John DeLuna returns from BotCon 2001 with news on the blue Transmetal 2 Megatron, the green Ramulus and an uncertain Megavolt Megatron on this July 23, 2001 Radio Free Cybertron. He calls the convention more solid and controlled than BotCon 2000, but the Tigatron and Arcee exclusives leave him flat. Brian Kilby then reviews his first Robots in Disguise toys, praising Sky-Byte and panning the Car Brothers’ robot modes. The site of the week is lexicon.tf, a Transformers fan fiction database.
News
Blue Transmetal 2 Megatron Becomes Cryotek
The blue Transmetal 2 Megatron is coming out as a new character named Cryotek. John hears he will get a new tech spec and story to go with the name. He would have bought the blue Megatron anyway, but says the new identity makes it a thousand times more attractive to him. [Source: not found]
Green Ramulus Was a Real, Tiny Production Run
The green Ramulus turns out to be a production toy released in very small quantities, perhaps 10 to 30 pieces. Kids bought them at toy stores, and the variant is known only because one collector found one. Hasbro then went with the familiar magenta and gray scheme for the mass release. John compares it to a small-run black Transmetal Prowl. [Source: not found]
Supreme Optimus Primal Likely a Toys R Us Exclusive
A Supreme Optimus Primal prototype appeared at a dealer table, though no new details surfaced. John says Ben Yee expects the Air Attack figure to be a Toys R Us exclusive, and he will wait to see if that pans out. [Source: not found]
Megavolt Megatron’s Fate Still Up in the Air
The 3H panel at the end of BotCon brought what John calls the most heartbreaking toy news: Megavolt Megatron’s release is still undecided. The panel revealed its gimmick. Rolled along in head mode, its legs wobble like G1 Scorponok and its mouth chomps like wind-up walking teeth. John says the toy rocks and deserves to be released, and points listeners to the pictures on bwtf.com. [Source: not found]
Icebird Animorphs Prototype and a $12,000 Unicron
Dealers showed an Animorphs prototype of Icebird, with a human head and ripped clothes, confirming the Mutants were meant to be Animorphs. A blue-and-yellow Unicron prototype sat on a dealer table priced at $12,000, and it was gone by Saturday or Sunday. John thought $5,000 to $7,000 was the ceiling for any Transformer and finds the price mind-blowing. [Source: not found]
ATT Buzz: BotCon 2001 Report
At his second BotCon, John DeLuna found the 2001 show more solid and controlled than BotCon 2000, which he felt was too big for its own good. Dealer rooms, panel rooms and a video room that no longer ran 24 hours all sat along one hall. He praises the voice actor guests: Berger, Bell and Stevenson for G1, and Scott McNeil and Garry Chalk for Beast Wars. He jokes about American and Canadian voice actor rivalry while praising the Ocean Group’s work.
BotCon Exclusives: Tigatron and Arcee
The exclusives got a standing ovation at the dinner, and John says Glenn Hallett milked the Arcee reveal. John stayed seated. He wants BotCon exclusives to be classy repaints with new characterizations, and he says Tigatron and Arcee have neither. He prefers the Tigatron mold in Ravage colors and dislikes the opaque white plastic on both. Arcee uses the Transmetal 2 Blackarachnia mold, which he never liked, though the breastplate remold shows how far 3H’s relationship with Hasbro has come. His biggest complaint is that the flip-top Tigatron box and Arcee’s talking voice chip drove up the price. He would take a Cyclonus repaint in a brown paper bag.
Dealer Rooms
John’s own haul was light: Blast Punch Primal and Combat Hero Optimus Prime. He says there were too many dealers for the demand, and the dealer rooms opened an hour late on Saturday. Most dealers priced Brave Maximus at $140 to $170, but WYSIWYG undercut them and sold out fast. Within 20 minutes, the rest of the room had crossed out their tags and dropped to $120. Big Bad Toy Store brought two to three times as much stock as anyone else, but sold out of roughly 30 Blast Punch Primals in about 20 minutes.
Robots in Disguise Review
Brian Kilby found most of the first Robots in Disguise wave the week before BotCon: Prowl, Side Burn, X-Brawn, the Transmetal 2 repaint three-pack and Sky-Byte. He still lacks Megatron, Optimus Prime and the Spy Changers.
Brian finds X-Brawn’s softer plastic easier to transform than his Super Wild Ride, without being lower grade. All three Car Brothers have nice car modes, though Brian prefers plastic wheels to rubber, which can melt or get lost. He rates X-Brawn’s spindly robot mode best of the three, calls Side Burn the most balanced, and hates Prowl’s robot mode, as he did on Mach Alert. He gives the Car Brothers a 5 out of 10.
The Predacon three-pack repaints Brian’s favorite Transmetal 2 toys. Gas Skunk’s highlighted take on Stinkbomb is beautiful, but the soft plastic makes the set feel weak, and his arms and legs pop off. Dark Scream looks average at best, and Slapper’s paint job is no better than Spittor’s. The pack also gets a 5 out of 10.
Sky-Byte, a repaint of Transmetal 2 Cybershark, is the gem of the line for Brian. He says it stands better than his Cybershark, and the yellow, purple and white paint is amazing. He credits Takara’s strength in repaints and gives Sky-Byte a 9.
Site That Doesn’t Suck: lexicon.tf
This week’s site is lexicon.tf, the Transformers Lexicon, a searchable fan fiction database put together by Charlotte Brogden. It holds roughly 500 stories, from comedy to serious work and from prose to script form. It also offers author details and interviews, essays, e-books and a links index. Submissions take a while because each must be formatted, and profane stories probably won’t be accepted. Brian thinks it is better organized than the larger Transfic database.
Radio Free Cybertron is the world's first and oldest toy and action figure podcast — broadcasting from the heart of the Transformers fan community since October 1999. What started as a scrappy fan show has grown into an institution, with nearly 1,000 episodes and over 25 years of coverage. Every week, host Brian Kilby and the RFC crew dig into the latest Transformers news, toy reveals, collecting, and everything hitting shelves from Hasbro, Takara, and beyond. No fluff, no hype — just informed, passionate collectors who have been doing this longer than anyone else on the planet. The original. The longest running. Till all are one.
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