had a lot of fun working on those, getting to poke fun at the movie in those shorts.
- John's favorite movie of all time is Cinema Paradiso. Neil's favorite is Lawrence of Arabia. Sue loves mob movies and How the West Was Won. Victor doesn't have an all-time favorite, he loves all of the ones mentioned before and ones like Doctor Zhivago. He loves a good James Bond movie, his favorite being Goldfinger. Sean Connery is his favorite Bond.
- What did Sue learn from Wally Burr when voice directing? She also took from Gordon Hunt and knew what to do and what not to do. She knew not to do line-readings, except for cases when the actors actually requested it from her. She tries to get actors out in two-and-a-half or three-and-a-half-hour sessions as opposed to how Wally would do eight-hour sessions.
- Neil believes Spike's swear was an adlib that was left in (when the story has been that it was included to get the movie a PG rating instead of a G rating).
- Everyone's favorite part of voicing the characters? Neil: "I love to act!" Sue: "Getting to be with the people I like." John: "I love doing it!" Victor: "That was really fun. When am I going to do another one?" He works at a community theater where he does acting for free, and he still loves it.
- Neil thinks killing Optimus was "a monstrous mistake that doomed the movie". The movie bombed and he felt like they were "committing suicide".
- John joked about Animated Blurr getting turned into a cube.
- John considers both G1 and Animated Blurr to be basically the same, but he had more fun with Animated since he got to be with the other actors. In G1, he wasn't allowed to record with the others.
The dealer room remained open until at 6:00pm, allowing some down time before the final event of the night at 8:00pm. During this time, I met back up with Agent X and fellow Allsparker Echowarrior, and we headed up to Agent X's room to hang out in the meantime.
---
At 8:00pm was a screening of The Transformers: The Movie, with humorous commentary provided by one of the Cosplay Contest hosts. We in the audience were encouraged to have fun with this screening by singing along with the songs, quoting the famous lines, cheering whenever a new character appeared onscreen, and calling out the characters' names (either their actual names or jokey ones like calling Galvatron "Spock" or Unicron "Citizen Kane"). It wasn't quite like Mystery Science Theater 3000, but it was very casual and everyone seemed to get that this was anything but a serious event.
The movie was scheduled to end at 10:00pm but wrapped up closer to 9:30pm. After which myself, Echowarrior, and Agent X all went back up to the latter's room to hang out and help him with his own parts party. One of the people who showed up to Agent X's parts party was YouTuber dumbjake, whom I got to have a very brief chat with.
I eventually went back to my hotel late that night.
---
Saturday, July 11
The biggest day of the weekend started with more dealer-room set-up for vendors at 9:00am, and opened up for all registered attendees at a more appropriate time of 10:00am, with general admission at 10:30am.
Also at 10:00am was the second round of the Energon Bag Toss Tournament and the Art Room opened with drawing classes and activities for kids.
---
At 11:00am was the first panel of the day, a Robots in Disguise (2001) 25th Anniversary panel hosted by Daniel Riordan and YouTuber Captain Kyle of Toy Spotlite. I attended this panel and took these notes:
- Daniel Riordan had no one in mind when playing Megatron. He'd never witnessed Frank Welker's performance so he went into the role with a fresh perspective.
- He loves doing motion capture work.
- Neil Kaplan is a favorite RiD actor of his to work with, they always enjoy each other.
- His favorite quote from his Megatron is a line he remembers saying a lot: "You will be destroyed!" But it's less the lines and more the attitude of the character that was memorable to him.
- He always wondered if Megatron was even feeding Dr. Onishi with how long he held the good doctor captive.
- He said that he got to record the lines for both Omega Prime and Galvatron during the final battle in the same session instead of recording them separately like normally.
- He loves the over-the-top heroic pomposity of Omega Prime's voice. He considers both Megatron and Omega Prime's voices to have the same pomposity, just in different registers.
- Mel Blanc was a big influence for him as a voice actor.
- He and David Sobolov came into Chicago to attend BotCon on the same flight. They didn't run into each other beforehand, but Daniel heard David's voice speaking to the flight attendant and immediately recognized him by his voice.
- He was not given any visual or audio reference when he first played Megatron. He only had a written description of the character.
- There was no one from the Japanese version dictating how the dub was going to be. The dubbing cast and crew were given a lot of freedom to make the dub the way it was.
- There was a rare moment in the dub where he got to record with the other actors instead of being in the booth by himself, but he doesn't remember what the scene was or what the circumstances were that enabled that. He guesses it was a crowd scene or an altmode scene where no mouth movement for the characters was visible onscreen.
