Unfortunately, I can only attend Day 1 of HASCON. This is the Hasbro Convention in Rhode Island. I was given a press/influencer pass for the weekend to attend and today was the only day I could do. But I made a pretty full day out of the hours I could be there.

I headed down to the convention around 8am. I got there very quickly, parked at the mall and walked over. I went to the main entrance of the Dunkin Donuts center and waited for the doors to open at 10am. Doors only opened at 10am for VIPs and Press. I was press but wasn’t given clear directions as to where to enter. I asked a very helpful person who told me where to go and I headed over to the correct entrance. While I was standing around waiting there were people who came out and did temp tattoos. I got an Autobot symbol on my left inner forearm and a Decepticon symbol on my right inner forearm.

I also met some guys from a New England Transformers toy collecting group. We chatted for a while and that made the waiting much better.

When I did get into the convention I went right to the Transformers corner. I was going to do an interview at 11:15 and so I wanted to stick close. I met a bunch of nice people int he Transformers booth. They were all employees of Hasbro and they were super nice. I talked to as many as I could and asked them all about working with the Transformers brand. My jealousy over such a dream job must have been bubbling over. The display was a good one. I liked what I saw.

This Generations line display was amazing, I was taking way more video today than stills and I will have a video up soon. I had no time to actually make one today.

There were tons of things in the booth, they had the Transformers movies playing and also a ton of toys on display but then there were vehicles from the movies and a giant Optimus Prime from Robots in Disguise. It was pretty cool for any Transformers fan. But that was just a small portion of the whole day and the whole display.

My interview time got pushed so I went over and watched the Transformers toy panel. The man I was going to interview was one of the guys on the panel. I watched that until it was time for questions and hustled back over to the convention center. The two coolest things from the panel were the reveal of this new Optimus Prime figure that I really want to get and also the new Dinobots figures that will combine to form a new character called Volcanicus. Awesome!!!

I went back over to the convention center and there I got to interview John Warden the Design Manager for Transformers. We are of the same generation, generation 1. This guy has been able to live out so many Transformers Fan’s dreams. It was really awesome to talk with him, too. He recently worked on the design for Trypticon and now Trypticon can eat headmasters! Crazy!

My interview with John was at 1pm. So, there were a few things that happened in between the Transformers Toy panel and meeting John. I’m just really partial to Transformers so that was my big focus. Okay, one last Transformers thing before I get into other things.

In 2007 the first Transformers movie came out and I went to Botcon in Providence. I just looked way back in my blog archives and found the post of my visit to Botcon 2007. If you click through then you will see a photo fo me with Optimus Prime, just like I took today. It is funny, I ran into Amy Pontes from Light Rock 105 and I hadn’t see her in person in 10 years. She told me that I had lost weight, looking at that photo, I believe that I did. On my old posts the Photos are super tiny. You can click on them to see bigger ones on Flickr.

There were many other Hasbro properties to see. I went to the MArvel Legends area, Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons as well as Magic the Gathering. Did you know that I have never played Magic the Gathering before today? I also never played Dungeons and Dragons in my life. I did get to learn how to play Magic and it was fun. I came home with two decks and an eagerness to teach Eva how to play. While I was at the Dungeons and Dragons booth I ran into one of the PR reps that I already work with on other products, shes’s going to get me into Dungeons and Dragons, too. I’m excited about that.

I also walked around the Nerf area and there were some amazing new products. I got to try out things like The Judge. That was one huge blaster that shot out 3 darts at a time 10 times before reloading!

In the MArvel section I noticed that there were some DEadpool themed Nerf blasters. When I got to the Nerf section I learned that these were for an upcoming set that will be exclusive to Gamestop. They look great.

The last thing that I did was go upstairs and take a look around. There was a huge gaming area and people were playing Magic and more. I wasn’t interested in playing. I wanted to get home and process the video that I had made today. As I walked out the door I noticed the table for Stan Bush. He sings the songs from the original 1986 Transformers The Movie! I told him how much his song, The Touch meant to me. I always tear up at that song. I started to tear up while talking with Stan. He was gracious enough to take a photo with me.

If you are interested in what was going on with Transformers in 2017 then check out my old posts where I got to hang out with the IDW crew. These guys had just started with the Transformers brand and now they do everything Hasbro and it is amazing. Day 1 of Botcon 2007 was cool, too. I got some fun swag from that event.

I am working on a video. I took way more video than still shots today and had to process all of it on my laptop at home. It should all be done by the time I get home so I can put something together for tomorrow, I hope.