Whoever Botcon does will get complaints from people wanting them to be done by Takara or Hasbro. But there are characters neither of them have the opportunity and/or desire to do. And that is where Botcon / The Club came in.

Besides, several characters Botcon did gained their own molds a few years later such as Kup, Scourge and Chromedome.

 

Probably, since we don't even know if they have the ability to manufacture any or have them manufactured for them.

 

I hope Hasbro does those guys though.
But that would be great ways to do them.

 

Okay, what about turning generics from the original cartoon into new characters?

New character - Combiner Wars Cyclonus


New character - Siege Shockwave
New character - Earthrise Starscream


New characters - Masterpiece Rumble


Zeta Prime - Siege Optimus Prime


Guardian Prime - Siege Starscream


Prima - Combiner Wars Cyclonus


New characters can be named characters who don’t have any visual representation. The four Rumble recolours I would cast as the Tremorcon - Transformers Wiki

 

He is helping bring BotCon to life... by selling merchandise before the show and promoting it at his own convention, lol.

I’m confused why we’re still debating FunPub’s cost breakdown for exclusives when that’s not at all relevant to this new iteration, plus has been talked about to death over the years... are we still airing out our grievances, and if so why here when Brian and Co. aren’t at all involved?
      

 

I was mainly highlighting that if BC Productions intends on offering a more affordable Botcon than the previous iteration, it would likely be without a full time staff, as labor is expensive and results in increased prices.

 

While I like the idea of making new characters based on one-off background characters in G1, like Lancer and Greenlight, I would not use the Combiner Wars Cyclonus mold. For one thing, it's a remold of Silverbolt to begin with. Not an original Cyclonus mold like the Universe one. Plus there's no limbs for them combine with. But more importantly, there's probably going to be a new Cyclonus figure in Earthrise. The last time Hasbro used the Cyclonus trademark was in 2017 for RiD2.0 Cyclonus. So they need to use it very soon otherwise the trademark will expire. So there will probably be a much better Cyclonus mold to use in 6 to 18 months time.

Assuming BC Productions gets the official license and capability of having exclusives, that's kind of something I hope they avoid that the old FunPub was guilty of: having a BotCon exclusive that was immediately made obsolete by a normal retail release of the same character a year or two later. Like with Kup and Scourge in 2009, who were supposed to be our CHUG Kup and Scourge, but were replaced 2 short years later with the infinitely better Generations Kup and Scourge. Or like in 2007 how we had a Springer repaint using the CD Hot Shot figure, but then Hasbro came out with their own Springer using another Cybertron mold in Evac the very next year. While they're both just repaints, at least the Evac one was a helicopter. Which, even though Springer is a triplechanger, he only used his car mode once in TFTM for about 4 seconds and then never again.

 

That’s why the original 3H figures still remain the best exclusives, and most memorable... you could only get them at BotCon. And with great fiction to back them up, I hope if they do secure the license to make exclusives, they revisit the characters from 1995-2000, CatSCAN, Tap-Out, Glyph, Rook, Roulette, Shadow Striker, and Sentinel Maximus... would LOVE to see CHUG updated repaints of those characters. Like Generations Waspinator as Antagony and Inferno  

 

I'm still amazed l managed to get 02 Cyclonus for $20 on eBay.

 

i managed to score catscan for the same awhile back, seems the 02 exclusives just werent all that popular compared to other years

 

Trouble is, original characters have been demonstrated not to sell as well as known characters. A certain segment of the fandom may think they're better (because Hasbro is less likely to do them again in the near future, among other reasons), but if they don't sell as well, whoever's producing them is less able to continue doing so.

 

Where are the stats on this? Sounds like absolute fabricated nonsense... anytime I see a 3H figure on Ebay, it sells above retail. There are PLENTY of FunPub exclusives that go for next to nothing, either because they’re poor design, completely obsolete, or over-produced in numbers (2005, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2015)...

 

eBay prices don't matter. What sold AT the convention is what matters. Only those actually pay the folks who produced the figures.

3H's model proved unsustainable, while FunPub continued for over a decade.

 

Yep. There's nostalgia for 3H stuff NOW but it kinda took awhile for that to happen.

 

3H's model wasnt unsustainable, they tried to do too much too quickly after becoming official and burnt bridges of good will as a result. if 3H's original characters were so poorly recieved then why did funbup revisit several of them? apelinq, the hunter (shockaract), fractyl, packrat etc etc.

 

I've already conceded that the original characters are popular with a certain subset of the fandom. As to what caused 3H's decline... these are interpretations of the facts, which I agree should not be confused with facts themselves, and to the extent I'm guilty of that, I apologize. I'm not sure that there is data sufficient to promote your interpretation over mine, but I'll concede that it fairly assesses the facts that are available.

The fact that 3H was saddled with TONS of unsold product, especially from 2002, certainly didn't help them, but I'll be the first to admit that they were pushed into producing too many (as opposed to "those characters were less popular"). Pre-2002, nothing was produced in the kinds of numbers that even FunPub later produced with regularity, and anecdotally it seems that exclusive production numbers were tied more closely to attendance, so popularity of characters was likely less of an issue. So, again, to the extent that I'm promoting an interpretation of fact as fact, I apologize.

That said, I don't think the concept that known characters have greater appeal to a greater number of people (vs. unknown characters) is one that should need such intense defending.

 

3H sold out. I was there. I was also there for FunPub, which many times did NOT sell out... no idea what you’re talking about.

 

Another thing to factor in is that the transformers brand wasn't as big back in the 3H days as it is now. (You can thank Michael Bay for that).
Also, not as many people even knew Botcon was a thing. Back in 1996-2004, the internet wasn't in everyone's pocket the way it is now.
Hell, up until 2009, I was still using dial up connections and aol free trial CDs.

 

And another thing to factor in is that Hasbro was pretty steadfastly ignoring G1 back during the 3H years, and fans were desperate for new versions of the official characters they knew. Today, Hasbro's new-mold or extensive-remold G1 characters will beat Botcon's new-head-if-the-budget-allows G1 characters every time, and I see a lot more people interested in new characters.

 

3h arent the ones that did the new head if the budget allows g1, that was funpub. in fact, if i recall correctly, the only 3h exclusive that had a new head was sentinel maximus. tm3 megatron and defensor would have had new heads, but they went under before that happened.