12:00pm was a panel for a fan group called Realm of Collectors. I skipped this one to head back into the dealer room.
---
1:00pm was both the Blokees Speed Build and the next panel, which was for Stern Pinball's new Transformers pinball machines. I went to this panel and was surprised to find that it began with the preview for the Blokees special event that was supposed to be held the day before. Jon Bailey and Travis Artz hosted this preview before the folks of Stern Pinball took over to resume their panel properly.
I made a recording of this panel and shared it with Transformers media archivist Walruslaw of TFRaw, who uploaded to his YouTube channel for all to see:
---
1:30pm was the top 16 of the Energon Bag Toss Tournament. I was still at the Stern Pinball panel during this time.
---
2:00pm was the Cosplay Contest. I went back into the dealer room during this time.
---
3:00pm was this year's script reading starring Sue Blu, John Moschitta, Neil Ross, Daniel Riordan, David Sobolov, Jon Bailey, and Victor Caroli. Like last year, the story was another "Season 5" story set in the G1 cartoon universe at some point after "The Rebirth" featuring some 1988 toy characters like Quickswitch, Joyride, Dogfight, Override, Crankcase, and Grotusque. The name of the story is "The Quick and the Deactivated", written by Jesse Wittenrich (from a story concept by Pete Sinclair). This is "Episode 27" of the Season 5 stories listed in the convention program/comic magazine.
The entire reading and Q&A session afterward was recorded by Daltinian95:
I asked Jesse about the possibility of this story being turned into either a comic or a Yolopark box story like "Unpaid Bounty", but he said that the latter possibility is entirely up to Yolopark, if they decide to do a toy of a character from this story, so I wouldn't expect this script reading to get adapted into a licensed story form.
---
3:00pm was also the top 8 of the Energon Bag Toss Tournament. I was at the script reading instead.
---
4:00pm was another session of the Blokees Speed Build, as well as a Metal Cardbot panel. I went to the panel.
It was a very informal event and no representatives from SAMG Entertainment could be in attendance, so it was instead hosted by Hany Agaby, Jesse Wittenrich, and Pete Sinclair. Nothing really new was revealed here. It was mostly just a casual Q&A between the panelists and the fans of Metal Cardbot in the audience, and there certainly were a lot of Metal Cardbot fans and experts in the audience. Some were even children and teenagers with a ton of Metal Cardbot knowledge about the toys and fiction, who asked some very impressive questions.
---
5:00pm was the final 4 of the Energon Bag Toss Tournament and the final panel of the day with the biggest news of the weekend: The Special Blokees Event. What's the big news? We're getting a new Transformers Blokees cartoon coming to YouTube in 2027!!!!!
I recorded this panel, too, and Walruslaw put it on YouTube. A trailer for the cartoon, complete with an absolutely massive voice cast reveal, is at the beginning of the panel:
---
Continued below...
The dealer room closed at 6:00pm and the awards for the winners of the Energon Bag Toss Tournament and the Art Contest were presented at 6:30pm. I met back up with Agent X and we both went to get some dinner until the next event, running into Echowarrior along the way.
---
7:00pm was the scheduled time for an evening screening of a fan film titled "Cybertron Falls: Til All Are One" by TFI Creations. There were some technical issues that delayed its starting for quite a bit, but they eventually got it going.
You can watch it below and judge it for yourself, but as for what myself, Agent X, and Echowarrior thought of it, we felt it was highly derivative, excessively fanservice-y, very bleak, and written like it was aimed at the early-90s online fandom with very little originality, cribbing much of its story, dialogue, and visual references from The Transformers: The Movie (1986) and both the War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron video games. It even recreated the Darth Plagueis scene from Revenge of the Sith at one point. Agent X even got up and left during the middle of the film.
Nonetheless, the audience applauded the film at the end, though it wasn't anything like a standing ovation with cheers and screams, but nor was it a slow, quiet clapping either. The whole room gave a very polite, average level of applause, and seemed to like the film much better than me, Agent X, and Echowarrior did.
During a Q&A with the film's creators at the end, I learned that this film was actually the finale of a trilogy of fan films, which is why it felt so much like it was written strictly for fans already deep in the sauce. Perhaps if they had screened the first part of the trilogy instead, me and the others wouldn't have judged it so harshly.
---
8:00pm was the scheduled time for a screening of the finale episodes of Beast Wars and Robots in Disguise (2001), in honor of their 30th and 25th anniversaries, respectively. However, "Cybertron Falls" ran longer than expected, not only due to the technical issues that delayed its starting, but also because it was scheduled to play for only an hour when its runtime was actually 1 hour and 45 minutes long. Whoops.
