So anyway, there's this Decepticon who transforms from a robot into a stick.  And then that stick can wad back up into a box, and if you get two more of the same robot-to-stick toy, you can make combine those three boxes into a larger box!

This Decepticon is Refraktor, the trademark-sidestepping name for Reflector, the ol' three-guys-become-a-camera dude.  Remember him?  The toys were all different, but the show just took the middle guy and made two clones out of him, but without the lens on his tummy.  And, honestly, the execution of this new toy is better than it sounds?  It's almost satisfying.  It's so very close.

I mean, let's get this out there: one Refraktor is worthless.  As stated, you get a robot who lays down and you put his gun between his ankles and you put his shield over his head.  That's a spaceship!  Maybe!  And every single shortfall of this toy is entirely because it's saving its engineering for the occasion in which you have three of him.  The gun combines with two other guns to become a tripod.  The shield combines with two other shields to become a camera lens.  The robot transforms into an unremarkable plank because that robot also needs to become an unremarkable third chunk of a camera.  

And the real kicker is that if you buy this toy and plug in the blacklight code into the website, you get a tease for a better possible version of the toy you just bought, with a flashcube and other extra parts.  That's just mean, Hasbro.

I'm less down on the toy than I seem, I'm pretty sure?  I mean, at the end of the day, it's three guys who combine to form a camera, which is neat.  The gun-tripod and shield-lens are good engineering.  And it's Reflector, the camera guy.  You can even yank the tummy-lens off two of them (plugging them into their butts), so you can have the regular tummy-lensed guy and his two non-tummy-lensed sidekicks.  

He just, you know, exists almost entirely on the steam of recreating something from the cartoon, without a lot of gas put in the tank of "is this fun for people in general."  And it works for me, because I've been in Transformers for 35 years and so I put value in these sorts of things.  But it's.... probably not a good sell to anybody else?  Unless they like Transformers who become sticks?

And lord knows I do if their name is Rung, but, like, he's a real character, and Reflector -- the perpetual cameo -- is so not.  

dang this came out a heck of a lot more sour than i was expecting

Recently, a few of BotCon/Fun Publications' toy offerings have reportedly been suggestions by Hasbro.  Like, "hey, this alternate head exists, and we have no plans, so we'd really like you to do this at your con."  Like customization class Ratchet, allegedly.  BotCon Reflector is one of those guys!

So apparently Combiner Wars Shockwave -- the tiny Shockwave toy that was designed so Combiner Wars Bruticus could hold him as a gun -- had an alternate Reflector head.  Hasbro puts these alternate heads in most of their toy's engineering for a rainy day.  Some we'll probably never know about because why would we?  If it's not eventually used or doesn't accidentally show up on an instruction sheet, there'd be no discovery.  It seems like the alternate Reflector head would have been one of those things, were it not for BotCon.

Besides, Shockwave's already purple and gray.  Would Hasbro put that toy out in purple and gray again?  Probably not.  It was a weird idea to start with.  But it's a perfect idea for a convention exclusive, because nerds like me will totally pay money to buy another purple and gray version (three times) of a toy we already have in purple and gray.  

Honestly, this is the toy I was least excited about this year.  It fills an otherwise vacant spot in my collection.  I don't really have a set of three Reflector guys, and otherwise they're absent from my 1984/85 Decepticon shelf.  And so they're NECESSARY to me, but only for checking off names on a list that's essentially completed already except for them.  This is not to say these aren't swell guys, it's just that my interest in them pales in comparison to the bounty of combining Beast Wars dudes presented me.  

There are many unofficial modes that attempt to combine the three into a camera, like the original Reflector.  They can be pretty or they can stay together well, and no one's found a way to accomplish both yet.  I've included a photo of my buddy Robowang's attempt.  (Robowang is the guy I sent to BotCon in my place to pick up stuff for me.)  His falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, and "falling in the middle" is a pretty apt way to describe most attempts to make a camera.  Generally holding this guy in an unofficial camera mode is like trying to pick up and eat a slab of lasanga.  It's gonna buckle and fall apart in layers in your hand.  

Next and finally: TM3 Megatron!