Бо́тКон: Ежего́дный Фестива́ль Фана́тов Трансфо́рмеров

Annual convention

BotCon, briefly known as "The Official Transformers Collectors' Convention" (or OTFCC), is an annual convention for Transformers fans and collectors. BotCon has been held annually since 1994. BotCon is a syllabic abbreviation for "Robot Convention" but also refers to "Autobot" and "Decepticon", the protagonist and antagonist robot factions in the many continuities in the Transformers franchise. Featured BotCon guests are usually involved in the creation of Transformers media in some respect, whether as voice actors from the animated series, artists or writers from the comic books, or actual Hasbro employees. Fun Publications has held the convention for a number of years, with 2016 being its final year. It was replaced by the now defunct HasCon, Hasbro's own convention, in 2017.

At the 2010 BotCon, Hasbro introduced a "Hall of Fame" awards ceremony to commemorate the people and characters of the franchise. Hasbro selected the first four robot inductees, while fans worldwide voted for the fifth. In the end, Dinobot from Beast Wars: Transformers won the votes. Among the human inductees were Bob Budiansky for helping create the franchise through comics and personality profiles, Peter Cullen for giving Optimus Prime his voice, and Hideaki Yoke and Kohjin Ohno of Takara Tomy for creating many of the franchise's toys. For 2011, Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay were inducted for the success of the Transformers live action film franchise. In 2012, the first posthumous award was given to voice actor Chris Latta, who died in 1994. Wheeljack, one of the characters he voiced in the original series, was selected as the Fan's Choice recipient.

One of BotCon's most popular features is the exclusive toys made available to the attendees. The toys are different every year and are not retailed anywhere in the world. The number of exclusive toys increased significantly in 2005 after Fun Publications became the official license holder of the convention. The identities and designs of the toys were originally kept a close secret until the opening of the convention, but in the later years of the convention the organizers often chose to reveal one or more of the exclusives ahead of time due to repeated problems with stolen prototypes being sold on eBay. In 2008, organizer Brian Savage ordered all eBay users selling these prototypes to return them to their rightful owners. Although the toys are always unique, financial costs prohibit the creation of entirely new molds. As such, the toys are redecos or repaints of previously used toys given new identities, occasionally switching allegiances and even gender. Beginning in 2003, some of the exclusives were given new, retooled heads to further differentiate the new characters from previous uses of a mold. As the number of exclusives offered at each convention grew, so did the number of retooled parts. Since then, it has been standard practice to produce three or four newly tooled heads (or other parts such as wings in the case of 2007) for each BotCon. After the convention, exclusive toys usually become valuable collector's items in the community, particularly among fans who missed the convention. The Transformers Collector's Club also releases exclusive figures, which are also remolds and repaints of regular Transformers figures.