"Raksha" <Raksha@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:4113e240.4769598@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> >guests.
>
> Given all of the other organizational inadequacies I've heard about by
> now, I think one *can* blame this on the organizers. Why didn't stuff
> like this happen at this year's BotCon? Though, if there weren't so
> many other problems in the picture, a little thing like opening a
> touch late, would never be a big deal.
Apples and oranges in my opinion. Now that the convention is "official",
Hasbro has 3H jumping through that
many more hoops. For example, it's one thing to trust a few diehard fans
to
create a labor of love for an exclusive
and produce it in sufficient quantities and on time. It's quite another to
get a multi-national toy conglomerate to approve
and produce exclusives in substantially higher numbers and still
manufacture
enough of the current product line to meet retailer demand. We're at the
bottom of the list as far as Hasbro is concerned.
> I saw some pictures from the art contest and the dealers room,
> and I was just flabbergasted. If I'd had a dealer's table at this
> event, I'd have demanded my money back and turned around and left
> again. Bare concrete floors and exposed pipes?? I expect a venue
> like that at a reptile swap meet or a dog show, where you want a bare
> floor that can be hosed down - but for a supposedly big-name sci-fi
> convention, it's beyond tasteless and unprofessional.
To be honest, I never noticed while I was there. I was too busy looking at
the mountains of toys to buy. :)
The lack of carpeting was inconsequential to me.
> Did they make people sit on straw mats for the panels, perhaps?
Heh. No. There were plenty of chairs for everyone. As for the art room,
given the small offering present, I found it adequate. It really didn't
seem
any smaller than the one in St. Paul. Perhaps if there had been more
entries...
All in all, given the rather last-minute change in venue, I think the
facilities at OTFCC were adequate. Perhaps not as elegant or as polished
as
in previous years but they served their purpose.
>
> Funny, why wasn't there an explanation in the tech spec on the box?
> Why wasn't there an explanation in the comic/program guide from last
> year? Doesn't something that major, deserve at least a passing
> mention? Yeah, it *could* have been turned into a plot point or point
> of character development, but to the best of my knowledge it was
> ignored, as though no one would notice the difference anyway.
No, Shadow Striker's ****ft in allegiance was covered in one of the newer
Universe issues. The writer didn't make a big issue of it but it served as
an interesting twist. I assume that the TechSpecs didn't mention this
(only
alluded to in her quote) to keep the cir***stances behind her defection
secret.
> This is
> another example of why so many of us wonder what 1H does with all the
> money that's coming in
Uh...what money? The vast majority of pre-registrations comes in the last
few weeks before the deadline. 3H has to take their best guess as to how
many people will attend as well as how many toys they'll purchase so they
can outline their budget for each year's show. We've already been told
that
many shows since '97 have produced little to no profit after expenses and
operating costs and with fledgeling mini-TF-cons springing up, accurately
predicting numbers is more of a gamble than ever. That isn't to say that
every show loses money. If that were true, 3H would simply have to stop
and
pack up. However, it doesn't look like they have this unending positive
cash-flow that many suggest. Trademark searches for exclusive names,
writers, artists, guests and accomodations, exclusive production,
packaging,
and remolding, advertising, printing and binding, employee wages,
security,
convention space, contract fees with Hasbro...they all cost money. A *lot*
of it.
Perhaps 3H *should* cut back on costs in the next few years...produce
fewer
exclusives and invite fewer guests...as well as host the con in a less
expensive city. I wonder what all those fans who were clammoring for OTFCC
to be held in a "major" city so that more people could attend think after
two years of Chicago's exorbitant pricing? The only cost I think they
*can't*
eliminate is the need for remolding. Now that Hasbro is repainting nearly
every figure at least twice, the promise of yet another repaint just isn't
exclusive enough to draw in more people. The remolded parts keep the
exclusives "special".
>.. with tens of thousands of dollars in
> resources, there's really no excuse for the ongoing incomplete and
> missing products and little mistakes upon little mistakes.
It costs "tens of thousands of dollars" just to produce the remolded heads
for last year's exclusives in limited numbers. While there have been more
problems with the convention in the last couple of years, I strongly
believe
that is due more to Hasbro's restructuring, the show's official status and
therefore Hasbro's need to approve and micromanage every detail, an insane
amount of bad press - often undeserving of such - as well as 3H's
"openness"
with details of the con which were never made public before. We used to
have
to wait *months* to find out where the next convention would be and the
identities of the exclusives were kept top-secret until the Friday before
the convention itself. However, in recent years we've been told the
location
of the next show at the end of the current show and thanks to unscrupulous
and disrespectful people who both sell and purchase toys before they've
even
been officially released to the public, we can now see the exclusives on
eBay and on websites across the Net *months* before the convention. The
playing field has changed and it'll never go back to how it used to be no
matter who runs the show.
> A crew that can turn out a
> box like CatScan from 2002, which was a truly amazing piece of work
> (never mind that the toy inside it was worthless), should be able to
> create a PVC card that doesn't cut off Skywarp's tech spec text in the
> middle of the second sentence. Perhaps a little thing called "quality
> control" is missing in this picture? Perhaps the quality control came
> from the other 2 H's whose absence is now making itself felt?
At least in the PVC's case, the lack of QC was on Hasbro's end. They
produced them and their packaging - not 3H.
3H took a lot of flak because three of the Seekers were identical in
colors
to their mass-released counterparts. However,
they were *supposed* to have been produced in metallic hues to
differentiate
them from their "common" toys. Somewhere along the line, Hasbro dropped
the
ball on this for whatever reason, and the result was substantially less
exclusive than what was planned. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Hasbro
*did* catch the mistake (at least with regards to the missing text) but
not
in time to produce all-new sets. Therefore, since 3H had already spent the
money on the PVC set, they probably decided to go ahead and sell them
as-is
rather than cancel them and eat the cost.
-Star Saber
: postmaster@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
provider's address>)
>
|
