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[Groundsplitter]

Okay, my turn to tell about my experiences this last weekend. I have a few pictures as well, although they are not particularly special - I'm not a skilled photographer at all, and I have to make a conscious effort to even remember to bring out the camera. Click on the thumbnails to see the larger images.

Being somewhat involved in the organization of the event, I didn't get much sleep the last two nights before the Mini-Con. I spent part of the evening/night between Thursday and Friday finishing the design of the name tags, setting up the laptop we were going to use at the convention, and putting together some of the background music used at the convention. The latter a somewhat unnecessary task, I realize now, since the volume was kept so low that I doubt most of the attendees paid any attention to the music anyway. But in case anyone wonders, the music consisted of three hours of select karaoke pieces from the Japanese TF cartoons and some instrumental music from Transformers: The Movie (1986 version).

I had pondered when and how to get to Arlöv, and had at an earlier stage leaned towards going together with Path and the Finns on the way down from Stockholm, to save money. But I also had a strong desire to get involved in the preparations as a staff member, and get a chance to get acquainted with BigPete before the convention started, so I eventually decided to go down to Arlöv in advance by train, even though this meant having to take the night train on Friday evening.
I left Knivsta already at about 21:00, in order to catch the train from Stockholm at 23:10. A wise decision it turned out, since Upptåget was experiencing delays, and I missed the first connecting SL train in Upplands Väsby. But I had calculated with that risk. Delays are way too common on those two lines.

Anyways, upon boarding the night train in Stockholm I discovered that I had got a seat in the compartment for passengers with animals. Not that I minded one bit. It meant being screened off from the aisle/corridor by a door, so I didn't have to get bothered by people talking or walking past my seat.
But it also limited the space for lying down to sleep. There were five seats in the compartment, and I travelled together with two girls and their dog. One of the girls laid down on the floor to sleep in front of the door, and I let the other girl take the three seats on one side of the compartment. That left two seats for me to sleep on, two seats with high arm rests of solid wood. I tried four different positions throughout the night, before I finally found one that was comfortable enough that I could get a few hours of sleep.

I arrived at Malmö central station at 6:42, 80 minutes before the time BigPete had said I could contact him, and almost 2½ hours before Fighbird/Martin and Marie would arrive at the same station. I relaxed for an hour, not doing anything in particular while I pondered whether to have BigPete pick me up or go to Arlöv by myself. But having him pick me up would either force him to make double trips to Malmö, or force me to wait another hour and a half until Martin and Marie had arrived too. So I decided to take the local train to Burlöv/Arlöv, where I walked the final distance to BigPete's and Maria's flat. This also gave me the opportunity I wanted to get acquainted with them in advance.

We talked for about 20-25 minutes; I got to see parts of BigPete's collection and all the boxes that Hasbro Nordic had sent over, before we left to pick up Fighbird and Marie. We looked for them inside the station but couldn't find them, until BigPete was notified on the phone that they were waiting outside. Near the entrance where we had got in, in fact - I reckon the Danes must have reached the entrance, from a different direction, just a minute or so after we had passed through.

I don't have any pictures showing the windmill from a
distance, but it was an impressive sight up close too.
This year's Mini-Con sets a precedent for fine locations
that I suspect will be very difficult to beat.

After a "scrapeful" trip (BigPete's car had difficulty carrying the five of us as well as Martin's heavy bags - he joked that he had brought his anvil- and bowling ball collections) with a short stop at the Danes hotel we finally arrived at the Kronetorpsmöllan windmill. It was an impressive sight, being situated on a low hill with no other settlements in the vicinity and only a few trees.

BigPete and Maria soon left to pick up all the boxes and other stuff we needed for the convention (including the large television screen), while the Danes and I rearranged the chairs and tables. At first I thought the hall felt a bit cramped, but we soon discovered that it lent itself well to our needs, and the rearrangement didn't take much time at all. As you may have seen in other pictures we put three tables in a row as dealer tables immediately inside the door, and created a viewing area with 28 chairs and a place for the television screen at the far side of the L-shaped hall, with a few more tables and chairs placed out strategically for the displays and an "idle" area.

When BigPete and Maria returned with all the boxes, in company with our "security officer" Robin, Martin and Marie started setting up the dealer table, BigPete assembled the competition prizes and set up his part of the dealer table, Robin and Maria hung up the huge Transformers the movie wall banner outside the windmill, while I finalized the name tags.

The "Crap-o-plenty Store", i.e. Fighbird's stuff.
I was very happy that he had brought so many
things to sell. It did a lot to give this event a
genuine convention feeling.

