Breakfast - just a couple of pastries/danishes and apple juice this morning.
7.40am - left for the Convention Centre.
Walked past the Sheraton (with the Hilton in the distance).
It was about 7.50am when I got to the Conference Center on the far side of the Convention Centre.
1.50pm - left Custom Class with my mostly-complete toy, and got back to the Inn about 10 minutes later, not sure if Dallas would still be there, as I said before I left in the morning that I should be back around midday to go toy-hunting in the afternoon (since he had a hire car). He was there, but only just got back from somewhere, and we left about an hour later... heading north to get onto the highway to go east, we passed by the Pasadena Town hall.
We went to a sports store first, as Dallas is a keen baseballer, so wanted to stock up on gear that is more expensive and harder to find in Australia (like me hunting toys).
The store was huge, and had free wifi, so while he was inside for a little over an hour, I sat outside surfing our messageboard.
We got there at 3.45pm, and left a little after 5pm. Fortunately shops close late in America, so there was little fear in missing a toy store... we just had limited time to bet back for the Package pick-up at 8.30pm.
We decided to just go to the nearest Walmart, which was south at Rosemead... instead of the earlier plan of heading to Monrovia for the triple hit of Walmart, Target and TRU.
My Map said there was a Target at Rosemead, but there was actually a Walmart down there as well. We didn't end up going to the Target.
Inside the Walmart at 5.40pm, we headed straight for the toy section... and was greated by a big cardboard Strafe perched over the Transformers section.
They didn't have anything I wanted, or already bought from a previous Walmart.
Dallas headed over to the sports section, while I checked out the food section.... and was amazed at this wall of Pringles.
I've been impressed before with the sheer range of snack foods in America, especially when it comes to potato chips... but this was 25-30 different flavours of Pringles. We only have about 5 flavours in Australia, and at one stage had 11 flavours at one time... but this was just insane.
Naturally I bought some - four of the more interesting flavours (I didn't eat three of them while in America, as I took them back home with me). The Tortilla ones were actually corn chips instead of potato chips.
I also bought a couple packs of white fudge flipz... one of my favourite US snacks.
We left Walmart at about 6.30pm and was back at the Hotel 40 minutes later.
At 8.30pm we headed over to the Convention centre, and got there about 10 minutes later.
There were already people lined up for the 9.30pm pickup, and the Golden Ticket people were already inside the Ballroom. We were only 10 minutes after the doors would have opened, but Dallas and I were the last in line (no one else came later).
The pick up tables. The main Dealer Room would be over to the left. Actually, the art contest and autograph tables would be in this spot when the Dealer Room was open over the weekend.
When we were done about half an hour later we headed outside and saw that Ratchet was back (this van was there in 2011 at the last Pasaden BotCon).
Boxset - Scorponok, Ferak, Cannonball, Ginrai, Devcon.
Comic/guide, and some sample pages. The story this year was very hard to follow, being very confusing for the first half. The cover using toys looks weird as well, as a drawn cover would have suited a drawn comic.
Some comparison photos with any previous toy versions.
UPDATE - How to fix Scorponok's shoulders. We were told later that Scoponok (and Cannonball) had some construction errors, with Scorponok being the easiest to fix.
On the sides there is a purple part (it is orange on the original Energon toy on the right) that looks like a ladder under the armpit. As you can see on the Energon toy, the back part slopes up, while the BotCon one slopes downwards. The two parts on each side of the toy need to be swapped over to allow the shoulders to fold down a little further.
On the back of each part is two screws. Remove the four screws and the two purple parts come straight off.
Each purple part holds onto two hindges.
Accumulated haul with today's toys added in.
11pm - watched TMZ on TV to see if I was on, as the previous day on the TMZ tour we saw Cuba Gooding Jr, and he did end up being featured on their daily show. But no shot of the people on the tour bus though, as there was only five us on there, so it might have been bad publicity for their tour if they showed an empty tour bus.
Spent a little time on the computer, but not long, as I didn't want to be too tired for the early start in the morning (I didn't want to risk missing the LA Tour that started at 8.30am).