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Date Posted: 7/04/03 1:17:29 GMT+10
Author: Goktimus Prime
Subject: OzFormers Convention Report

I'm so very very tired... nnuhhh...

Anyway, here's my report on the convention...

DAY MINUS ONE: Thursday April 3

Had a nasty car accident due to severe weather, badly damaging my car. Gah! Of all the rotten luck! Bloody awful timing considering not only the fact that I had to prepare for the convention tomorrow, but also because of the fact that I'd just had my car serviced last weekend with a new $500 radiator! Gaaah!!

After some drama, I managed to meet up with Jhiaxus at the train station. Being from a remote rural town in Northern Queensland, Jhiaxus had no idea how to use a train and got hopelessly lost on Sydney's train system... so it was well into the evening by time we met up. In any case, we walked back to my place, and my good friend Rinoa came and we loaded some of the heavy stuff into her car (TV, VCR, display cabinets etc).

DAY ZERO: Friday April 4

Jhiaxus and I caught the train to Wynyard Station where we rendezvoused (is that a word?) with ExcelonZero. We had breakfast at a Japanese restaurant and discussed the posters print run. The head chef came out and had a look at our posters and complimented them -- he remarked about how he had seen some Transformers stuff back in Japan and how his son likes Transformers and is collecting the Armada Happy Meal Toys from MacDonald's atm. When he asked me if I knew about the Happy Meal Toys, I told him that I'd already collected them all (at least, all that have been released so far) and he absolutely baulked, nearly falling over on the ground behind him. That was funny.

We then went and had the posters printed, then we headed down to convention site... got a bit lost, but eventually found our way there. Inside, we saw our booth site. The partitions had already been erected. Rinoa had already taken our equipment inside, and it was all waiting for us near the entrance. After bringing our stuff over, two tables were delivered. There was a bit of confusion as opposed to access to electricity for our booth -- apparently the electricians had neglected to list our booth as one of those requiring access to electricity (despite the fact that convention organisers did mention our booth to them). Anyway, that was soon cleared up and we were told that electricity would be installed. Griffin came and met us -- he'd arrived at the convention site straight from the airport. Then Dirge arrived as well. After some basic setting up, Jhiaxus and I departed and caught the train to Lidcombe Station to pick up the comic books. There were two cartons of 130 comics... gah.. we hauled them back to the train station and brought them back to my place.

DAY ONE: April 5

Luke Howell came and gave us a lift that morning. In my haste I forget to bring some things for the booth -- namely SCF Arcee and Daniel for our diorama.

Arriving at the convention site, we started setting up promptly. Dirge and Griffin arrived at 9:00 and started helping out. We set up two toy dioramas -- one was a battle scene of involving early season one Beast Wars characters. The only S1 characters who weren't there were Inferno, Tigatron and Airazor -- mainly because there wasn't enough space for them all. As a running gag, Waspinator was disassembled and his pieces were strewn about as if he'd been torn apart -- with his head propped up and facing the viewers. We had some good response from fans to this gag.

The second booth had two displays. The top shelf showed some rare/interesting toys -- Glyph, Tap-Out, Onyx Primal, Packrat, Fractyl, New Year Convoy and Megaplex (G1), as well as characters from our exclusive comic book -- Crosscut, Roadrage, Cliffjumper, Kup, Venom and Thundercracker. The bottom shelf had our "Death of Optimus Prime" diorama which kinda looked like this, except that we used New Year Convoy's Matrix which was held by Hot Rod (thanks to some fishing wire and blu-tack). Nobody really complained about the absence of Arcee and Daniel, other than Griffin. :p

We had more cool stuff displayed behind the booth on the partition walls, including:
* US TFTM poster
* Australian TFTM posters
* OzFormer exclusive posters (enlarged versions of what we were selling)
* More rare toys including: BotCon Tigatron, BotCon Arcee, Shokoract, Apelinq and Metal Hawk.

We laid out our merchandise on the tables and started playing stuff on the TV. During the entire weekend, we showed:
* Transformers The Movie (in Japanese, so that we wouldn't compete with the DVD sales and theatrical screening)
* Scramble City
* Transformers Zone
* Transformers Toy Commercials (in MUCH better quality than the ones on the TFTM DVD, as they were mastered from LD)
* Diaclone and Micron Toy Commercials
* Transformers Headmasters episodes
* Transformers Beast Wars episodes (The Agenda)
* Transformers Beast Wars Neo episodes (Unicron arc)
* Transformers G1 eps "Autobot Run", "The Core" and "The Ultimate Doom"
* Transformers Beast Machines episodes
* Transformers Beast Wars II The Movie

When 10:00 hit, they let the guests in. I saw a mad crowd of people littering rushing towards the front door as soon as they opened the front gates.