So, because it ran so late, there was no time to screen the Beast Wars and Robots in Disguise finales, which was disappointing to me since, after having sat through the grimness of "Cybertron Falls", I really wanted to see the fun and bright Robots in Disguise finale with a crowd of other RiD fans. Oh well.
---
9:30pm is when the night ended. Me and Echowarrior went up to see Agent X in his room where we all hung out until we decided to call it a night. Echowarrior went back to his room and I went back to my hotel.
But on my way out, I ran into a familiar face I hadn't seen since 2016: Ryan Yzquierdo, site owner of Seibertron.com. He showed up at the convention hotel to crash the party and say hi to people. We got talking and catching up a bit before I had to go back to my hotel, and he invited me and other people to a special event that he was to hold the next day after BotCon was over.
We also took a photo together:
---
Sunday, July 12
The final and shortest day of the weekend began with vendor set-up at 9:30am.
The doors to the dealer room then opened to all attendees at 10:00am.
---
11:00am was the both an open play for the Energon Bag Toss and the first panel of the day, "Transformers University Sophmore Year: BotCon 200".
Eccentric name aside, this was a behind-the-scenes panel hosted by Joe Moore, Pete Sinclair, and Jesse Wittenrich, where they gave a presentation of unproduced BotCon toy concepts for BeastBox, BeastDrive, and Yolopark, all conceptualized during this current era of Agabyss-run BotCon. Before that, though, they did a bit of Q&A:
Sonic Stallion was based on the colors of Action Master Thundercracker, while Pickles was based on Dreadnok colors(?) and was named by Jesse's niece.
These two were just a case of exploring new color schemes and funny names for them.
They REALLY wanted to do this one. They were going to do it in glow-in-the-dark and wanted to make it a quarterly exclusive, but the designer of the mold disliked the glow-in-the-dark gimmick.
The idea behind Sluice was to just do another Dinobot, one like Paddles. Nothing was said about Stompdown.
Shade Thrower was based on Nightbird's colors. Nothing was said about Palette Cleanser.
Self-explanatory.
Based on the colors of Shattered Glass Starscream. They actually went as far as to tease this one on back of the 2023 convention program, but it just didn't happen.
This one was basically for Robby Musso. He loves black and gold and this was his favorite BeastBox mold.
Nothing was said about Moxie, but the other one is meant to be an evil take on Santa Claus named "Slayride".
Named by Jesse Wittenrich after Spectre General, which was also the name used for the Agabyss exclusive X-Transbots MP-scaled Shattered Glass Ultra Magnus (which Jesse also named). The colors also vaguely evoke SG Ultra Magnus.
These two bunnies are smaller than normal BeastBoxes because they combine together into one cube, and they would have had both the toy and movie colors of Galvatron, with the carrot being the cannon. They really regret not doing this one.
Early ideas for the 2023 BeastDrive toys. The second one was based on the colors of the 1988 Powermaster Darkwing, while the third was based on the Armada Mini-Con Twirl.
More BeastDrive ideas. The second one was based on the colors of Robots in Disguise (2001) Jhiaxus.
Another BeastDrive concept. Would have been a Velocipator that turned into a taxt cab.
After this were concepts from Archecore:
There were originally supposed to be three Archecore exclusives. They did the Crystal Freki in 2022, and these would have been the other two. The reason these other two didn't happen was because the price for Crystal Freki was too high and the cost for these two would have been so expensive, so they just decided to make the Crystal Freki a one-and-done. But in the original plan, Freki's water/ice element was to go with the fire and earth elements of these two when all three combined together.
Concluded below...
---
7:00pm was the scheduled time for an evening screening of a fan film titled "Cybertron Falls: Til All Are One" by TFI Creations. There were some technical issues that delayed its starting for quite a bit, but they eventually got it going.
You can watch it below and judge it for yourself, but as for what myself, Agent X, and Echowarrior thought of it, we felt it was highly derivative, excessively fanservice-y, very bleak, and written like it was aimed at the early-90s online fandom with very little originality, cribbing much of its story, dialogue, and visual references from The Transformers: The Movie (1986) and both the War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron video games. It even recreated the Darth Plagueis scene from Revenge of the Sith at one point. Agent X even got up and left during the middle of the film.
Nonetheless, the audience applauded the film at the end, though it wasn't anything like a standing ovation with cheers and screams, but nor was it a slow, quiet clapping either. The whole room gave a very polite, average level of applause, and seemed to like the film much better than me, Agent X, and Echowarrior did.
