After 2 years of pandemic pain, it was time for the long awaited return to a proper real life summer Transformers convention with TFcon Toronto 2022, which happened July  8-10. The virtual conventions were fun when we couldn’t go out, and the December TFcon was welcomed (though it occurs to me now that I did write much about that one except a post on my Tumblr to talk about the toys I bought),  but this was more like it! Great guests, lots of stuff to see and do, and of course, plenty of stuff to buy. I’m so glad that I got to experience it, and that I got to contribute again.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t completely without issue, as this weekend happened to coincide with the gigantic Canadian Internet outage! Luckily, things still went incredibly smoothly all things considered as far as registration and administration with the convention and the hotel. But not having Internet access for much of the weekend sometimes made it feel like we were back in the stone age. Eventually, things mostly got back to normal. But with all the chaos, it didn’t occur to me to take a lot of pictures. This is the only shot I took of the dealer room, and it’s all blurry. Too bad.

One of the guests was Mr. Laurie Faso, who preformed the voice of Orion Pax in the original Transformers TV series. A friend of mine commissioned me to make a piece of artwork featuring Orion Pax so that he could have Mr Faso sign it. Everybody was impressed with it and you can take a look here on my DeviantArt.

Comic book artist Andrew Wildman was there for the first time and did a panel where he went through his process and showed some unused artwork of Grimlock fighting Beast Wars Megatron.

Former Hasbro designer and current awesome guy Aaron Archer was back and did another panel where he talked about the creation of Transformers Armada. Actually I think he was mostly there to sell some art and hang out with people. I’m lucky enough to say that I was one of those people!

Transformers production coordinator Paul Davids had an amazing panel about working on the original TV series and the rest of his amazing career in show business. Voice Actor Greg Berger (Grimlock) returned to Toronto and Canadians Doug Parker (Terrorsaur in Beast Wars and Tidal Wave in Armada) and Sharon Alexander (Arcee in Engeron) made rare convention appearances. All the voice actors took part in a live script reading, which is tradition, and this year it was a fast paced whirlwind!

It was a huge thrill to have Vince DiCola, the musical composer of the 1986 Transformers movie, attend the show, as that is a guest I’ve been hoping would come to Toronto some day. On the Sunday morning, he even graced us with an impromptu piano concert, which I was luckily able to capture a bit of!

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by @sykografix

I did a panel too! I presented “The Most Obscure Transformers Shows“, which was all about rare oddities in Transformers media. I showed a lot of wacky stuff that which doesn’t get talked about very often and many fans might not have thought about in a while or ever seen before. It was a fun presentation to put together and I had a blast being up there talking about all these weird parts of the Transformers universe. There were a lot of big laughs in this one! Way more than I ever expected.

I bought toys! Well, of course I did. After the past few years of spotty distribution and not being able to go out very often, I took advantage of the opportunity and filled in some of the gaps in my collection. I haven’t opened anything yet (saving the unboxings for Twitch) but I did get a few loose items. I even won a couple of things from the charity auction. You can read about everything I bought (and some other stuff I bought after the convention was over) on my Tumblr.

So, this was the 20th anniversary of TFcon! I did not attend the very first TFcon in Hamilton, Ontario, but I did hear about it and attended the second show, which was only a few months later. TFcon has been an important part of my life ever since. On one hand, it’s hard to believe it’s been this long. On the other, I do believe it! I pretty much remember every single one. I’ve made great friends and been witness to some amazing moments over the years. It was great to do it again after not being able to for so long, especially since I didn’t get to do much during the December 2021 show.

You can see more images on the TFcon Toronto 2022 Photo Album. I nicked a few images from there for this post.

Overall, TFcon 2022 was a blast. It was well attended, but not as crowded as 2019. I feel like it was a comfortable number for this time. If more people were there, maybe I wouldn’t have thought so. The guests were great, there was plenty of stuff to do, and if I had any complaints (outside of the unavoidable Internet issues) if would be that I was sometimes too tired to experience everything when it was happening, which is my own freaking fault. Though, at the feedback panel at the end of the Sunday, I did state my list of complaints that TFcon was too much fun, there were too many toys to buy, and that I bought too many toys, so they should all be ashamed of themselves. But hey, there is always room for improvement!

See you next year!

Sayonara.