My Introduction to Transformers TCG

I used to play Collectible Card Games.

 Well, more specifically, I tried a bunch of games, and then played one particular game for a few years. That one specific game was produced by a company that licensed the property from someone else, and when sales declined after 7 years, the card-producing company decided that it wasn't worth it to continue paying for the license, and killed the game. A few months later, the creator of that game died of cancer.

So that was the end of that.

I dabbled in a couple of other games -- I bought a couple of Magic: The Gathering starters. I tried the Dragon Ball Z relaunch by Panini. I considered Pokemon. I dabbled with Vs. System. I bought a couple UFS Universal Fighting System decks. None of them really connected with me.

And then, in late 2017, a strange thing happened.

I was working in a comic shop, and three representatives from Wizards of the Coast came in to say hi, and to see how products were performing for us at the store level. What should they do more of, what should they do less of, how's Magic doing, how's Dungeons & Dragons doing, etc. But potentially the most interesting question they asked was, "If you were put in charge of Wizards of the Coast for one day, what change would you make?" My answer was simple -- I wanted a Transformers Collectible Card Game. Their faces lit up, as Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) were now owned by Hasbro, the owners of the Transformers property. "Hey, we could do that," they said. And that was the end of it. I didn't think anything more of the interaction, and kind of forgot about it.

Three months later, news articles appeared that WOTC would be producing a Transformers Trading Card Game, and my co-workers who were with me that day were like, "Hey! Look what you made happen!"

Now look, I'm not going to take full credit for the idea. I know that Trading/Collectible Card Games take a long time to develop, and it's not the sort of thing that Hasbro and WOTC can just slap together in a couple of months. But since I said I wanted a Transformers card game, and Wizards/Hasbro made it happen, I figured, y'know, I may as well check it out, right?

So on the night of release, I went up to my Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS, an acronym I'll be using a lot), and bought two starter decks and a box of 30 booster packs. My brother came over, we figured out how the game worked, decided that some characters were better than others, etc., etc. I showed the game to a few friends who all thought it was fun and appreciated how easy it was to learn. And that was kind of it. I picked up a booster pack or two if I saw them around, but I didn't think much more about it, until some friends got into it.

And then a friend who plays Heroclix (a totally different game) said he saw that the same FLGS I bought the cards from in the first place was having events on Sunday afternoons. So I went and checked it out. Fortunately, it turned out that I WAS playing the game correctly, at least in terms of the rules and stuff. But definitely not in terms of strategy.

But the guys at the card shop were fun to play with, and also huge Transformers dorks. They were all showing off their collections of Transformers toys, all made up of toys that individually cost between 100-300 dollars a piece. So, yeah. Okay. My kind of people (My Transformers toy collection has dwindled significantly throughout the years, mostly as I've decided that space was more important to me than expensive toys).

And that brings us up to the first year of my Transformers TCG story; From when those WOTC guys came in, until the actual release of the game and me helping to establish our local community.

Coming soon: Commentary on actual game content.

Transformers 1986 first-draft script

Uh, so, apparently, Ron Friedman sold a copy of the first draft of the 1986 Transformers movie to members of the Transfandom, or something. It is available here:

http://boltax.blogspot.com/2010/12/heritaage-auctions-transformers-movie.html

This is A Very Big Deal to all Transformers fans. Big ups to David Willis (creator of the webcomics Shortpacked! and Dumbing of Age) who made me aware of this piece of Transformers legend.

Holy cow.

Why manga is cheaper.

As a former comic store owner, one of the questions I get asked the most is why manga is so much cheaper than American comics.

I'll preface this by saying I have done absolutely zero actual research into this answer. I've just used some common sense.

First off, manga tends to be printed in black-and-white, and on low-grade paper. American comics are printed on high-grade, glossy stock paper, and in full-color. Oftentimes, nowadays, with full bleed, meaning some of the artwork goes off the edge of the page.

Go to your nearest photocopy shop. Ask them to reproduce something in black and white on the type of paper used in manga, and then ask them to reproduce something in full color with full bleed on American comic paper stock. Notice how the American comic reproduction is going to be at least three times as much, because of the higher-quality product.

Secondly, let's look at what companies are putting out: Manga publishers are re-printing translated material. American comics publishers are creating 20-24 pages of original, brand-new content, every single month. Now, both types of publishers are paying for printing, advertising, distribution, etc. But what different things are they paying for?

Manga publishers are paying for the licensed rights to reproduce already-created material and translations. Sometimes they pay for newly-designed covers.

American comics publishers are paying for original scritps, artwork, inking, coloring, cover design, editing, continuity checks (in many cases, as ignored as they may be), and, sometimes, even licensing. And every single person along that line needs to be paid enough to make a living doing their job.

Hey, reproduction is cheap. Don't believe me? Compare the amount of advertising found in most American monthly comics with the amount of advertising found in their trade paperbacks and hardcovers. That's right - Montly comics will have 8-12 pages of ads for 20-24 pages of comic, while the TPBs and HCs have NO ADS. Why? The creators have already been paid for the original work, and, until recently, very few comics creators had royalty clauses built into their work-for-hire contracts.

Once the work is created, reproducing it is cheaper than creating new work. As a result, manga and American comics reprints actually end up being about the same price, when you consider the differences in paper stock and color versus black & white.

This isn't to say that either is BETTER. I only bother to read stories that I think are good stories, regardless of their country of origin, or, in some cases, even the cost, if the story is good enough.

