When SG Blaster was first introduced in the Shattered Glass text stories, he was based on the original Blaster toy but with colors swapped.  That probably put him outside the jurisdiction of the Transformers Collectors' Club, toy-creation-wise.  Except for those wacky Seacons, they stick with modern toys.  I wanted a toy of SG Blaster to exist, and so that meant hoping e-Hobby would do one.  Ha ha ha, as if that'd ever happen.

WELL HUZZAH.

So while the new SG Soundwave isn't particularly necessary, Blaster was a must have, especially since toys of Soundwave already existed.  He hasta fight somebody!  And with him come some guys to shove in his chest.  So sweet deal, all around.

Unlike a lot of Shattered Glass color schemes, Blaster's doesn't seem to be based on anybody else's.  He's not Blaster in Soundwave's colors, for example.  No, he seems to be a new color scheme.  Part of his new scheme was some tribal tattoo-y things on his shoulders.  When SG Blaster's toy was first announced, those tribal tattoo-y things were absent, and there were only recolored versions of his original stickers there, like any other reissue.  I was relieved when we learned about the sticker label sheet that comes with the set, which included large stickers to wrap around his shoulders and give him his tribal tats.  I'm especially relieved that they're a perfect fit.  There's also another sticker that belongs to Blaster, a yellow sphere with a stick through it.  According to the eHobby videos, that seems to go on his right shoulder, so that's where I put mine.

He comes with the SG electro-scrambler.  I imagine it's super-lame and not terribly courteous.

Like Soundwave was re-released in Japan in new colors as Soundblaster, so too was Blaster re-released in new colors as Twincast.  (Blaster's name in Japan was "Broadcast," and so "Twincast" was a better new name for him in that context.)  But I'm not as fond of Twincast as I am of Soundblaster.  See, in the hilarious Hong Kong dub of the Japanese Headmasters cartoon into English, "Soundwave" was rebuilt into "New Soundwave."  But Blaster started out being called "Billy" and was rebuilt into... "Blaster."  Owning Twincast, then, doesn't mean I own a guy with an awesomely dumb name.  It's just Blaster in wacky colors.

One of my first memories of being part of the online Transformers fandom was learning about the AMAZING and VIOLENT and TO THE DEATH fight between Blaster and Soundwave in the Japanese Headmasters cartoon.  I was told all these things about how those two just friggin' go at each other like crazy people, and how it's super adult and gritty.  And then, you know, of course years later I got to watch what actually happened, and, well...  Let's just say standing and shooting at each other at point blank range for like fifteen minutes without anything happening, before the pair just leap at each other at the same time and punch each other in their respective chests, before both of them randomly explode... eh.  It was oversold.

(The hilarious English dub, of course, made the scene fairly entertaining, but YouTube isn't being handy with it at the moment.)

But these redecoes of Blaster and Soundwave are why it happened!  Blaster was rebuilt into Twincast, and no more would he be called "Billy"!  He was a grown robot.  And you got to buy him!  Again!  Like "New Soundwave," he was retooled to be able to hold two cassettes at once, though this didn't do as much aesthetic damage to Blaster as it did to Soundwave.

And just like New Soundwave, Twincast's stickers have become paint detail instead.  And also like New Soundwave, Twincast's Encore reissue attempts to make his face look more show-accurate.  Instead of being all silver, now his face is yellow with blue eyes.  This is a welcome change to me, not because of the show-accuracy, but because non-silver faces on Transformers are things I enjoy.  Another change, related to the exchange of stickers for paint, is the smoothing over of the tech detail on his cassette-door chest so they could tampograph an Autobot symbol on there.

Of course, getting Twincast was just a symptom of requiring the new Mini-Cassette guys who came with him, who I'll talk about later.

Personally, I'm just excited that he exists, but I liked the punchline too much.  Ethan is so frustrated.  He shouldn't be!  He's getting some!

(And, really, the whole thing is really Blaster's toy's fault anyway.)

Tomorrow night: Why Beast Wars is awesome.

I'm home!  Let me drone on about one of my convention purchases, a reissued Blaster and some of his cassettes deployers.  Why the hell would I buy a toy I already have in still-great condition?

I guess it might be the three little dudes he comes with who I don't have.  I have no Steeljaw, no Ramhorn, no Eject.  That might be an incentive.

I guess it might also be his awesome-as-hell packaging, with the metallic slip-cover over the book-box deal.  And the lengthy bio on the back is less icing on the cake than it is a cake made entirely of icing, perhaps as a side dish.  It doesn't only flesh out Blaster's character, but it provides all sorts of nerdy little things about Cybertron's history and pre-war culture.  Oh, and Blaster's still a boom-box because cassette tapes are great for bootlegging music.

But no, the real dealbreaker is that Blaster's legs are a slightly different color.  Instead of silver, they're a metal-flaked beige.  That really got my attention, for reasons I should probably be ashamed.  Is that all it takes?  Is that really it?  One slightly different color?  Sure, his legs are sometimes brownish in the original comics, but...

Yeah, it was the warmer leg color.

I think I need an intervention.