BigPete also had some things to sell.

The competition prizes were kept in the kitchen
for the duration of the convention. Several of the
items here haven't been released in Nordic stores
yet.

Robin and Maria had a tough job hanging up the
banner, which Martin had brought to the convention.
Robin found some plastic strips in his car that he
used to secure the banner.

The name tags that I designed for the convention.
Staff members got a green variant clearly marked
"Staff", and regular attendees got a blue version.
There was also a red variant labelled "Security",
printed only in a single copy for Robin. A future
collectible, perhaps?
By the way, if anyone wonders why only some of
the tags had the full name printed, it's because I
looked at which of the attendees had revealed
their real name on the board. If you haven't shown
that you're not afraid to reveal your name on the
board, I didn't want to disclose it on the name tag
either.

[Groundsplitter]

Part II:

After we were done with these tasks - BigPete and Robin had also carried in the television screen, and BigPete and I had spent some time trying to successfully connect it to the laptop computer I had brought along - we prepared the deluxe toys that Hasbro Nordic had donated as gifts for all the attendees. To make it random which attendee got which toy (we realized that some of them were more desireable than others, and unfortunately we also had lots of some of them, and less of others), BigPete and the others put the toys in plastic bags and put them on the floor next to me in no particular order, and I put in the paperwork (a program and the prize table) before "sealing" the bag with a name tag. I had put the tags in a heap with the names facing down, so I couldn't see which tag I had chosen until I had already picked it up. The bags were then placed in some cartons behind the reception desk, with the surplus, un-tagged bags in a separate box for attendees that showed up at the door.

Even though we had got a head start with an easily rearranged hall, time eventually ran out surprising fast, so it was quite late when BigPete and Maria (and Robin? I can't remember) went out to get us some food. I don't think anyone of us had eaten any breakfast, so we were all starving. I had eaten some cinnamon buns that I had brought with me on the train, but that was it. And while the rest of us were waiting for them to come back, the first attendees started to show up, so I decided to man the reception desk for a while.
Smokescreen was first, I think he arrived already before BigPete and the others went out for food actually (since he was selling some stuff too he arrived early to set up his part of the dealer table), then TFormer and Sandstorm, Stolpen, and Soundblaster and his mother turned up. It was quite exciting; meeting all these people I'm familiar with from the board and the NTFA Store for the first time, so I enjoyed acting as the receptionist a lot.

Anyways, eventually things got started. A bit slow at the start, perhaps - the attendees looked around mostly inspecting each other and marvelling at the dealer table while the staff took a well-deserved lunch break, but eventually we got to the first point on the programme, the Cyber-Slammer race, and then things started to loosen up. (I didn't take part in any of the activities myself. Since I consider myself a retired TransFan I wasn't particularly interested, and I preferred to take the opportunity to chat with some of the attendees and say hi to as many as possible.
I don't want to sound as if I have high opinions of myself, but I thought that as leader, and having dealt with so many of the members at some point or another, I should try to make myself available for small talk.)

Being inexperienced with organizing a convention, we soon found that the schedule had some gaps in it, but BigPete showed what a resourceful guy he is when he improvised new ideas to fill those gaps: when we found ourselves with some 15 minutes to spare, he quickly decided to give all the participants in the art competition an opportunity to present their contributions to the rest of the audience. I think this was actually one of the better programme points, even though it was unprepared.

I think this was the second heat in the
Cyber-Slammer Race. Lucar-tron, Inkku,
Nerdcore-for-Life and Aske are ready to
release their Slammers.

The finalists are preparing for the final
race. From left to right: Ultra Marcus,
Marie, Path and Inkku.

The final was a very close race, as
you can see. Ultra Marcus and Inkku are
almost tied, and Path was beaten with just
2-3 centimetres.

The contributions to the art competition.

A picture from the improvised art
presentation. Here BigPete tells us about
the unproduced Mini-Con 2007 exclusive,
Micromaster Darkwings.

[Groundsplitter]

Part III:

After the presentation of the art pieces, it was time for one of the main events: the exclusive preview of half an episode of Transformers: Animated. I don't think there was anyone not interested in this event; in spite of all the scepticism voiced on the board earlier, everyone took place for the showing, to see what it would be like. I sat down in the rearmost row, next to the window, since that would give me a overview over everyone else - I was interested in seeing everyone's reaction ... plus that I kept an eye open for anyone fiddling with hidden cameras. One of Hasbro's conditions for letting us show this clip was that the images must not under any circumstances make their way onto the Internet. But there was never any problems with that. Our attendees were a dependable bunch.
Martin stood on the opposite side of the viewing area, and kept an eye on the crowd from his point. The clip hadn't run for long when the people in the back row stood up to get a better view. It really captivated us.

