Auto Assembly have announced their first Bot Shot Tournament will take place at this years Auto Assembly event.

"We wanted to do something a little different this year, so as part of our range of games and competitions that will be running throughout the weekend in our re-vamped Games Room, we will be running a Bot Shots Tournament at the convention all weekend! It is open to all attendees and we will be offering prizes at the end of the convention for the top three competitors!" says committee head Simon "Simes" Plumbe.

You can find out the rules and details of how the tournament will work by reading the Auto Assembly 2013 Bot Shot Tournament Details.

Pete Sinclair of the Transformers Collectors Club has dropped by The Allspark to talk about the possibility of recolouring the just-announced Botcon 2013 Machine Wars Hoist figure into Hubcap as well as a G2 inspired Electro.  Pete posted "Friday tidbit for the Allsparkers... We are NOT doing Hubcap AND Electro at BotCon. Nobody gets more than one repaint at the show. IF we offer a repaint of Hoist it will clearly be THAT character."

You can find his original post, as well as the comments from the Allspark forum members here.

Hasbro's Facebook page was updated yesterday with an image of the first Botcon 2013 Machine Wars figure in the guise of Hoist who is a recolour of Transformers Generations Sgt Kup with a new head sculpt.

The official Transformers Collectors' Club have posted several tweets to try to give some clarification regarding the recent "Beast Wars Shattered Glass" comic preview which was posted online.  In the tweets the group stated "Lets clear up some things about the 2013 story BEAST WARS Shattered Glass... The SG Universe is now home to Classics Earth. Along with Classics earth, a few dozen Heroic Autobots and Evil Decepticons now reside in the Shattered Glass Universe. BEAST WARS Shattered Glass takes place in the distant past on Shattered Glass Earth and features the Heroic Maximals led by Ultra Mammoth Fighting against the Evil Predacons. WHO these Preds are will be revealed in Issue 49. The story focuses on the Classics characters. However, with this story taking place ON Shattered Glass Earth, there may be some cool twists..."

Hasbro's Official Transformers Facebook Page has updated with a preview page from the Transformers Collectors' Club Magazine's 2013 comic book.

Issue 49 of The TRANSFORMERS COLLECTORS' CLUB MAGAZINE kicks off the new year in a BIG way with the debut of a NEW team of Maximals led by Ultra Mammoth! The all-new ongoing comic story "Beast Wars Shattered Glass" is featured exclusively in the TCC Magazine. Check out the preview below. And for more information on the TRANSFORMERS COLLECTORS' CLUB be sure to visit http://transformersclub.com/

It would appear that the story takes place after the "A Flash Forward" epilogue comic (part 1 | part 2) - Classics Ultra Magnus, Ironhide, Silverbolt, Prowl, and Grimlock have landed somewhere in the Shattered Glass universe... possibly in the distant past.

Click here to see the preview

Seibertron.com have posted a interview they have held with Botcon Organiser Pete Sinclair regarding the choice for next years convention to have a Machine Wars Theme.

What was the inspiration for a Machine Wars theme?
Pete Sinclair wrote:The inspiration here is a basically a "Machine Wars: Series 2." The 2013 BotCon offerings will work both as a stand alone AND as a continuation of the Machine Wars line. Once people read the fiction fans will see each toy from both series 1 and series 2 work as their own individual character.

Also, even if you did not grow up collecting Machine Wars, this set is going to be very appealing for many reasons and we anticipate that a wide range of collectors' will want to add these toys to their collections. They look really sharp!

You can read the interview in full here.

Following from last week’s announcement of Simon Furman returning to Auto Assembly next August, we can now proudly confirm that Simon’s co-consiprator on Regeneration One, Andrew Wildman, will also be making a return to the convention! As always, Andrew will be on hand to meet fans, sign autographs, sketch and will take to the stage for a Q&A Panel at some point during the weekend!

This will be the tenth anniversary of Simon and Andrew’s first ever appearance at Auto Assembly so we hope you’ll all make them both feel extra special next year!

Auto Assembly have posted the following press release regarding the 2013 Convention exclusive T-Shirts

As well as our convention magazine, comic and postcards that will be forming part of the Auto Assembly 2013 goodie bag, there are going to be several other convention exclusives available to accompany next year’s event! We are proud to be able to announce the first of these today which is the first in a series of t-shirts being produced for us by Big Ds Toy Chest. Featuring several different designs and coming in a range of sizes, they are available now to pre-order and will be available for collection when you arrive at the convention.

If you’re not too sure about ordering in advance, there will be limited quantities available at the convention itself but we’re expecting these to be very popular so we’d strongly recommend you get your orders in sooner rather than later. There will be four different designs in total, all illustrated by Auto Assembly artist Ed Pirrie, and will be just £14.99 each irrespective of the size or t-shirt colour you order.

