The weekend has kicked off in stupendous fashion with a news explosion from the Hasbro event held at New York Toy Fair 2011. If you were there, you knew you were in the right place because Optimus Prime was parked outside, trailer and all. (See above)

Image from Poe Ghostal’s Twitter feed.

I’ve been watching things from a far on my twitter feeds and blogs, so I’m going to do my best to recap all the relevant news and information coming out of the event. Read on after the jump to see all the details!

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This is the main event for the toy industry every year. For weeks now, companies have been blitzing us with reveals and teasers in a PR campaign to gain position in the minds of the public. I’ll be attempting to cover as much news as I can this weekend. This post will be preserved as an index for all Toy Fair related news. As I write and update articles, this post will be updated with a link to each story.

Toy Fair 2011: NECA debuts Gremlins 2, Gears of War, Bioshock, Duke Nukem and more
Toy Fair 2011: Mattel’s DC products; DCUC, Young Justice, JLU, Batman Legacy Line
Toy Fair 2011: Barbie and Ken back together again
Toy Fair 2011: Thundercats from Bandai
Toy Fair 2011: Masters of the Universe Classics (MOTUC)
Toy Fair 2011: Optimus Prime gets a parking ticket
Toy Fair 2011: BifBangPow! teases new Venture Bros. figures and more
Toy Fair 2011: GI Joe SDCC 2011 Exclusive Starscream Skystriker with Cobra Commander
Toy Fair 2011: Hasbro Event Presentation

Pre Toy Fair Announcement and News
Toy Fair 2011: Pre Toy Fair reveals for Hasbro’s Transformers
Toy Fair 2011: Pre Toy Fair Announcement of Walking Dead action figure line
Toy Fair 2011: Bandai press release for upcoming Thundercats products

After polls were taken on many fan message boards over the past week, Dragstrip has come out on top to become the next figure revealed in the exclusive box set for this year’s Botcon. I did not see this coming, but Dragstrip uses the Animated Arcee mold. So yes, Dragstrip is female. The Arcee head in the correct Dragstrip colors looks strangely right.

The Botcon twitter feed also added this quote:

“Think the names funny?One more crack and I’ll DRAG you out in to the street and STRIP you down to your motherboard, one slice at a time!”

  

In a wave of multi-site reveals on Monday, many of the new figures for Transformers Prime debuted along with the next Optimus Prime figure based on the franchise’s forthcoming third movie, Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Clearly capitalizing on the buzz from the premiere of the Transformers 3 trailer during the Super Bowl the day before, Hasbro gave Brian Truitt of USA Weekend the exclusive on the first figure from the Transformers Prime toy line, Arcee. Arcee will be a deluxe figure and should be hitting retail at the beginning of October. This tends to guarantee the summer releases will focus on the movie, but will not be dragged out quite so long as the Revenge of the Fallen line had. (But I’ve been wrong before!)

 

Continue after the jump for many more revelations!
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Here he is, making his fourth Botcon exclusive appearance. Breakdown uses the Animated Rodimus mold with a newly retooled head. I’m hoping we get a G2 version in a souvenir set or attendee exclusive!

  

Looks like I was wrong about Transformers in 3-D. The Botcon website has just revealed the first figure in the 2011 Exclusive Box set. It will be a repainted Animated Jazz as Stunticon Dead End. The theme of the set looks like it will be all five Stunticons in Animated form. Derrick Wyatt, the lead designer on Transformers Animated has assisted greatly with art and design for the site.

  

[UPDATE – Crazy: Looks like I was wrong, go here to see the theme revealed for the Botcon 2011 Exclusive Box Set!]

Question Mark? Well, it hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it sounds like the theme for Botcon 2011 is going to be Transformers in 3-D, a little known story that took place after G1 that involved a team of Autobots led by Ultra Magnus, a team of Decepticons led by Cyclonus, and a team called the Destructons led by Lord Imperious Delirious, possibly the greatest character name in all Transformers fiction aside from Powerglide.

How do we know this? Well, here are the hints we were given on the @Botcon twitter feed:

Just realized SO many stories and/or TF continuities (as a whole) were told in installments/seasons of 3… Well, get ready for Season 3.5!

G1? AEC? Animated? BW? What could it be? All of this contemplating may make you feel like you got hit by a Delirious Fire Attack

Lord Imperious Delirious’s grand attack was called the Delirious Fire Attack. You can read more about him on the TFWiki here. Also Transformers in 3-D was a unfinished comic story from 1988 with three completed chapters. You can read more about that here.

We’ll know for sure once the next issue of the Collector’s Club Magazine starts rolling out to members.

Side note: @Botcon also revealed the 2011 logo, which never has anything to do with the theme of that year’s convention. (See Above)

I’ve written and rewritten this post at least three times today as new developments have surfaced. So lets get the basics down. Wizard magazine and ToyFare magazine are now defunct publications with most of their respective staffs being laid off effective immediately.

A now-former Wizard employee spoke with ifanboy and had some interesting things to say.

A self-aggrandizing press release from Wizard owner Gareb Shamus announced that the company was now a public company, will be launching an online magazine called ‘Wizard World’, and plans to have a 12 city convention tour. There was no mention of the discontinuation of the company’s two major publications.

Those who had subscriptions can expect not to be reimbursed since Mr. Shamus has something of a reputation for non-payment of contract work, and other shady practices.

As someone who had a subscription early in the magazine’s career and has roughly the first 100 issues, its sad to see it go, but I can’t tell you the last time I picked an issue up. It was a shadow of its former self. ToyFare’s end was a low blow for the toy industry as it was one of the few examples of a print publication based on toys that had remained successful and managed to get exclusive reveals of unseen figures.

You can see the press release and statement from Wizard World PR after the jump.

[Via Newsarama]
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