We've had word from Simes regarding the lastest two guests who will be appearing at the 2009 Auto Assembly convention in Birmingham, England.

The two guests are both UK G1 Comic related in the forms of Lee Sullivan and Mike Collins.

Our new hotel block is online at BotCon.com.  You can now make reservations at the Pasadena Hilton for both double and King rooms.  Our special rate is $141 a night and the hotel is 2.5 blocks from the Pasadena Convention Center (about a 5-8 minute walk).

Go to BotCon.com for the reservation link but don't wait!  This hotel could sell out just like the Sheraton did!

More information coming in the next several weeks concerning packages, tours, admission, dealer booths and more!

Brian

"For one young Autobot..." is all we have revealed so far. While we tend to guard the convention sets and souvenirs closely, I want to let you know that we are very excited about what we have waiting in the wings!

The set we have planned features a select team of Autobots never before featured in G1 in this way. The timeline we are spotlighting is new, yet very familiar...

That's the news posted by Brian Savage, the main man at Fun Publications (the group behind BotCon and the Transformers Collectors Club).

We are pleased to announced that bookings are now OPEN for Auto Assembly 2009, Europe's largest Transformers convention! Taking place over the weekend of 15th-16th August 2009 in Birmingham, England, Auto Assembly is set to be bigger and better than ever! This time it is going to be a packed weekend celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Transformers filled with activities, dealers, guests and so much much!

The convention will be held on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th August 2009, with a bonus mini programme of activities on the evening of Friday 14th August for those who book for the full weekend. Because we expect the convention to be a complete sell-ouy, initially only weekend passes will be available, but single day tickets will be on sale closer to the convention should spaces still be left. There will be an extra special programme of activities running on Saturday evening until the early hours of Sunday, which will include a party and a live script reading featuring our TWO voice actors as well as other activities, but these will be EXCLUSIVE to weekend attendees!

The convention will be held at the Holiday Inn Birmingham City Centre, which is on Smallbrook Queensway, Birmingham, right in the heart of Birmingham City Centre, England. It is an ideal location for anyone travelling to Birmingham from anywhere in the UK and is just 2 minutes walk from Birmingham New Street Station!

As many of you will know, We have run a number of surveys to find out exactly what you want from Auto Assembly 2009 and we will be tailoring the activities and events to suit YOU the attendees. There will be so much going on that you won't have time to rest - from guest talks to video screenings, workshops to toy and art displays, dealers and competitions, a charity auction and games area, quizzes and much more besides. And for the first time ever at Auto Assembly, TWO voice actors!

We already have our first EIGHT guests confirmed - TF artists Andrew Wildman making his sixth appearance at Auto Assembly, Simon Williams, John McCrea, Staz Johnson, and colourists Jason Cardy, Kat Nicholson and Liam Shalloo. Finally is our first guest of honour, Ian James Corlett, the voice of Cheetor from Beast Wars and Beast Machines. More guests will be announced soon along with our second voice actor!

Ticket prices for the weekend are just £45 for adults and £35 for concessions with under 5s being FREE. However, ticket prices are being reduced to just £40 and £30 for a limited period until 31st March 2009 as a thankyou for those of you who register early. We will also be offering reduced rates for families (2 adults and 2 children) with early discounts again.

We have also managed to negotiate for reduced accommodation rates in the Holiday Inn hotel for their superb bedrooms and details of these will be posted on the website and sent out to all of you with confirmations of your bookings along with details of a few extra surprises we will be sending to all of you!

We've also got one of our usual goodie bags and we believe that 2009 will see this being our best yet with no less than six gifts being confirmed already including DVDs, keyrings, postcards, stickers and more! As always, the earlier you book the more goodies you will get and the DVDs will be limited to the first 49 pre-registrants so if you want these you will need to hurry!

Finally, we're also looking at ways of improving our pre-registration system to make things smoother and faster than ever for all of you attending including the return of the fast-track quick check-in from Auto Assembly 2008 and email booking confirmations that will be sent out within a few days for all pre-registrants.

Anyway, bookings are open NOW through the Auto Assembly website and postal bookings will be open shortly so check out the website now for all the latest news and developments. We hope to see all of you there for what we think will be the biggest and best Auto Assembly ever!

Simon and Sven
Auto Assembly

web: www.autoassembly.org.uk
forum: http://autoassembly.proboards7.com
email: autoassembly@aol.com
tel: +44 (0)7804 951406

Fun Publications have sent out an email as well as updating the Botcon website with details of the first hotel for BotCon 2009, confirming that it is the Sheraton Pasadena Hotel. Many people, including ourselves, had already worked out where the hotel would be (due to previous conventions in the area), with several fans already having made their reservations.  Several types of rooms have already sold out so make sure you check that they have the room type of your choice before confirming any orders.