Towards the end of the clip there was a spot when the screen became black for several seconds, and you could almost feel the unanimous disappointment in the air: "Aw... So, that was it...". But I had half an eye on Martin, and noticed how he tensed a bit - paying extra attention to the audience while looking straight at the television screen, trying not to give anything away. Was he just waiting for everyone's final judgement, or...? Suddenly the screen lit up again, for another minute or so of Transformers: Animated. The audience gave up a collective sigh of relief (me too), and Martin burst out in a short laugh. The devious Dane had watched the clip in advance, and knew there was more to it!

After the clip we discussed what we had seen. Was it good? Was it bad? Will it work as a series? The general opinion seemed to be that the characters appear to have much richer personalities than in the last few series, and even though the style still appears odd to some of us, especially to the more old-school fans, it was better than expected. Someone pointed out that Hasbro is obviously setting their sights on a younger audience, and the new style will probably be right for that target group. For some more detailed observations from the Transformers Animated clip, check out the discussion over at TFW2005's board.

Buy! Sell! Buy! Sell!

After the exclusive preview the trading/dealing started. I didn't participate in this since I've basically stopped collecting, but I did buy a loose G1 Hound from Smokescreen to replace my own copy, which suffered a broken seat since a few years. But apart from that I mostly chatted with people, until Path, the Finns (Turo, Sonja, Inkku, Joona and Satu) and I had to leave to check in at our hotel in Malmö. For some strange reason you had to check in between 17:00 and 19:00, so we had to keep an eye on the time.

The dinner at the Indian Haweli wasn't scheduled to start until 21:00, so we had a few hours to spare and no solid idea what to do, so we set out to explore the neighbourhood, and possibly find a cafeteria or something. For some reason I was chosen to lead the way, and I tried to lead us to some more exciting areas. Just by accident we soon happened to find the Laserdome, a trip to which had been a potential programme point on our schedule. No one in our group felt like playing laser tag though, so we decided to continue our exploration. Encouraged by my chance discovery of the Laserdome (we had no detailed maps with us) I wondered if I could accidentally find the way to the restaurant as well - I like to explore cities, and I do have a certain talent for sniffing out the more promising areas (usually in smaller cities though). But this time we had no luck. After a few "dead ends" (streets that didn't appear to lead anywhere exciting) we gave up and headed back towards the hotel.

We hadn't made it all the way to the hotel when BigPete called us though. The Indian Haweli had an opening already at 20:00, so it was time to proceed to the restaurant. This turned out to be an adventure in itself. First we discovered that none of us seven had the address to the restaurant, and after we had got it from BigPete we discovered that our maps weren't detailed enough to show this address either. But after asking three or four people on the street for directions, we finally made it.

This was actually the first time I have visited an Indian restaurant, so this too was an adventure for me. Since I was unfamiliar with Indian food BigPete advised me to choose one of the mildly spiced dishes from the menu (every dish was marked as belonging to one of three categories: "mild", "medium" and "strong/spicy", or something like that). I chose a "mild" vegetarian dish, based on potatoes and cauliflower. But if this was "mild", I definitely don't want to know what "medium" or "strong" means.
No, it was actually quite good, even considering the strong spicy flavour. But by this time my sleep deprivation started to make itself evidenced; I dropped off four or five times after I had finished my meal, and I was quite satisfied when we eventually left to go back to the hotel.

That's the end of Saturday's adventures.

[Groundsplitter]

Part IV (final part):

Sunday would become a rather short day at the convention for me, Path and the Finns. I had spent most of my money reserves on the train ticket to Arlöv on Friday night, and had no other alternative than going home with them in Path's car (which is what we had originally planned). This did cause a few unforeseen problems, when we eventually realized we would have to leave earlier than we had quite counted with.
For the Finns it meant having to withdraw two of the entries to the art competition (the entries were still in the run, but on Sunday they would only be represented by two notes reminding the attendees what the two entries had consisted of), and for BigPete it meant having to set up his own stationary computer in place of my laptop computer, for the second showing of Transformers: Animated and Martin's two PowerPoint presentations. It was exactly the reason why I had brought my laptop along, so he wouldn't have to use his own computer, but we failed to think of all the consequences of me having to leave early.

The Finns, Path and I had argued about exactly when to leave, and for a while we considered not going back to the windmill on Sunday at all, but eventually we agreed to remain there until about 11:30 (Sunday's programme started at 11:00). That way we would at least get to participate in the convention lunch, which would actually save us some time later on, we argued, since then we wouldn't have to stop for lunch on our way back.

