Buster Jones, the voice of G1 Blaster, has been announced as the latest guest for BotCon 2012.

BotCon: Look out and shout... See who our next BotCon guest is here: http://t.co/6kRPrh7N

Planet Iacon have posted some colour images of Knight Morpher Cyclops on Facebook.

We're back to playing catch up again with out Beast Wars II cartoon gallery update (due to no internet at the new house) so here'd a quick look at the two of the four galleries I put live on Friday, but didnt' get any time to tell you about.

Beast Wars II Episode 18 - The Black Lio Convoy

The Destrons stumble across an old artefact which can duplicate any object that it scans in the ruins of an ancient city on Planet Gaia.  Galvatron decides to use the device to clone his arm, creating a Black and Grey duplicate of BB - only to find that the clones are uncontrollable, believing themselves to the the original.  This gives the Destron Lord of Destructin an idea .. he'll trick the Cybertron's into using the device on themselves, to that their duplicates can take out Lio Convoy and his troops.

As expected it's poor old Tasmania Kid who finds the device and takes it back to base.  After first clonning a Manga that Scuba is reading the device is used on Lio Convoy creating a dark duplicte, Black Lio Convoy.

Having only seen a few pictures from this episode previously what then suprised me was that the other Cybertron's were also cloned into Black Versions .... the suprise of this to me is that toys were not made of these.  A Black Big Horn (Grey), Apache, Scuba and Tasmania Kid are also produced.   Only Scuba is not cloned, allowing him to defeat the evil clones.  This episode if also very similar to an A-Team episode when some imposters pretend to be the Heroes for Hire, with Murdock not being "copied".

Beast Wars II Epiosde 19 - The Space Pirate Seacons

This episode sees the Space Pirate Seacons, lead by Halfshell, arrive on Planet Gaia looking for Anglomois energy.

Stay tuned for the other two a little later today

We have found some new Transformers related trademarks filed with the USPTO by Hasbro Inc. The trademarks are:

1. SPARKPLUG
2. SCORPONOK
3. OMEGA SENTINEL
4. VECTOR PRIME
5. WING SABER
6. SCATTORSHOT
7. NEMESIS STRIKA
8. BLIGHT
9. KICKBACK
10. AUTOBOT HOUND
11. BOT SHOTS
12. KRE-O TRANSFORMERS

You can view all of the details of these and other trademarks within our exclusive Trademark Application area of the website which features trademark applications from 1984 through until the present day.

We thought we would catch up with some of the behind the scenes concept artwork from Transformers Prime that was posted by Jose Lopez and Vince Toyama during March.  last week, Jose posted a picture of the redesigned head for Unicron that he was asked to produce for the series.

Earlier in March, Vince Toyama posted some early production designs for the first series of the show:

Jim Sorenson has updated his blog, Disciples of Boltax, with a report on Roll Out Roll Call 2012 which took place in Southhampton here in the UK over the weekend of the 10th and the 11th.  We had the pleasure of meeting up with Jim and Bill before the show and taking them on a bit of a tour as we drove down to the show, but it's a great insight to read a report on any show from the perspective of one of the guests.  You can read it here.

Thanks go to Neurie for pointing out that The Entertainer has Transformers BotShots Launchers and Rescuebots

@transformertoys not sure if it's new news but entertainer now have the Bot Shot launchers and rescue bots twitter.com/Neurie_/status…

Jeff Anderson Confirmed As Latest Auto Assembly 2012 Guest

Hot on the heels of announcing the return of Nick Roche to Auto Assembly, we are proud to announce another comic guest for Auto Assembly 2012...

We will be joined by comic artist Jeff Anderson who will be known to Transformers fans for his extensive work on the Marvel UK comics. Fans have asked us for several years to bring Jeff to Auto Assembly and he will be making his debut at the convention this year.

In addition to Transformers, he has also worked on Death’s Head, Knights of Pendragon, Mys-tech Wars, the graphic novels The Shadow's Edge and The Cutting Edge and an adaptation of The Bible. For more information on Jeff and his work, please visit his website at: http://www.jeffandersonillustrator.co.uk/

For more details on Auto Assembly 2012 which is taking place over the weekend of 3rd - 5th August 2012 in Birmingham, England or to book your tickets or find out information about booking dealers tables, visit the website at http://www.autoassembly.org.uk and for all the latest news on Auto Assembly Europe, visit http://www.autoassemblyeurope.eu

The Auto Assembly Team

Web: http://www.autoassembly.org.uk / http://www.transformersvideogames.co.uk / http://www.ct-alpha.com
Auto Assembly Europe: http://www.autoassemblyeurope.eu
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/autoassembly
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/auto_assembly
Forum: http://www.autoassembly.org.uk/forum
Email: contact@autoassembly.org.uk
Tel: +44 (0)7860 948296

Auto Assembly is sponsored by

Toyz And Gamez - http://www.toyzandgamez.co.uk
Transformers @ The Moon - http://www.transformertoys.co.uk
TransformersAnimated.com - http://www.transformersanimated.com
TheTransformers.net - http://www.thetransformers.net
Titan Books - http://www.titanbooks.com
3 Darths Comics - http://www.3darthscomics.co.uk
Science Fiction Collectables - http://www.sf-collectables.co.uk
Big Bad Toy Store - http://www.bbts.com
Xyber Toys - http://www.xybertoys.com

TFW2005 member Syydney has translated an interview with Transformers Prime Arm Micron creater Takashi Nakase in which he states the Targetmaster enspired toys will appear in the end credits for Transformers Prime in Japan.