During a Q&A with the film's creators at the end, I learned that this film was actually the finale of a trilogy of fan films, which is why it felt so much like it was written strictly for fans already deep in the sauce. Perhaps if they had screened the first part of the trilogy instead, me and the others wouldn't have judged it so harshly.
---
8:00pm was the scheduled time for a screening of the finale episodes of Beast Wars and Robots in Disguise (2001), in honor of their 30th and 25th anniversaries, respectively. However, "Cybertron Falls" ran longer than expected, not only due to the technical issues that delayed its starting, but also because it was scheduled to play for only an hour when its runtime was actually 1 hour and 45 minutes long. Whoops.
So, because it ran so late, there was no time to screen the Beast Wars and Robots in Disguise finales, which was disappointing to me since, after having sat through the grimness of "Cybertron Falls", I really wanted to see the fun and bright Robots in Disguise finale with a crowd of other RiD fans. Oh well.
---
9:30pm is when the night ended. Me and Echowarrior went up to see Agent X in his room where we all hung out until we decided to call it a night. Echowarrior went back to his room and I went back to my hotel.
But on my way out, I ran into a familiar face I hadn't seen since 2016: Ryan Yzquierdo, site owner of Seibertron.com. He showed up at the convention hotel to crash the party and say hi to people. We got talking and catching up a bit before I had to go back to my hotel, and he invited me and other people to a special event that he was to hold the next day after BotCon was over.
We also took a photo together:
---
Sunday, July 12
The final and shortest day of the weekend began with vendor set-up at 9:30am.
The doors to the dealer room then opened to all attendees at 10:00am.
---
11:00am was the both an open play for the Energon Bag Toss and the first panel of the day, "Transformers University Sophmore Year: BotCon 200".
Eccentric name aside, this was a behind-the-scenes panel hosted by Joe Moore, Pete Sinclair, and Jesse Wittenrich, where they gave a presentation of unproduced BotCon toy concepts for BeastBox, BeastDrive, and Yolopark, all conceptualized during this current era of Agabyss-run BotCon. Before that, though, they did a bit of Q&A:
- They talked about the brief, recent history of the Agabyss-era BotCon exclusives so far, how the BeastBox and BeastDrive toys were Transformers homages akin to how the anime series SSSS.Gridman had many homages to Shattered Glass and Age of Extinction.
- They talked about this year's Yolopark 2-pack. Side Burn from Rodimus was chosen not just to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Robots in Disguise (2001) but also because Pete always liked the old TCC Side Burn toy. Menasor, however, was actually a last-minute change from right before they sent the concept to Yolopark. Originally, they had wanted the second figure in the set to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Beast Wars, making the set celebrate both anniversaries. But the original choice didn't fit right as a VS set. Menasor wound up working as a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" kind of thing with "his relation to Defensor" (that being OTFCC Defensor, who was an unreleased Universe toy concept like Menasor) and "Defensor's relation to R.I.D. and all that universe" (that being Defensor having been made from an R.I.D. toy mold). Who the original choice for the second figure was will be revealed further below.
- They talked about the relationship between BotCon and Yolopark. When Yolopark was approached about doing BotCon-exclusive Transformers kits, Yolopark were "super receptive. They know it's just gonna help the brand. They wanna get their brand out to as many people as possible. They were really nice to work with." The owner of Yolopark was even at BotCon in person this weekend. They've even been asking about what BotCon will be doing for next year's exclusives. But, interestingly, the final approvals for what each BotCon-exclusive kit will be don't go through Yolopark, but rather through Hasbro Asia. And Avatar Megatron actually did very well and its success has made them realize the type of characters they need to go for.
- In regards to creating new sculpting for each Yolopark kit, new sculpting isn't cheap, and each new sculpting adds an additional five dollars to the retail cost of the kit. And they're not doing huge runs of these, like the BotCon sets they only do about 500 sets. And even then, the Yolopark sets are already a niche, so these BotCon sets are basically a niche within a niche, so they know they're not going to be interesting to everyone.
- Jesse was the one who thought of the idea of Universe Menasor from the IDW Orion Pax kit. He sent photoshops of the IDW Orion Pax as both Thunder Clash and Menasor, and when Pete saw the Menasor he felt it was a perfect fit for the villain of the VS 2-pack.
- When asked if, instead of doing new tooling, they ever considered switching parts from different Yolopark kits to make new characters, he answer to this inquiry will be given further below.
