HasCon 2017

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HasCon 2017 »

And then there is even more wailing, and stronger gnashing of teeth from the fans.
Date September 8, 2017
City Providence, Rhode Island.
Venue Rhode Island Convention Center and Dunkin' Donuts Center

HasCon 2017, the first HasCon convention, was held in Providence, Rhode Island from September 8 through 10, 2017. As an expo/celebration of all brands that Hasbro owns or licenses across all age groups, Transformers had a significant presence.


Venue

The convention was held at the Rhode Island Convention Center for the main show floor, gaming rooms and smaller panels, with the adjacent Dunkin' Donuts Center arena used for the larger presentations and concerts.

The main show floor, on the first level of the Convention Center, was broken up into large areas for each brand, with toy display cases, prop displays, numerous play-tables covered in toys, and stages for presentations, autographs sessions and audience-participation games. There were face-painting and hair styling stations scattered throughout the floor as well. Transformers was the first section seen from the main entrance to the floor (and yes there was a face-painting station there to robot-ize up your kids); going forward led to Marvel Comics and Star Wars, while going right went through the games area and into My Little Pony, Hanazuki and the like, with Nerf on the far wall opposite, with plenty of firing ranges and an inflated enclosed combat zone. The not-actually-owned-by-Hasbro licenses were of course pushed more to the back of the hall but still given lots of space.

In the center of the floor was the "Boutique", where Hasbro sold retail toys (at wholesale price), as well as convention-exclusive posters, clothing and other swag, with a separate booth specifically for HasCon-exclusive "collector" toys and items (though over the course of the weekend that stock would filter into the normal checkout areas).

The main hallway outside the show floor was filled with guest services kiosks, food vendors, and other companies on display, as well as autograph areas for the less-directly-Hasbro-related guests. The back end of the call was the "Hascade", featuring free-play stations for numerous Hasbro-branded mobile games, arcade games, and the like.

The upper floor held the Magic: The Gathering play room, full of tables where a tournaments went on all weekend. Next to it was a small dealer section, primarily populated by people selling their art and hand-crafted wares, but there were a few of the normal toy resellers there to boot. Most importantly in that room though was the Dunkin' Donuts tent that offered free donut holes and small cups of Monster energy drinks all weekend. On the other end of the hall was the "FANmily Stage Room", a smaller conference room that held panels all weekend. The hall on this floor was also filled with food vendors and other companies displaying their services.

Guests

Semi-technically, Hasbro's whole staff were guests, as they were brought in to cover their brands' booths and answer questions, just as they did during BotCons. Many also attended panels for their brands and fields of work, including several TakaraTomy employees.

