Didn't that one Hasbro Pulse survey last year mention Botcon? I wonder if Hasbro is considering bringing it back themselves.
I think the contempt has to do with how FunPub box sets were crazy rare and expensive to get a hold of. And on that note, BotCon is back up? And by "it", I obviously mean the speculation.
So. For a time all the sites were down, Botcon, Joecon and both clubs. I'm pretty sure they're just changing servers. Most of the archives are unavailable as well. Edit: @AzT pointed out; the club site is still down.
And how some would turn around and jack up the price even more that pretty much screamed to me "I want all the money back that I spent on this trip to Botcon"
What really disappoints me (because life's too short to be made upset by the cost of toys) is how Hasbro's proven themselves that you can sell niche redecoes of existing toys at a significantly smaller markup as of late. Even "souvenir sets" (a term I use because of BotCon's use of the term when describing a set of 2-3 figures) like the Siege exclusive sets haven't been sold at that high of a markup. If we're to bring back BotCon, all I ask is that the organizers not try to short-change the guests. Know the price point that is reasonable to guests and will net the highest profit margin in that case; it's a tricky challenge, but as we know, there's a precedent.
not sure I'm allowed to say anything negative about them, except I don't agree with their practices and canon work
Oh God. I WISH it was just that. Is there like a chronicled list of all the things FunPub did somewhere? I remember griffin of oz did a pretty lengthy expose on them stealing money from Australian fans but there was a bunch of other things too. Some of it was pretty shocking and it amazes me to this day that Hasbro didn't pull the license from them earlier.
Fun Publications doesn't just deserve to be raked over the coals for how overpriced their exclusive toys were, bu alo how much they contributed to making the official transformers canon a goddamn disaster. Because for one thing, the original fiction they released - all of which is treated as canon - was often an avenue for spats between fans. Like the time David Willis used his Recordicons backup strip to shit on The Allspark Alamanc II's retcon of Five Faces of Darkness - which, being canon itsself, also ensured that the true nature of the dynasty of G1 Optimus predecessors is now schrodinger's cat for eternity. (I'm 100 percent not joking. Look it up. The wiki is now required to say Vector Prime may or may not have been telling the truth about - for instance - U Haul robot being Sentinel Prime, all because Recordions#9 had a news ticker in one panel that said "LTIVERSAL TRAVELER VECTOR PRIME ALWAYS LIES ABOUT FIVE FACES OF DARKNE." Giving the transformers fandom control over the canon was a fucking mistake.)