- There were plans to do quarterly exclusives for the Yolopark kits (like with Ricochet and Avatar Megatron), but they're rethinking that because the required minimum order is a decent bit higher than they need it to be. They're selling well, but it's going to take too long for them to get to where they need to be on the minimum order, so they're going to scale that back. They're also looking at some other size classes of the Yolopark kits. They've been very happy with the VS sets; the 2024 one sold out, there were a handful left of the 2025 one and whatever was at the BotCon Store that weekend was the last of that set's stock. They're confident that the last of the 2026 set will sell out once it's put online. So they're going to stick with the VS sets for the time being, but they might switch that out for something else next year; they're not sure yet. But they're probably not going to go with doing four smaller kits a year like they had planned with releases like Ricochet and Avatar Megatron.
- They acknowledged the slight issue with Avatar Megatron's head not attaching to the neck ball joint as fully as it should due to some excess paint on the ball the joint, and recommend sanding down the ball joint a bit to make the head sit better on it.
Sonic Stallion was based on the colors of Action Master Thundercracker, while Pickles was based on Dreadnok colors(?) and was named by Jesse's niece.
These two were just a case of exploring new color schemes and funny names for them.
They REALLY wanted to do this one. They were going to do it in glow-in-the-dark and wanted to make it a quarterly exclusive, but the designer of the mold disliked the glow-in-the-dark gimmick.
The idea behind Sluice was to just do another Dinobot, one like Paddles. Nothing was said about Stompdown.
Shade Thrower was based on Nightbird's colors. Nothing was said about Palette Cleanser.
Self-explanatory.
Based on the colors of Shattered Glass Starscream. They actually went as far as to tease this one on back of the 2023 convention program, but it just didn't happen.
This one was basically for Robby Musso. He loves black and gold and this was his favorite BeastBox mold.
Nothing was said about Moxie, but the other one is meant to be an evil take on Santa Claus named "Slayride".
Named by Jesse Wittenrich after Spectre General, which was also the name used for the Agabyss exclusive X-Transbots MP-scaled Shattered Glass Ultra Magnus (which Jesse also named). The colors also vaguely evoke SG Ultra Magnus.
These two bunnies are smaller than normal BeastBoxes because they combine together into one cube, and they would have had both the toy and movie colors of Galvatron, with the carrot being the cannon. They really regret not doing this one.
Early ideas for the 2023 BeastDrive toys. The second one was based on the colors of the 1988 Powermaster Darkwing, while the third was based on the Armada Mini-Con Twirl.
More BeastDrive ideas. The second one was based on the colors of Robots in Disguise (2001) Jhiaxus.
Another BeastDrive concept. Would have been a Velocipator that turned into a taxt cab.
After this were concepts from Archecore:
There were originally supposed to be three Archecore exclusives. They did the Crystal Freki in 2022, and these would have been the other two. The reason these other two didn't happen was because the price for Crystal Freki was too high and the cost for these two would have been so expensive, so they just decided to make the Crystal Freki a one-and-done. But in the original plan, Freki's water/ice element was to go with the fire and earth elements of these two when all three combined together.
Concluded below...
After this came the Yolopark concepts:
Radio AM Robot, made from Soundwave and Megatron kit parts with a new head. This one did not happen because they were not allowed to mix and match parts from different Yolopark kits, answering that earlier question. Avatar Megatron happened instead.
The Generation 2 Autobot wristwatch, made from Optimus Prime and Soundwave parts. Once again, it did not happen because they could not mix parts from different kits.
Pre-Ladybug concept. They were trying to figure out as many uses of the new head as possible. The colors are based on the masked bee and would have been named "Negabee".
G2 Go-Bots Ironhide and SG Soundwave. Early ideas for this year. They love SG Soundwave but opted to stay away from Shattered Glass because Blokees is already doing it.
Robots in Disguise (2001) Ironhide, Action Master Slicer, and Deep Cover. More concept ideas.
Tap-Out was on tap to have been the Beast Wars figure in this year's VS set (answering that other earlier question), but he got tapped out. Secret Agent Arcee was also an alternative if there was an issue with Menasor. They weren't sure what was happening as it seemed like there might be a "hiccup" with Menasor, but the plans with him went through. Mexican Prowl and Thunder Clash were also other ideas, but Thunder Clash was considered already done by BotCon when Fun Pub did him back in 2009.
Next came the big finale:
They once pitched to 52Toys that they wanted to make action figures of Peter Cullen and Frank Welker. They would have turned into cubes ("Energon Cubes, whatever") and would have been retooled from 52Toys's Hexanoid Unus figure. They would have each come with headgear accessories (cowboy hat for Cullen, sunglasses for Welker). They pitched the idea to the 52Toys agent, they were talking about it, but the relationship with 52Toys wasn't going to go forward, so the concept was abandoned.