You can see the first t-shirt featuring  Generation One Bumblebee on the Auto Assembly website

Auto Assembly 2013 Major Updates
 
We've been quiet for a little while here at Auto Assembly. We've spent the last few months trying to recover from Auto Assembly 2012 and making plenty of plans for next year's convention, and taking a look back at some of the things we did this year so we can make 2013 the best convention we have ever organised.
 
Anyway, onto Auto Assembly 2013 and we have some fantastic things lined up for all of you. As you may know, back in August we confirmed our three voice actors who are joining us - Dan Gilvezan (G1 Bumblebee), Neil Kaplan (RiD Prime) and Steve Blum (TF: Prime Starscream), but since then we've been fairly quiet. Until now...
 
Over on our website, we've been busy making a lot of announcements about the convention and this is going to continue for the next few months with something new coming from us every few days!
 
One Day Passes
Until now, we have only been selling full weekend tickets for Auto Assembly 2013, but as of 22nd November 2012 we have now made one day passes available for the convention. However, these are limited so if you are interested, you'll need to book these sooner rather than later!
 
Guests
 
Starting things off are our guests. We deliberately held back on announcing our comic guests for 2013 so we still had guests to announce after our voice actors! Anyway, our first two confirmed comic guests are Simon Furman and James Roberts with more to come over the next few days.
 
Convention Exclusives
 
We've just unveiled the artwork for the first of our convention exclusive postcards for Auto Assembly 2013 and you can find this on our website. It's already been extremely well received and we'll be showing you the artwork for the rest of the cards over the coming months. That's not all though - we have more convention exclusive merchandise that we'll be announcing, starting tomorrow...
 

Full details on all of these stories and many more are on the Auto Assembly website, as well as more news to come over the next few days!
 
Auto Assembly 2013 is Europe's largest EVER Transformers convention and is taking place over the weekend of 9th - 11th August 2013 at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel. To book your tickets, to enquire about dealers tables or sponsorship / advertising opportunities or to find out more including details of all the dealers attending, all of our guests and a full schedule for the weekend, visit the website at www.autoassembly.org.uk
 
If you can't make it to the convention, we'll be offering a Non-Attendee Package early in the new year and running other online activities that you'll be able to get involved with!
 
Hope to see you all next year!
 
The Auto Assembly Team
 
Web: www.autoassembly.org.uk / www.transformersvideogames.co.uk / www.ct-alpha.com
Auto Assembly Europe: www.autoassemblyeurope.eu
Youtube: www.youtube.com/autoassembly
Twitter: 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
 
Calloway Custom Designs - www.shapeways.com/shops/callowaycustomdesigns
Big Ds Toy Chest - www.bigdstoychest.co.uk
Toyz And Gamez - www.toyzandgamez.co.uk
Kapow Toys - www.kapowtoys.co.uk
TF Source - www.tfsource.com
Robot Kingdom - www.robotkingdom.com
Transformers @ The Moon - www.transformertoys.co.uk
TransformersAnimated.com - www.transformersanimated.com
Titan Books - www.titanbooks.com
Big Bad Toy Store - www.bbts.com

The Allspark has a nice advert for some New York Comic Con Kre-O Gi-Joe toys

The New York Comic Con organises have sent out a press releae regarding the door prizes for their sold out convention

Here at New Jersey Collectors Con the focus is on Collecting Action Figures! There are many other options for fans to attend shows but we like to think we present a unique event with the best toy dealers on the East Coast. Because our event is focused on the Toy Collector, we wanted to give back to the fans of our show by releasing the door prize schedule and the Mega Door Prize for the October 7th, 2012 Fall NJCC.

The Transformers SDCC 2012 Fall of Cybertron Bruticus will be this years NJCC 2012 Fall Show Mega Door Prize. One lucky winner will be walking away with this awesome box-set, but the door prizes don't stop there.

The door prize announcements will start at 9AM and conclude at 3:30PM with our last door prize announcement.

• 9AM SDCC 25TH ANNIVERSARY CLASSIC JINX
• 10AM STAR WARS CELEBRATION VI LEGO BOBA FETT LIMITED TO 1000 SETS
• 11AM MARVEL UNIVERSE COMPOUND HULK & MAXIMUM CARNAGE' MINI MUGGS
• 12AM TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES NIGHT SHADOW LEONARDO SDCC EXCLUSIVE
• 1PM SDCC POWER RANGERS FINAL VICTORY SET LIMITED TO 300
• 2PM SDCC 25TH ANNIVERSARY CLASSIC JINX
• 3PM GIJOE vs. TRANSFORMERS SHOCKWAVE H.I.S.S. TANK
• 3:30PM TRANSFORMERS SDCC FALL OF CYBERTRON BRUTICUS GIFT SET

New Jersey Collectors Con Fall Show Date October 7th 2012

Holiday Inn Cherry Hill – New Jersey
2175 West Marlton Pike (Rt. 70), Cherry Hill, NJ 08002
Sunday, October 7th, 2012


The NJCC 2012 Dealer Room is 100% sold out!

