• Main
• Books
• Kitbashes
• Other
• FAQ
• Links

At BotCon 2002 during the Hasbro panel, some early concepts for the Mini-Con faction insignia were shown off to us. These early versions were reminiscent of a head or face, just like previous sigils for Autobots, Decepticons, Maximals, Predacons, and even the BM Dinobots. (BW Mutants and Vehicons had more symbolic... uh... symbols.) Later, the people who were planning the Armada line decided they didn't want to use a face for the Mini-sigil after all. We were lucky enough to see the first attempts, though. I hastily sketched what I saw in my notebook:

These were enough for me to reconstruct the basic look of the early sigils, but unfortunately there are a few uncertainties. I'm least certain of the first symbol, which was very much in a G1 style. It was constructed from dark panels with white space between them. The lines inside the "cheek" panels represent thin triangular holes. Also, the panel shaped like a down-pointing chevron isn't well represented in the quick sketch, but it is supposed to be separate from the others. With my meager artistic skills I attempted to flesh out the picture, first with these:

First thing to note is that I don't know which way the triangles in the cheeks are supposed to point, so I tried it both ways. Also, the sigils are too elongated vertically. They should be more squat, similar to old sigils in dimensions. Lastly, there is a problem at the bottoms of the cheeks; rather than leave a wide "nose" space, the cheeks should come together like the picture below. This feature is visible in my original sketch, so it definitely belongs there.

That's about the closest I can get to the first sigil. Please remember that I'm not sure about the triangles in the cheeks. They may have been pointing the other direction.

Now we come to the other two sigils, which personally I find a lot more interesting. We'll start with a cleaned up version of the sketeches from my notebook:

Now we get to the place where I'm not so sure anymore. I'm pretty sure that these sigils consisted of separate panels, too, as I have a memory of thinking that I didn't have enough time to draw them that way, and thus deciding to draw them all connected. Problem is, I don't know if the "eyes" chevron is supposed to be a filled panel, or a blank space. My memory tells me it was blank, but analogy with the old-style sigil implies that it was not blank. So, I dunno. Here are the possibilities:

It is my hope that somebody artistically inclined who was at the Hasbro panel can take inspiration from these and come up with something that actually looks nice. (Hint, hint.)