The idea was that, if these two did well, then maybe they could talk to some other voice actors and see if they could do something. "You never know how things start. Sometimes they take off, sometimes they don't. But we'll never know, at least in this format." Robby Musso did the art for these two.
They have tons of other concepts, but some of them are still in play, so they can't show them to us. These are all the ones that are, at this point, off the table.
They ended the panel with one final question: "If you were to do Shattered Glass Soundwave, would you retool the head to give him the headband?" Answer: "Yes, if we were to, yeah."
---
12:00pm was the second panel of the day, an Artist Spotlight hosted by Nel Yomtov, the colorist for every single US issue of the Marvel G1 comics. I recorded this panel as well (though, I missed recording his introduction, but his intro sounded like the kind of information he would have given in past interviews). However, there was one glaring technical shortcoming that, unfortunately, made the audio of this panel completely inaudible in my recording of it (by no fault of my own, to be clear).
When Yomtov spoke at the panel, he held the microphone close to his chest, but not close enough to his mouth to speak into it properly. He needed to hold the mic higher in order for his voice to reach it, but he did not do so and nobody at the panel asked or directed him to do so. In other words, because he kept the microphone too far away from his mouth, nearly everything he said at the panel came out completely unhearable in my recording. Which is a tremendous shame since, for every question he was asked, he answered with a full-blown story.
Off the top of my head, the only question I can remember his answer to was when he was asked if there was ever a job opportunity that he really regretted passing on. He answered "No" to this question because, whenever there was a job opportunity that came his way, he never turned it down because he, as a freelance artist, could not afford to turn down any new opportunities. The competition was really fierce back then. So, he has no regrets for passing on anything back then because he never passed on anything back then.
---
1:30pm was the third and final panel of the day, as well as the final panel of the weekend: the BotCon Recap Q&A, hosted by Hany Agaby and various others who joined him onstage throughout the panel. Unlike the previous years, I didn't pay that close attention to the feedback given in this year's panel because my mind was wanting to get back to the dealer room for some last-minute purchases and some last-minute talks with any of the guests. Luckily, Daltinian95 made a recording of this panel as well, for anyone curious about what all was said and opined about this year's convention:
Though, there was one bit of news given at this panel that I did snap a photo of: The date and location of next year's BotCon.
The same location as this year, but will be in a different room next year.
---
The dealer room was set to close at 3:00pm, so for the final hour, I headed back into the dealer room to get my final purchases and try to talk to any of the guests. I managed to get a brief conversation with Daniel Riordan and a very brief talk with Sue Blu as she was striking down her booth and putting things away.
When I spoke to Riordan, we naturally talked about his time on Robots in Disguise (2001), how much I enjoyed the show as a kid, other voice actors who worked on the show with him, and things like certain differences between RiD and the original Japanese Car Robots version. Particularly, he'd never heard the original Japanese performance of Megatron/Gigatron and had no idea how different it was from his more over-the-top, theatrical performance.
He was also able to confirm something for me: He confirmed that any similarities between his performance of RiD Megatron and the late Robert Axelrod's performance of Lord Zedd from Power Rangers were purely coincidental. At the time, he had never watched or heard Axelrod's Zedd voice and had no idea how similar the personalities of his Megatron and Lord Zedd were to each other. He did, however, suspect that both he and Axelrod might have been unknowingly drawing from the same inspirations that they both grew up with (I brought up Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon as one such possible source of inspiration for both of their respective performances).
As for Sue Blu, I only had a very brief moment to speak with her. I asked her if she might be able to confirm who voiced Chak and Una in Beast Wars, since she was the voice director of that show. She didn't have much time to think about it, but after I told her about which cast members were credited in the episodes Chak and Una appeared in, she suspects that it might have been Venus Terzo who voiced the two children in whichever of their episodes she's credited in, and Sue herself who voiced them in whichever of their episodes she, but not Venus, is credited in. This would mean Venus would have voiced them in "Cutting Edge" and "Nemesis Part 1", while Sue would have voiced them in "Go with the Flow".
The convention shut down at 3:00pm, but the day was not yet over for me.
---
Because I have become better acquainted with the BotCon staff, I was permitted to be in the dealer room after closing time, so long as I didn't interfere with any of the work being done in there to close down and pack up everyone's booths. My dad (who had accompanied me on this trip to visit with some friends of his while I was at BotCon) came by and I briefly got to introduce him to the likes of Jesse Wittenrich, Derek Bigesby, and Hany Agaby.