"We are excited to officially announce that you can now make your reservations for BotCon '09 online.
To make your hotel reservations, go to BotCon.com and follow the link to the Sheraton Pasadena Hotel.
BotCon '09 will be at the new Pasadena Convention Center.  The Sheraton is attached to the center.  Hotel rooms will go very quickly and they have a limited number of rooms with double beds so next week we will have a second hotel block available at a near by property that has additional double bed rooms.
We will send out another update after we receive the electronic reservation link.
It will be several weeks before we have the registration forms available so keep checking BotCon.com for future updates!
Thanks and see you there!"

Fun Publications have sent out a notification confirming the dates and location of BotCon 2009,in Pasadena, California from 28th May to 31st May 2009.

##Santa just announced the location of BotCon 2009##
BotCon 2009 will be in Pasadena, CA May 28th-31st!
We are working on some very special surprises as we know all of you are on the GOOD LIST!
Hotel and venue information will follow in a few short days!

Although there has been no official word on the event, other than the date, it is assumed that a showing of the second Live Action Transformers movie, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, will take place.

According to the latest issue of the Transformers Club Magazine, three of the Botcon exclusive figures for the 2009 convention will have remolded heads.

Rumours are ripe regarding which toys will be used for the convention, which takes place in the 25th Anniversary year, and around the time of the released of the second live action Transformers film.

The first voice actor guest has been announced for Auto Assembly 2009 as has been announced as Ian James Corlett, who voiced Cheetor in both Beast Wars and Beast Machines.  Auto Assembly 2009 will take place over two days and will have two voice actors as guests for the first time in its history.

We are pleased to announced that Auto Assembly 2009 is coming! Europe's largest Transformers convention is back for 2009 and it is going to be bigger and better than ever! This time it is going to be a two-day convention allowing us to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Transformers in style and will be a weekend packed with activities, dealers, guests and so much much!

The convention will be held on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th August 2009, with a bonus mini programme of activities on the evening of Friday 14th August for those who book for the full weekend. Initially only weekend passes will be available, but single day tickets will be on sale closer to the convention should spaces still be available. There will be an extra special programme of activities running on Saturday evening until the early hours of Sunday, but these will be exclusive to weekend attendees!

The convention will be held at our new venue, The Holiday Inn Birmingham City Centre, which is on Smallbrook Queensway, Birmingham, right in the heart of Birmingham City Centre, England. It is an ideal location for anyone travelling to Birmingham from anywhere in the UK and is just 2 minutes walk from Birmingham New Street Station!

We have run a number of surveys to find out exactly what you want from Auto Assembly 2009 and we will be tailoring the activities and events to suit YOU the attendees. There will be so much going on that you won't have time to rest - from guest talks to video screenings, workshops to toy and art displays, dealers and competitions, a charity auction and games area, quizzes and much more besides. And for the first time ever at Auto Assembly, a live script reading from Transformers voice actors! Talking of voice actors, we will be having not one but TWO voice actors joining us at Auto Assembly 2009 to join in the celebrations!

We already have our first three guests confirmed - first up is legendary TF artist Andrew Wildman making his sixth appearance at Auto Assembly, secondly is IDW and Titan colourist Liam Shalloo, and third we have John McCrea whose Transformers work includes Titan Magazines Transformers and Transformers Animated titles. We will be announcing more over the next few days. We are also in the final stages of discussions with our first voice actor and hope to announce them in the next 7 days and the second actor in the next few weeks!

Ticket prices will be £45 for adults and £35 for concessions with reductions to just £40 and £30 for a limited period once bookings open for early registrations! We have also managed to negotiate for reduced accommodation rates in the Holiday Inn hotel for their superb bedrooms and these will be posted on the website.

We are also working our traditional goodie bag of free gifts for attendees and this is going to be our most spectacular yet. As always, there will be more gifts the earlier you register but this will include keyrings, postcards, DVDs (for the first 40+) and much more!! There will also be added bonuses for pre-registrants and if that wasn't enough, we are also looking at ways of improving our pre-registration system to make things smoother and faster than ever for all of you attending.

Bookings will open soon so keep an eye on the Auto Assembly website and all the usual Transformers websites and forums for all the latest news and developments as we have them.

We hope to see many of you there next year for what we think will be the biggest and best Auto Assembly ever!