So, manga is cheaper than American comics because, in the United states, manga costs less to produce. That's all.

Interrobang!?

From Dictionary.com:

–noun
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
Also, interabang.

Origin:
1965–70, Americanism ; interro(gation point) + bang1 , printers' slang for an exclamation point

Retail Horror: Part 3

Today, a story from Toys "R" Us!

This one, of all my retail horror stories, is the only one that could be considered at all my fault. This lady came up and bought a lot of small items. I don't remember exactly how many, but it was over a dozen items, and the total retail value was over 100 dollars. It was only my fifth or so day at the job, and the woman asked for gift receipts for each item, as most of the gifts were for a lot of upcoming birthdays.

Gift Receipts are receipts that don't include the price, so that a person may return an item without knowing how much you spent on them. Which is kind of stupid, because you can just look up the price of something online. But I digress.

Now, at TRU, in 2004, there were three options we were presented with, when it came to gift receipts. The first was No Gift Receipt. This was the most frequently-used option, as most people were just buying things for themselves. The second option was Single Gift Receipt, so all the items would be placed on one receipt with no prices listed. This was the Gift Receipt option that I saw used the most that wasn't none. Finally, there was Individual Gift Receipts, where one Gift Receipt is printed for each item being purchased, resulting in a multitude of receipts at the end of the transaction.

Also, it was totally still my first week, and this particular TRU store, at least at the time, did not do a very good job of training. I had three half-days of working with another employee, who showed me the basics of everything we do in the "R" Zone (video game section), and on my fourth day (which was my first full day), I was left alone to run the "R" Zone all by myself. I think this particular event took place on my first solo Saturday. Obviously, there were other people in the store, but not as many as you'd think.

The woman, in addition to asking me for individual gift receipts for each item, also asked me to hurry up. Apparently, she had left her child at the nearby Chuck E. Cheese's, and wanted to quickly get back to him. So, in my attempt to hurry, I accidentally hit the No Gift Receipt option, out of the habit I'd already formed after just a few days on the job. And the lady freaked out about this mistake, and demanded that I fix this situation, and re-do the entire transaction so she could have her gift receipts. Also, I had to hurry, because she had abandoned her child.

For the record, the only Chuck E. Cheese's nearby was one that was on the other side of the shopping center from the TRU at which I worked. Like, her kid could've walked over to TRU and it wouldn't have been a big deal at all. So it's not like she left her son very far away.

Now, why the heck this lady was paying for a dozen or so toys in the "R" Zone is beyond me - I was not the only register open, and you had to go completely out of your way to get to me, over any of the regular registers. Secondly, after exiting the "R" Zone, you had to go past all the regular registers, anyways, before leaving the store! So this lady thought that coming over to me, way out of her way, would be faster. Of course.

In addition, in order to void out her previous transaction, I had to call over a manager. But the store was always understaffed, because TRU corporate didn't give us enough hours to go around. So it took something like 15 minutes for a manager to get over to me, even though I had a walkie-talkie unit that I used to radio them, directly.

And, of course, by this time, there was a line of people who just wanted to buy one or two games lining up behind this lady, who was still complaining about the fact that she left her child alone at Chuck E. Cheese's.

LISTEN, LADY: YOU ARE THE MORON WHO ABANDONED YOUR CHILD. That is NOT *my* problem. Yes, I made a mistake. But if anything happened to your son, that's your own damn fault for being a fucking moron and leaving your kid unattended.

PLUS! I don't know what kind of sissy she raised, but if I was left alone at Chuck E. Cheese's for an extra 20 minutes, I wouldn't even have noticed. Or I would've considered it extra time to play Whack-A-Gator and Air Hockey. Or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, if this story took place back when I was a kid. You know, back in the late 80s, when there were a LOT more skeevy people wandering around places like that, and security was nonexistent. And, uh, I turned out fine.

Which leads me to a thought about the media: There are SO MANY stories of child molestation and/or abduction out there right now. What about the 99%+ of the kids out there who are absolutely fine? This isn't to make like of things like that happening; They absolutely do, and we need to all be aware of such a thing happening to not only our own children, but everybody else's kids, too. But the fact of the matter is, these particular Toys "R" Us and Chuck E. Cheese's locations were in the nicer part of town, and both places were always totally crowded with loudmouth kids on Saturdays. So nothing was going to happen, and if anything did, they wouldn't have been quiet about it.

And, hey, look, I'm not saying my hitting the wrong key wasn't my fault. It absolutely was. But this lady went to the "wrong" register in the first place, while leaving her kid alone. And one of those was far more of an issue than me accidentally not printing her up some gift receipts.

So, anyways. The manager on duty comes over, helps me get through this whole fiasco, and then GIVES THE LADY A $20 TOYS "R" US GIFTCARD FOR HER INCONVENIENCE. THE INCONVENIENCE OF HER BEING AN IDIOT?!?

I could not BELIEVE that when it happened.

Hey, if something happened to that kid, I'm really sorry. But since we never received any complaints, the kid was probably just playing Skeeball for an extra 20 minutes and didn't even notice. And she was rewarded 20 bucks for being an asshole in every metaphorical sense of the word.

Meanwhile, I got yelled at by her for 20 minutes, and basically scolded by my manager, who told not to make that sort of mistake again.

I quit Toys "R" Us two weeks later, and shortly afterwards got employed in a cafeteria to clean tables, which was a FAR better job.

The moral of this story? Don't get jobs in places you like to shop, because the other customers are fucking insane.