I'm glad that we did go back, even for that short time, since we got to mingle a bit more, and meet a few more people. One of the more memorable incidents was another unscheduled kind-of-presentation. Turo fastened his eyes on Ultra Marcus' Star Convoy figure on the display table, and wondered what that figure was. I started giving him some of the facts, and we were soon joined by Ultra Marcus who added even more details. This started a sort of tag-team discussion between the two of us, where one added detail lead to another detail and yet another detail, basically causing Turo's simple inquiry to turn into a presentation. Ultra Marcus demonstrated many of the features of the figure, like the battery-powered "Roller" section, which makes Star Convoy (a reincarnated version of Optimus Prime in the Japanese continuity) "walk" (or roll) in robot mode, and which becomes a conveyor belt in base mode. A number of people had gathered around during this demonstration, and I got the feeling that it was quite appreciated.

The display table, a picture taken on Saturday.

The display table again. A few more items had been
added on Sunday, including Star Convoy.

The happy winner of the rare Downforce.

Martin announced another unscheduled event: an auction for the Sandnes exclusive Mini-Con toy, Downforce (a repainted G1 Drag Strip). Only eight of these had been produced, and Martin's and Predaking's intention one year ago was to list the last remaining copy on eBay - the proceeds was to go towards running this website. Martin never got around to selling the toy though, so he decided to auction it at the convention instead. (an added benefit was that this way the exclusive toy would also remain "in the family", Martin noted). The auction turned into a three-way duel between Psychotron, Path and BigPete, and at the end Path became the winner. The last Downforce sold for 450 SEK, which pays for roughly 2,5 months at our web hotel.

But eventually we had to go, and we were forced to say goodbye. A pity; we would have loved to stay until the very end.

The trip home was one of the longest trips, if not the longest trip I have ever taken in a car, and also the most crowded. But it was also one of the most fun trips I have experienced. It wasn't boring for a second, and the many hours on the road didn't bother me at all. Not even when we got stuck in a lengthy traffic jam in Södertälje - Path and the Finns continued to joke and spill sarcastic and ironic remarks. Path treated us to a big laugh when he pulled down the side window and stuck his head and arm out to exaggeratedly wave his fist angrily at the traffic... behind us!

There was also time for some more serious stuff. Apparently there are very few wind turbines in Finland, so Turo and the other Finns were a bit curious of those, and I tried my best to give them some information, even though much of it was just guesswork. Being somewhat familiar with southern Sweden (Småland and Östergötland in particular) I also acted as a bit of a guide from time to time.
I think I was close to driving Turo crazy with my details of which locations are inhabited by relatives of mine - by sheer coincidence the large majority of my mother's family lives in cities along the E4 route: Ljungby, Vittaryd, Mjölby (well, not anymore, but I, my mother and father, and their parents all started there), Linköping and Norrköping.

We did one stop along the way, in Jönköping where we bought snacks, sought out the bathroom, and switched drivers. Path had wheeled the car from Arlöv to Jönköping; Inkku took over the reins the rest of the way. For a long time we appeared to be way ahead of schedule, Joona calculated with an ETA of about 18:00, but then we ran into that traffic jam in Södertälje, and when we finally arrived at Stadsgården in Stockholm at about 19:10 it was with a margin of a mere 30 minutes. So it was lucky that we left when we did.
We spent the remaining 30 minutes in the entrance hall until the Finns had to check in and we said goodbye. Path gave me a ride to the train station, and that's basically the end of that weekend.


I have already mentioned that I purchased a loose G1 Hound from Smokescreen. My haul also included a Deluxe Movie Bumblebee, the "08 version" or whatever people are calling it, I believe, plus a copy of IDW's Official Movie Prequel Issue #1, with a special cover that I wasn't aware of before. This came packaged with the Bumblebee Unleashed figure, which Turo had purchased at the Mini-Con. I asked him if he could scan the cover for me, since I want to add it to the cover gallery on the website when I update it the next time, but he was so generous that he gave me the comic book itself.


To sum things up this was one of the greatest weekends I have experienced for quite some time. BigPete and Martin did a marvellous job in organizing this convention for us, and I really, really hope we can repeat this next year (even though it will have to be with other organizers). This was way too good for us to allow it to be a one-time occurence.

This post has been edited by Groundsplitter: 8 November 2007, 12:33

[Groundsplitter]

I've amended the fourth part, with a paragraph on the Downforce auction.