Events


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Friday September 8

More than Meets the Eye
Hasbro and TakaraTomy employees discussed their work on the various Transformers toylines of 2016, with a look into 2017. Began with talking about the technical issues of designing two The Last Knight sublines; the AllSpark Tech series and Knight Armor Turbo Changers. With AllSpark Tech, the physical space needs of the activation cube had to be accounted for, plus every phrase and sound effect for every toy had to be plotted out for each motion, as the whole point of the line was that a single cube will work with every figure. The Knight Armor helmets needed to be impressive reveals, with the helmets matching the characters' aesthetics; Megatron's was meant to evoke a necromancer, while Hound's blended the medieval with military.
Next they discussed the Robots in Disguise combiners, which were designed from the get-go to ensure kids got a complete combiner with every single purchase. The design process actually started with sketching the combined robot modes, melding the components' design cues and blending them together, then refining those looks with the show production crew. There were multiple mechanical issues to work out: they wanted an emphasis on "big action" and interchangeability. They had to design a new universal joint to make that work (forgiving of course some toys only changing into certain combiner parts), as well as where one holds the toy when combining, to avoid auto-transforming parts pinching unwary fingers. Sean, the Senior Designer for Robots in Disguise, elaborated on his love of jet-robots and his desire to add to their ranks with the all-new character Stormshot, even if he wasn't a combiner.
Then it was Power of the Primes, which was largely a new product reveal, focusing primarily on the new Dinobots. A number of small but important details got revealed here, including Slash being a female Dinobot, and the group's use of clear plastic with gold-painted inner walls to simulate the original toys' distinct clear-plastic-over-vac-metal look. The Dinobots were also revealed as combiners, forming Volcanicus. They noted some improvements over the Combiner Wars combiners, with a big priority of hiding the combiner joints in robot mode, plus the new combiner foot-parts would include rocker-ankle joints of the kind found on Victorion.
Next came an elaboration on the Leader-class figures, with the reveal of the new Leader-class Orion Pax/Optimus Prime toy! The truck cab becomes the first Orion Pax toy sculpted to resemble the original Floro Dery animation model, and forms the core of the larger Optimus Prime toy, whose very Masterpiece-like body is actually made up from the trailer unit. These designs required some trickery to get the weigh balances and silhouettes right, which results in Optimus having an "outer" window-chest that opens to reveal an "inner" window-chest which opens to reveal a socket for the Matrix accessory. Speaking of silhouettes, the section ended with a silhouette "teaser" for Predaking, to be "properly" revealed at Toy Fair.
This panel was not originally in this timeslot, but was moved within a few days of the event due to a travel issue with the Marvel team that was originally slated for this spot. As the very first panel of the show on a Friday with people in an exclusives line, it was lightly attended, leading to a worrying first impression... but the next day's attendance would shatter those impressions. On the other hand, the Hasbro crew remarked that it was nice to be able to put everything into the display cases so early in the weekend.


IDW - Transformers Comics: How Artists and Writers Bring Stories to Life


From Unicron to Megatron - Explore the Villains of Transformers


Saturday September 9

IDW: The Hasbro Comic Revolution


Peter and Frank Sound Off: The Voices of Optimus Prime & Megatron!


Transformers: 'The Last Knight' in the Making
This one brought 'em in. Opened with Lorenzo di Bonaventura and John Warden discussing the beginnings of the movie franchise and its evolution, up to the in-production Bumblebee spin-off movie. That film, it was discussed how they were trying for a different feel to the movie altogether, not looking to replicate the "Bayhem", and the horrendous hairstyles of the 1980s.
Isabela Moner was brought out, and talked about her experiences on the set. She sent in her audition tape somewhat late in casting, and was almost immediately picked over the production team's then-current top contender out of a field of over 50 actresses. She really wanted the role and felt that her being so physically small but playing such a tough, determined character would be inspirational to kids. And there was plenty of gushing over Anthony Hopkins.
And then Mark Wahlberg came out and the crowd went ballistic. He talked about being brought in after working on Bay's Pain & Gain, the physical challenges of being on a Bay shoot... and some chuckling over how his kids are a little grumpy over daddy being so recognizable as a big-time movie star. Makes it hard to not be swamped when picking them up from school.


Transformers: Special Dinner Event

Sunday September 10

While Sunday saw several panels repeat, there were some new panels and events on the schedule:

The Prime Wars Trilogy: See the story come to life!


Peter and Frank Sound Off: The Voices of Optimus Prime & Megatron!


IDW - Transformers Comics: How Artists and Writers Bring Stories to Life


The Women of Transformers


More than Meets the Eye


Merchandise

Exclusive items from multiple brands were available at the show, but we'll focus on the Transformers-related stuff...

Purchase-at-show items included:


The Hasbro "Boutique" sold regular-retail Hasbro toys at wholesale cost. Several of these items were either not yet available at retail or had only just started hitting... and largely sold out by end of show:

There were also a lot of posters and apparel on sale, both Transformers specific and HasCon-branded with Transformers characters on them (usually Optimus).

The Boutique eventually added the HasCon exclusives to their available stock over the weekend. Free shipping was offered by having the orders be fulfilled by Hasbro Toy Shop online ordering at checkout.


Throughout the weekend, numerous posters, art cards and other small swag was given away free at the various booths:


Run-up

References

  1. ↑ Lorenzo di Bonaventura's attendance was initially revealed via a press release rather than on the site itself.
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ↑ [2]
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