The e-HOBBY + TFCC Collaboration Shattered Glass Soundwave VS Blaster set is up for pre-order from the Transformers Collectors Club now.

e-HOBBY has also posted a packaging sample image of the toys.

On a related note, the Transformers Collectors Club has clarified a few things via their Twitter account regarding the release of this set: The EHobby is not build to order BUT we can order as many as we want. Confused? To clarify, our order has to be in BEFORE the Pre-order period is up on our end. So we could technically run out as we are not going to go heavy on these. We will do a guesstimate based on the first couple weeks of sales. We won't go overboard and cut it way short as we know many will wait till that last week. But we dont want to be way heavy either. So when you are able to, please get your order in.

Auto Assembly 2012 Marlboor Kitbash Workshop Video Released

All of us here at Auto Assembly are still recovering from Auto Assembly 2012 which was our most successful convention ever attracting just under 800 fans from all over the world to Birmingham reinforcing our position as Europe's largest Transformers convention.

A few months ago, when we announced our partnership with Calloway Customs to bring all of our attendees (and those who ordered our Non-Attendee Pack) our Marlboor upgrade kit for Generations Wheeljack to convert the toy into an updated version of Diaclone Marlboor we were shocked and pleased with the response to it and promised that we would release the footage from the accompanying workshop for those who couldn't make it.

Well now everyone can see exactly what you need to do with the kit in this specially recorded workshop hosted by Sid Beckett and Nick Calloway that was filmed exclusively for our Youtube Channel during the convention weekend!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kxOWlQu6jw

We can also exclusively reveal that we are looking into plans for a follow-up custom kit and workshop for Auto Assembly 2013 with Calloway Customs! It's still in the early planning stages right now but to be a part of this workshop book your tickets for next year's convention early to avoid disappointment. Tickets are selling at a phenomenal rate and it looks already as if Auto Assembly 2013 will be our first ever sell-out event! We will be doing another Non-Attendee Pack for those of you who can't make it, but this won't be unveiled until some time next year.

For those of you thinking about attending Auto Assembly 2013, our guests of honour next year are Steve Blum (Starscream in Transformers: Prime), Dan Gilvezan (Bumblebee in G1) and Neil Kaplan (Optimus Prime in Robots In Disguise). Further guests including details of our comic guest line-up, will be announced shortly.

Auto Assembly 2013 is Europe's largest EVER Transformers convention and is taking place over the weekend of 9th - 11th August 2013 at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel. To book your tickets or find out more including details of all the dealers attending, all of our guests and a full schedule for the weekend, visit the website at http://www.autoassembly.org.uk

If you can't make it to the convention, we'll be offering a Non-Attendee Package early in the new year and running other online activities that you'll be able to get involved with!

Hope to see you all next year!

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

Calloway Custom Designs - http://www.shapeways.com/shops/callowaycustomdesigns
Big Ds Toy Chest - http://www.bigdstoychest.co.uk
Toyz And Gamez - http://www.toyzandgamez.co.uk
Kapow Toys - http://www.kapowtoys.co.uk
TF Source - http://www.tfsource.com
Robot Kingdom - http://www.robotkingdom.com
Transformers @ The Moon - http://www.transformertoys.co.uk
TransformersAnimated.com - http://www.transformersanimated.com
Titan Books - http://www.titanbooks.com
Big Bad Toy Store - http://www.bbts.com

The Transformers Collectors Club have been focusing on Ultra Mammoth today, one of the Subscription Service Transformers toys.

They released a nice piece of art work on Facebook and shown off a testshot of the figure as well (on Twitter).

As we are still in post-Auto Assembly 2012 recovery mode, many of our team are trying to get some rest after this year’s convention although we are making some preliminary plans for Auto Assembly 2013. As such we haven’t started sending out any of the confirmation emails yet for those of you who have booked tickets for Auto Assembly 2013. Rest assured that these will be going out shortly, but we are in the process of wrapping up all of the final paperwork for Auto Assembly 2012 first as well including the despatach of all of out Non-Attendee Packs.

So if you’ve ordered tickets, booked dealers tables, purchased one of our Passes For Life, or qualified for complimentary passes through volunteering for Auto Assembly 2012, then check your inboxes over the next few weeks as we’re hoping to get confirmation emails sent out by the first week of September by which point we’ll be start work properly on Auto Assembly 2013… and making the first announcements regarding the rest of next year’s guests!