>>7972552>I was out of the TF scene for some years. I remember Botcon kind of being a big deal almost a decade ago, no?Transformers conventions still live on in the form of TF Con and various small conventions. the thing is, the fandom sort of outgrew Botcon as a whole, and like entropy, Botcon, initially a fan-run convention that became official, would be superseded by unofficial, fan-run conventions. Initially, in the 90s, when the TF fandom was small, having a Transormers convention was a big deal. so was having exclusive toy. G2, beast wars/Machines, and RiD were all very small lines compared tot he sheer amount of stuff we have today. But as time moved on, we started getting more media, toys, and comics, so Botcon had to bring more to the table. It wasn't enough to have a comic and a couple new characters, now the figures had to contribute to the franchise and the toys had to be existing, familiar characters to fill spaces. But then Hasbro started a more concentrated effort on expanding the line and filling out the ranks. Around this time, many Botcon releases would get replaced by retail releases very quickly, thus making your $200 box set look very pointless when you could get a deluxe Ironhide, Kup, or scourge at Walmart for $12. Towards the end, the big 3rd party boom and its murky legal standing that came with letting vendors sell that at an "official" convention made a further divide.
So now we have TFCon, and others, which is sort of a free-market version of botCon. Now its no longer limited to a single venue once a year. In lieu of official exclusives, 3Ps provide shows with exclusive figures. Hasbro has found other venues for their own exclusives. Everything really sort of worked out in the end.
Shame about the name, "BotCon" was genius.