---
Around 4:00pm, Ryan Yzquierdo made his way back over to the convention center to meet up with those he had invited to his post-BotCon special event; he arrived accompanied by his best friend Ben. I showed them both where the dealer room was and Ryan got to visit with several people he hadn't seen in years. While he was reconnecting, me and Ben helped Robby Musso tear down his booth and carried his packed up belongings outside through the back of the dealer room, where he loaded his things into his car. After a while, the final group who all gathered together to go with Ryan were myself, my dad, Ben, and Robby Musso.
Where we all went was over to Ryan's place of work, Seibertron.com HQ. We got to see his workspace where he stores his collection and sorts through the many, MANY items he has for sale at the online Seibertron Store. So many Transformers from Generation 1 to today; so many comic books of all kinds; so many toys and action figures from all kinds of series, like He-Man and Power Rangers; and even historical items like original newspapers dating back to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Ryan even showed us some very personal items like toys and drawings from his childhood, and clippings of fan newsletters dating back to the early days of the Transformers fandom. It was all incredible.
We ended the visit with a group photo (back row left to right: Me, Robby, Ben, and my dad (John); front center: Ryan).
---
The five of us then went out to dinner at a local Italian restaurant. Afterward, my dad and I said our goodbyes to the others and we returned to our hotel to start packing up our luggage for our flight home the next morning.
Before I packed up my things, I snapped a photo of my complete BotCon 2026 haul:
---
Overall, this year's BotCon was a blast-and-a-half! An incredible experience that was overwhelming in the best way possible. If next year turns out to be anything like this year was, I greatly look forward to what all lies in store.
Radio AM Robot, made from Soundwave and Megatron kit parts with a new head. This one did not happen because they were not allowed to mix and match parts from different Yolopark kits, answering that earlier question. Avatar Megatron happened instead.
The Generation 2 Autobot wristwatch, made from Optimus Prime and Soundwave parts. Once again, it did not happen because they could not mix parts from different kits.
Pre-Ladybug concept. They were trying to figure out as many uses of the new head as possible. The colors are based on the masked bee and would have been named "Negabee".
G2 Go-Bots Ironhide and SG Soundwave. Early ideas for this year. They love SG Soundwave but opted to stay away from Shattered Glass because Blokees is already doing it.
Robots in Disguise (2001) Ironhide, Action Master Slicer, and Deep Cover. More concept ideas.
Tap-Out was on tap to have been the Beast Wars figure in this year's VS set (answering that other earlier question), but he got tapped out. Secret Agent Arcee was also an alternative if there was an issue with Menasor. They weren't sure what was happening as it seemed like there might be a "hiccup" with Menasor, but the plans with him went through. Mexican Prowl and Thunder Clash were also other ideas, but Thunder Clash was considered already done by BotCon when Fun Pub did him back in 2009.
Next came the big finale:
They once pitched to 52Toys that they wanted to make action figures of Peter Cullen and Frank Welker. They would have turned into cubes ("Energon Cubes, whatever") and would have been retooled from 52Toys's Hexanoid Unus figure. They would have each come with headgear accessories (cowboy hat for Cullen, sunglasses for Welker). They pitched the idea to the 52Toys agent, they were talking about it, but the relationship with 52Toys wasn't going to go forward, so the concept was abandoned.
The idea was that, if these two did well, then maybe they could talk to some other voice actors and see if they could do something. "You never know how things start. Sometimes they take off, sometimes they don't. But we'll never know, at least in this format." Robby Musso did the art for these two.
They have tons of other concepts, but some of them are still in play, so they can't show them to us. These are all the ones that are, at this point, off the table.
They ended the panel with one final question: "If you were to do Shattered Glass Soundwave, would you retool the head to give him the headband?" Answer: "Yes, if we were to, yeah."
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12:00pm was the second panel of the day, an Artist Spotlight hosted by Nel Yomtov, the colorist for every single US issue of the Marvel G1 comics. I recorded this panel as well (though, I missed recording his introduction, but his intro sounded like the kind of information he would have given in past interviews). However, there was one glaring technical shortcoming that, unfortunately, made the audio of this panel completely inaudible in my recording of it (by no fault of my own, to be clear).
When Yomtov spoke at the panel, he held the microphone close to his chest, but not close enough to his mouth to speak into it properly. He needed to hold the mic higher in order for his voice to reach it, but he did not do so and nobody at the panel asked or directed him to do so. In other words, because he kept the microphone too far away from his mouth, nearly everything he said at the panel came out completely unhearable in my recording. Which is a tremendous shame since, for every question he was asked, he answered with a full-blown story.