We saw people starting to trickle in... we wondered if anyone would notice our humble Transformers booth. We wondered if anyone would buy our stuff. Along comes a fellow and demands FIFTEEN copies of our comic book and one copy of each poster!! From our first customer! Hurrah!

By the end of the day, I was thoroughly exhausted. But we felt a bit disheartened by our amount of sales. There seemed to be a lot of comic books and posters left by the end of the day, including an unopened case. It seems that we'd only sold half a case. Oh well.

I'd actually ordered 250 comics to be printed, but the printing company went ahead and printed 350 anyway. Gah.

We'd also noticed Hasbro's decided absence, which was rather annoying considering that they'd said that they were going to be there. Both the people at the Star Wars booth and ours were wondering where the hell Hasbro were. Turns out that they didn't bother to get their form and money in on time. Slackers.

On a side note, I met Kenny Baker and asked him to autograph my Artoo-Detoo toy. Sweet.

DAY TWO: April 6

Dammit, I left my cash float at home... so I ended up throwing in cash from my personal funds into the float.

I'd brought in Brave Maximus to display at the booth, as well as SCF Arcee and Daniel for the diorama. And since Hasbro wasn't there, Dirge and I decided to be naughty and we brought in some Armada and Micron Legend stuff. We showed the first four episodes of Micron Legend as well. I also brought in the Japanese X-Dimension recolour of the Land Military Team as well as the Blue Star Sabre. The Armada/Micron toys were quite popular, as many fans were just as interested in the current figures as well as the old ones.

Later that afternoon we lowered prices to sell more stuff. Comics were reduced from $3 each to $2 and posters were reduced from $7 to $5. I was still worried that I was going to make a loss on the comics, although ExcelonZero, who funded for the printing of the posters, had already calculated that he had broke even and was happy.

When I got home that night, we did the maths and to my delight I broke even and made a small profit, selling around two hundred copies!

On a non-TF related note, earlier that day I met Mary Oyaya and bought and autographed photo print from her. I showed her my Luminara Unduli toy and asked her if she had approved the likeness on the toy. She told me that Hasbro never approached her to approve any toy likeness, but she did say that she was impressed with the toy's likeness. I had previously positioned Luminara Unduli holding her light sabre up high -- she repositioned it so that it was held low and pointing downwards; this is her favourite pose and the same pose that she was doing in the photo that she signed for me! So I'm going to keep displaying my Luminara Unduli figure in that pose from now on! hehehe! Oh man, Mary Oyaya is so gorgeous! She let me pose with her for a photo and we put our arms around each other for some photo shots! Her husband also took a picture of us together as well -- it's cool to see her keeping her own album of her fans! I found that Kenny Baker's autograph was a lot more manufactured. I'm sure that after having been a Star Wars celebrity for over two and a half decades, he's been "immunised" to stardom, which is kinda sad. He didn't really appear terribly happy to be there. He wasn't rude either, but it was a bit mechanical. He just asked for the money, signed the toy, shook my hand quickly, and that was it. His wife was rather friendly though -- but I found Kenny was a tad too professionally distant.

When I met Peter Mayhew last year, there was a massive queue for his autograph. But even then he took the time to ask for your name so that he can personalise the autograph as well as shake hands, give you a smile and pose for a photo if you want (I didn't ask, but lots of other people did). Peter Mayhew would be just as popular as Kenny Baker -- in fact, judging from the line of people queueing up to see him, he was a lot more popular -- and although he was reasonably quick with the autographs, as he clearly wanted to get the line moving, he was also friendly enough to give you a smile. I don't think Kenny Baker even made eye contact with me, let alone giving me a smile,

I know all this sounds terribly trivial, but come on... the reason celebrities should come to these conventions is to meet the fans, because without the fans, they wouldn't be famous and successful! And for me, something as simple as a smile goes a long way. To me, it's a quick and easy way of telling the fans that they appreciate us and appreciate our devotion. So the good thing I found about Mary Oyaya was that, being a relatively new face to Star Wars, people weren't lining up to talk to her -- and thus she was still very grateful to all the fans that she met. This was evident not only in her friendly disposition, but in the fact that she started signing the autograph for me before I'd handed the cash over. And the fact that not only were fans taking photos of her -- SHE was taking photos of her fans! It was like.. fan-fandom! That's COOL!!

Convention Highlights

It was really great meeting so many new Transfans as well as other Transfans I'd met from previous Transfan meets and from the Internet as well! I met fans from interstate, particularly from Queensland and Victoria! And I met several fans from the UK and I remember hearing at least one or two fans speaking with an American accent, although I personally didn't speak to them.I think the UK fans appreciated the fact that they could discuss UK Marvel continuity with other non-British Transfans! One of them found it a real novelty that Death's Head was so popular outside amongst Transfans outside the British Isles.

Overall, the convention was a great success, and now I'm really bloody tired!! Gah!

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