does anyone have numbers on the past few Botcons, and how many figures were revealed before registration went live? this year, we saw 4 of the 6 figures, and I thought that's more than we've seen in prior years, but can't honestly remember...
We saw four,and then they showed a small picture of all six at registration. That was the first time we saw the Magnus toy and Metalhawk.
Last year, the entire box set was revealed - Motormaster was the last reveal, on 24 February with reg going live on 21 March.
I'm afraid that figure-reveal dates aren't something I've kept track of on the datasheet. Just pre-registration dates. But assuming that the dates on the BotCon web site's own archives are reliable, I can give a bit of info. BotCon 2011 - pre-registration went up on March 21st. All five box set figures were already revealed (the final reveal went up on February 24th). BotCon 2010 - pre-registration went up on May 12th. Four of the five box set figures (all but Sky-Byte) had been revealed by that time. BotCon 2009 - pre-registration went up on February 25th. It looks like one figure was revealed before then. BotCon 2008 - pre-registration went up on January 31st. I can't tell if any figures were revealed before then, but can verify that the final two figures were revealed on February 25th, so it seems unlikely that any had been revealed prior to pre-registration. FYI, this is also the year that the attendee figure, Ricochet, was revealed prior to the convention. I'm pretty confident that no figures were revealed prior to pre-registration before 2008, but won't swear to it. The archives are less informative for earlier years, and I'm going off of memory alone for that.
I distinctly remember in 2009 knowing the theme of the set and the names of the characters in the set before seeing any reveals, because I spent a lot of time thinking it was going to be an Animated set and trying to guess which molds would be used for which characters. So I'm like 99% positive the brochure was posted before the reveals that year. Whether or not we could register, well, that I don't remember.
As I said in the previous post, there was indeed one (but it seems only one) reveal before pre-registration was posted. You are correct about the brochure being posted earlier, but that's a different thing. But allow me to be more explicit than I was in that post: Pre-registration started on February 25th, 2009. The BotCon 2009 archive has this note: "Update 2/24/09 - The BotCon 2009 EXCLUSIVE figure preview has begun!" (It also confirms the 2/25/09 posting of the registration forms) While I don't remember for certain personally, I assume that the first reveal was Kup (listed as "Figure 1" on the figure preview page). As to the names being revealed first. That's been normal for a while now. We usually do know what the names of the characters are before any reveals come up. In the case of 2009, we apparently got those names with the brochure on February 20th.
