Wreck and Rule. of the forums has reported that Neil Kaplan, the voice of RID Optimus Prime, is coming to Auto Assembly 2005! Here’s what Simon Plumbe had to say on the announcement

Okay, we’ve just confirmed our latest guest for AA2005… and it’s a voice actor!

Making his first appearance at Auto Assembly is RiD’s Neil Kaplan, the voice of Optimus Prime and Ro-Tor!!

We had been in talks with another voice actor for some time which was 100% dependent on sponsorship. That sponsor started making very unreasonable demands of the actor, to the point that they wanted to by-pass Auto Assembly completely and go directly to the actor in question! As you can imagine, that resulted in that deal falling apart.

Neil stepped in about two weeks ago and asked if he could come along. He made us an absolutely fantastic offer regarding his appearance and combining the offer Neil made, plus the wonderful support we have had from all of you booking early and through funds raised from our online auctions and fundraising through the adverts on our website we have been able to make Neil’s appearance happen without the need for sponsorship!!

Neil will be involved quite extensively with the Auto Assembly 2005, and he is also going to be helping us with the auction and as we write this, is arranging for some rather special items to be signed from many of his fellow RiD cast members in the States…!

Simon