The reason behind Japan only "Arms Micron" -
Takashi Nakase: The biggest reason is that we wanted to raise the target age group. In past series, the target ages were small children and their fathers, but the age group which is actually able to enjoy transforming toys is 7 ~ 9 years old. We went back to the beginning and considered appropriate products for that age group, and came up with the concept of "customising". That is why Arms Microns need to be assembled from parts, and stickers are included to be put on the main figure - to give the feeling of "completing" the toy as one's own.
Hironori Kobayashi: We conducted a play session with children where they played freely with Movie series Transformers, mixed with various items such as Minicons, and found that they mostly enjoyed combining Minicons to make larger weapons or to customise the Transformers. We thought it might have some potential.

There will be short flash animation, "Arms Micron" episodes added after the main "Prime" episodes. About their background -

Kobayashi: We considered their background story from an early stage as we thought the existance of the Microns required an explanation. There were some ideas, and we decided to go with a story that (the Microns) were originally Energon present on Earth, and they adopted the forms of Transformers. In the story, the Transformers in the show ("Prime") are not even aware that their weapons are in fact Microns.

Mr.Nakase also developed an iPhone application (not available outside Japan) -
"there are many adult TF fans, and I created it for them so that they can enjoy transformation without having the actual toys in hand. It is a simple game but rather exciting. If you have an iPhone, please download it and try it. It is free."

Final words -
Kobayashi: I know long time fans are surprised at the way we are marketing "Prime" domestically. There are some dramatic changes. We feel this is a challenge which we have to take on in order to continue the Transformers brand in the future. This is a challenging year for us - please kindly watch over us.

Gamespot has published the official trailer for Transformers Fall of Cybertron

Full Metal Hero have reported that the upccoming Transformers Prime "Robots in Disguise" Voyager Wave 3 Skyquake  has been replaced by Dreadwing.

The new case breakdown is as follows:

• 1x Optimus Prime
• 1x Bulkhead
• 1x Megatron
• 1x Dreadwing

Korean Pop group Big Bang have uploaded the full version of the Japanese Transformers Prime opening song titled "Feeling" from their album Alive. This hip hop grounded track borders electronica with a heavy western/house influence. The entire album is available on iTunes Japan, which you can view by clicking here.

Here is the latest update on the credit card security investigation. from Fun Publications

The firm we have hired to analyze our former ecommerce server and software has preliminarily determined that we did incur a SQL injection code attack sometime before Christmas. Our ISP did have a commercial product installed that was supposed to defeat these types of attacks, but apparently it failed.

This allowed the hackers access to our order information. While it is still unknown exactly what data they were able to harvest (investigation continues) we need to assume that they were able to extract all of our order information. The security firm thinks that this attack has allowed the hackers to come back periodically and harvest more information. However, once the old server was taken out of service (around February 21st) there was nothing left for them to access.

Once this information was stolen, (no matter if it was back before Christmas) there is no time frame as to when the thieves may sell or try to use the information to purport credit card theft.

What does this mean to me?

We are asking again that anyone who has used a credit card in our old online systems in the past year (NOT THE NEW STORE) to get your card replaced immediately. If you have done this already, there is no action required on your part.

We apologize for the inconvenience, we know this whole thing is a pain, but it is better to replace the cards than have to deal with any issues that may result from this theft of data. Even though the amount of fraud has greatly declined, we are still receiving a customer report every few days of someone else (who hasn’t replaced their cards) getting hit. We strongly encourage you to take this step immediately if you have not done so already. Again, this DOES NOT pertain to any cards that have been used in the new store.

What is the plan?

We are still working on all of the issues and are several weeks away from a final resolution. Our new store is currently offline while we complete the entries and audit the data from the renewals we received last week. Just to reiterate, this new store is a totally different piece of software, at a totally different hosting site. There are hundreds of other retailers using this same software as it is hosted by the software creators.

We hope to have the store online and registration system back online sometime next week. When the store comes back online, we will be adding products slowly so it will take some time to have everything back in the store.

Thank you for your patience and support during this trying issue.

Brian

Maketoys have annouced they will be producing a Computroin based combiner toy.  This annoucement comes shortly after the concept images from TF Club's Technobot and Terrorcon concepts.

Planet Iacon once again broke the 3rd party news on Facebook

Full Metal Hero have posted up colour images of Maketoy Giant, the latest 3rd party Devastator, this one based on the yellow Generation Two and European Exclusive figures.