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Longtime Transformers fan giddy about BotCon
AP Photo
Daniel Siapno of Alberta, Canada, plays with a Transformer at BotCon 2009 in Pasadena.
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Published: June 18, 2009
PASADENA, Calif. - Walter Mueller knows his Transformers.
The 32-year-old has been collecting the robot toys for more than 20 years. He even has one of the brand's main characters, Optimus Prime, tattooed in full color on his leg.
The owner of a meat-processing plant, Mueller recently traveled from his native Ontario, Canada, to Southern California to attend BotCon, the 15th annual Transformers convention, in hopes of adding to his arsenal of more than 1,000 toys.
The Transformers movie and its forthcoming sequel have spawned dozens of new characters, while also having the effect of making the shape-shifting robots infinitely more complex than the toys that were first introduced in 1984, the year Mueller became a fan.
As the film raised the bar on the merchandise, the merchandise has responded, Mueller said.
"They're very movie-accurate," he said.
And that's by design -- literally. Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman went to Hasbro's "Transformers school" to get to know the Autobots and Decepticons before crafting their story about alien robots who come to earth and befriend an American teenager.
The big-screen 'bots are entirely computer generated. Their detailed transformations look spectacular but only exist in a digital world, making them far more complicated than their toy doppelgangers. A souped-up police car, for example, undergoes countless intricate, incremental changes to become the evil Decepticon Barricade. The plastic toys, however, must face the realities of 3-D physics -- and be user-friendly enough for a kid to enjoy.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, in theaters Wednesday, introduces more than 25 new characters to the Transformers family, including Sideswipe, a swordsmith disguised as a silver Corvette, and Soundwave, an evil cannon-wielding robot camouflaged as a spaceship that controls human satellite transmissions.
Jack Horton, 13, from Cresson, Texas, who came to BotCon with his dad, said he's most interested in playing with Transformers that have appeared on screen.
"When I see it in the movie, I want it a lot more," he said. "But in the movie you only see it for a few seconds. With the toys you can do whatever you want."
And he's not disappointed that the toy transformation doesn't exactly replicate the giant-sized, computer-generated moves in the film.
"The special effects are ridiculously complicated," he said. "You can't do that with a toy."
Fans say the "Transformers: Animated" series more accurately depicts how the toys transform in the real world.
But the character attributes are constant in film and on TV, based largely on the 25-year-old Transformers mythology, said global marketing director Greg Lombardo. So even though Bumblebee has changed from a Volkswagen Beetle to a sleek Camaro over the years, he's always been yellow-and-black -- and friendly. Optimus Prime has always been the leading good guy and Megatron the leading bad guy.
Hasbro has created more than 2,000 different Transformers characters over the history of the brand, each with its own look and personality.
Mueller spent about $3,000 over the four-day event. "It's one of the few places where you can actually find the stuff and see it firsthand," he said. "That's the real draw for me."
His favorite character: "Optimus Prime. He's the man."
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