Off the top of my head, the only question I can remember his answer to was when he was asked if there was ever a job opportunity that he really regretted passing on. He answered "No" to this question because, whenever there was a job opportunity that came his way, he never turned it down because he, as a freelance artist, could not afford to turn down any new opportunities. The competition was really fierce back then. So, he has no regrets for passing on anything back then because he never passed on anything back then.
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1:30pm was the third and final panel of the day, as well as the final panel of the weekend: the BotCon Recap Q&A, hosted by Hany Agaby and various others who joined him onstage throughout the panel. Unlike the previous years, I didn't pay that close attention to the feedback given in this year's panel because my mind was wanting to get back to the dealer room for some last-minute purchases and some last-minute talks with any of the guests. Luckily, Daltinian95 made a recording of this panel as well, for anyone curious about what all was said and opined about this year's convention:
Though, there was one bit of news given at this panel that I did snap a photo of: The date and location of next year's BotCon.
The same location as this year, but will be in a different room next year.
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The dealer room was set to close at 3:00pm, so for the final hour, I headed back into the dealer room to get my final purchases and try to talk to any of the guests. I managed to get a brief conversation with Daniel Riordan and a very brief talk with Sue Blu as she was striking down her booth and putting things away.
When I spoke to Riordan, we naturally talked about his time on Robots in Disguise (2001), how much I enjoyed the show as a kid, other voice actors who worked on the show with him, and things like certain differences between RiD and the original Japanese Car Robots version. Particularly, he'd never heard the original Japanese performance of Megatron/Gigatron and had no idea how different it was from his more over-the-top, theatrical performance.
He was also able to confirm something for me: He confirmed that any similarities between his performance of RiD Megatron and the late Robert Axelrod's performance of Lord Zedd from Power Rangers were purely coincidental. At the time, he had never watched or heard Axelrod's Zedd voice and had no idea how similar the personalities of his Megatron and Lord Zedd were to each other. He did, however, suspect that both he and Axelrod might have been unknowingly drawing from the same inspirations that they both grew up with (I brought up Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon as one such possible source of inspiration for both of their respective performances).
As for Sue Blu, I only had a very brief moment to speak with her. I asked her if she might be able to confirm who voiced Chak and Una in Beast Wars, since she was the voice director of that show. She didn't have much time to think about it, but after I told her about which cast members were credited in the episodes Chak and Una appeared in, she suspects that it might have been Venus Terzo who voiced the two children in whichever of their episodes she's credited in, and Sue herself who voiced them in whichever of their episodes she, but not Venus, is credited in. This would mean Venus would have voiced them in "Cutting Edge" and "Nemesis Part 1", while Sue would have voiced them in "Go with the Flow".
The convention shut down at 3:00pm, but the day was not yet over for me.
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Because I have become better acquainted with the BotCon staff, I was permitted to be in the dealer room after closing time, so long as I didn't interfere with any of the work being done in there to close down and pack up everyone's booths. My dad (who had accompanied me on this trip to visit with some friends of his while I was at BotCon) came by and I briefly got to introduce him to the likes of Jesse Wittenrich, Derek Bigesby, and Hany Agaby.
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Around 4:00pm, Ryan Yzquierdo made his way back over to the convention center to meet up with those he had invited to his post-BotCon special event; he arrived accompanied by his best friend Ben. I showed them both where the dealer room was and Ryan got to visit with several people he hadn't seen in years. While he was reconnecting, me and Ben helped Robby Musso tear down his booth and carried his packed up belongings outside through the back of the dealer room, where he loaded his things into his car. After a while, the final group who all gathered together to go with Ryan were myself, my dad, Ben, and Robby Musso.
Where we all went was over to Ryan's place of work, Seibertron.com HQ. We got to see his workspace where he stores his collection and sorts through the many, MANY items he has for sale at the online Seibertron Store. So many Transformers from Generation 1 to today; so many comic books of all kinds; so many toys and action figures from all kinds of series, like He-Man and Power Rangers; and even historical items like original newspapers dating back to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Ryan even showed us some very personal items like toys and drawings from his childhood, and clippings of fan newsletters dating back to the early days of the Transformers fandom. It was all incredible.
We ended the visit with a group photo (back row left to right: Me, Robby, Ben, and my dad (John); front center: Ryan).
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The five of us then went out to dinner at a local Italian restaurant. Afterward, my dad and I said our goodbyes to the others and we returned to our hotel to start packing up our luggage for our flight home the next morning.
Before I packed up my things, I snapped a photo of my complete BotCon 2026 haul:
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Overall, this year's BotCon was a blast-and-a-half! An incredible experience that was overwhelming in the best way possible. If next year turns out to be anything like this year was, I greatly look forward to what all lies in store.
It was fun. Hopefully, we can all do it again next year.