Last weekend Botcon 2013 was held in Austin, Texas. On the whole no major news. Hasbro was on hand to hint at their toy line-up for the next few months and used the panels to to tease future plans like Generations 2014 and 30th Anniversary collection. IDW spoke about their already solicited comics but no major revelations. Hasbro bans 3rd party makers from the convention but that didn't stop a few from showing off their wares. Transformers 4 wasn't covered at all so nothing new to report on the toy front. Hasbro did show off their Beast Hunters line up but as the links below indicate, "repaint" is the norm rather than exception but the Generations line is looking awesome. Below are summaries of info and links to lots of galleries put together by other Transformers sites that were able to attend the convention.

Update: Some TF4 toy news thanks to an interview with Hasbro's Joshua Lamb (starting at 24:05 point) from TF reviewer Vangulus indicates that discussions with Michael Bay on toy design indicates a goal of trying to simplify for faster transformations to try and mimic the movies (and cartoons) where characters transform and "engage to the action fast." The scaling of legion class Beast Hunters to deluxe size is an experiment towards simplification but TF4 toys deluxe are being designed from scratch. The interviews with two Hasbro managers discussing the toys and Hasbro's future approach can be found here.
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