Simon and Sven
Auto Assembly

web: www.autoassembly.org.uk
forum: http://autoassembly.proboards7.com
email: autoassembly@aol.com
tel: +44 (0)7860 948296

New member MDVerde posted a message on our the board last night to inform us about their new convention Ticobot 2008.

This is the first transformers convention in Costa Rica.

More details can be found: http://www.transformertoys.co.uk/discussion/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=758

Seibertron.com are reporting that the highly-anticipated Transformers Club exclusive Seacon sets are finally arriving. The figures had originally been announced as a Wal-Mart exclusive for original Transformers Universe line in August 2004, during the Official Transformers Collectors' Club Convention, but the set had been shelved due to lack of retailer interest and its fate had been uncertain for years.  Some fans, such as Minon from our own message board, were fortunate enough to pick up the figures and now thnaks to the TFCC more Transformers fans are able to do so.

We had an incredible response to our first survey about Auto Assembly 2009 and it's allowed us to make a lot of key decisions for next year's Auto Assembly convention to help us make it the biggest and best Transformers convention EVER that Europe will ever see. Thanks to YOUR input, we can confirm that Auto Assembly 2009 will be a TWO-DAY Transformers-only convention to be held once again in Birmingham, England, this time in our new venue, the Holiday Inn right in the City Centre.

We are still working on the exact date but we have a lot of exciting plans for the weekend including not one but TWO voice actors and a packed weekend of activities with so much going on that you won't have much free time during the weekend and plenty of different acitivies and events each day. Full weekend passes will be available as well as the option to book for single days but once again, we want to make sure that the convention is tailored to fit what YOU all want. So we're running another more detailed survey...

This time we want to know exactly what you want to see during the weekend. It's your chance to influence the programme during the weekend - what the focus of the convention will be, what events and activities we will have and even the type of things you want to see from our dealers!! 2009 is the 25th Anniversary of Transformers so lets celebrate in style!

Even if you haven't attended Auto Assembly before we still want to hear your views, and we'd love to hear from those of you who live outside of the UK who are considering attending in the 25th anniversary year next year. Don't forget that EVERY vote counts in this survey!

We will be taking all of your responses into consideration in planning for next year, as well as all of the additional comments you may make and we've already had some wonderful ideas come forward and some VERY useful comments that we will be taking on board for next time so those of you who have already responded have started to shape Auto Assembly 2009!

You can find the survey here:- http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=JMiLvctC4MVPjXfk8alHMQ_3d_3d

The survey is only going to be open for a limited period of time as we want to confirm the date and first voice actor as soon as possible (we have one close to signing on the dotted line already!) and open bookings quickly so the closing date is Wednesday 15th October 2008.

Thanks in advance and we hope to see many of you there next year!

Simon and Sven
Auto Assembly

web: www.autoassembly.org.uk
forum: http://autoassembly.proboards7.com
email: autoassembly@aol.com
tel: +44 (0)7860 948296

Auto Assembly 2009 Questionnaire Deadline Approaches

The guys behind AA have sent over the following release regarding the AA2009 questionnaire

"We've had a fantastic response to the paper and online surveys we've been running for Auto Assembly 2009 to help us make next year's Auto Assembly convention the biggest and best Transformers convention EVER that Europe has ever seen, but if you haven't already completed the survey, you've still got time! The closing date for the survey is the end of September 2008 and everyone who completes the survey and gives us their details will be entered into a FREE draw to win a family ticket to Auto Assembly 2009!!

Even if you didn't attend Auto Assembly 2008 - or even if you've never attended an Auto Assembly event before - we still want to hear your views, and we'd love to hear from those of you who live outside of the UK who are considering attending in the 25th anniversary year next year. Don't forget that EVERY vote counts in this survey!

We will be taking all of your responses into consideration in planning for next year, as well as all of the additional comments you may make and we've already had some wonderful ideas come forward and some VERY useful comments that we will be taking on board for next time so those of you who have already responded have started to shape Auto Assembly 2009!

You can find the survey here:-

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DkIO_2b1E485TJD6KbOum8Mg_3d_3d

Once the survey closes, we'll publish the results and produce a follow-up survey to go into more detail about the convention itself based on the decisions we reach and find out EXACTLY what you want from the convention!

Thanks in advance and we hope to see many of you there next year!

Simon and Sven
Auto Assembly

web: www.autoassembly.org.uk
forum: http://autoassembly.proboards7.com
email: autoassembly@aol.com
tel: +44 (0)7860 948296