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BOTCON '99 SNEAK PREVIEW:
1) HASBRO REP:

At BotCon '99, all of the special guests arrived for a introduction Friday night. He was very friendly. The fans were allowed to talk to the guests that night. I wandered around but was drawn to the very open, very enthusiastic Hasbro Rep. He answered the fan questions quite well (regarding the toys and the cartoon). Most importantly, he told us about the philosophy of Beast Machines.

2) CARTOON:

I was one of the fortunate many who got to see the debut of Beast Machines.
The first episode, "The Reformatting", was shown to the fans at BotCon '99 (July).
There have been plenty of spoilers and plot synopses of this so I won't tire you with the details. BWT, no photography was allowed at the preview.

Also, Beast Machines episodes 1 and 2 were shown at the San Diego Comic Con in August.

I'll inject no spoilers here.

I was amazed at the quality of the animation. The shadows and explosions were several steps ahead of Beast Wars. The shadows round out the characters well. Also, for the plot of the episode, shadows really enforce the mood of the events. Explosions were much more than puffs of smoke and flash of light. They were orange and red billows with smoke trails shooting off in different directions. I really enjoyed the music as well. While Beast Wars used a "jungle beat" and woodwinds, Beast Machines uses upbeat techno. Hey, fromt he jungle of primitive earth to the cities of Cybertron -- makes sense, huh.

3) TOYS:

Again, no pictures were allowed.
That Hasbro Rep delivers again. he pulled out a stand with two deluxe toy prototypes: Cheetor and the Vehicon Tank General (Clan Leader as he kept calling him).
Very impressive! These two were excellent. The Tankorr actually has legs. He was in a full standing position, not the rolling robot version seen on the show (so far).

FOX KID'S:
1) MAGAZINE:

The latest Fox Kid's magazine had some pics. [ now offline ]
No new pictures really. They're pics already released months ago by Mainframe.

PREVIEW MUSIC VIDEO:

2) August 14, 1999, Fox aired their Beast Machines music video. I really appreciate them for doing this, BTW. It contained footage from BMacs eps 1 and 2.
The TF Archive has a great quality, 18 Meg MPG of the video (the sound mainly comes from the left).
Rockman's site has an excellent MP3 of the music. He also has links to video versions more "download friendly".

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©1999 Mark Wong