Hey, remember Shattered Glass?  That's the name of the Transformers mirrorverse where the Autobots are bad and the Decepticons are good.  It's... generally only interesting when played for absurdity, because honestly just swapping dispositions left-right isn't fundamentally interesting.  I like it when it's able to be used as more of a commentary on Transformers itself.  Like, you know, science fiction's science fiction. 

Or when it's about lolcats.

Anyway, it was largely only a BotCon thing except for an Optimus Prime redeco here or there, but here we are with Generations Selects Shattered Glass Optimus Prime and Ratchet.  Ratchet's the big deal here since the only Shattered Glass Ratchet toy is a BotCon customization class exclusive that was limited to ... not many.  There were, what, maybe 50 customization class slots, and there were four options for the single Ratchet toy you got?  And how many chose to paint up their assembled Ratchet toy into Shattered Glass Ratchet instead of two flavors regular ol' G1 Ratchet, an imagined G2 Ratchet, or Rescue Bots Medix?  

I'm probably the only one who splurged to get all four.  (Thankfully that was a year you could purchase unpainted, pre-assembled extras.)  

The point is, except for like maybe five people, there was no other Shattered Glass Ratchet toy until now.  And so here he is!  A different deco than we've seen previously, but I do dig the teal.  I always dig teal. 

And there's Shattered Glass Optimus Prime too, sure.  I had to get him because I wanted the Ratchet.  He's pretty too, but I've already got two BotCon SG Primes in those colors, so.   It's disappointing he doesn't have "TILL ALL ARE GONE" tampoed on him like the first one.

So now I have Shattered Glass Blaster and a pair of Recordiguys for him, but neither of them are guys I'm particularly familiar with.  I wanted an old favorite!  And so I got myself a junker Steeljaw and made myself Shattered Glass Steeljaw.  I feel pretty safe making my own SG Steeljaw, free from worry that I'll get a real one.  After all, he's a TakaraTomy guy done up in the colors of a thing owned by their Most Bitterest Arch-Nemesis, plus they've already just recently done that toy in all black.  Either way, SG Steeljaw ain't gonna happen.

If I'd chosen his colors, I probably would have gone with something that's less likely to make TakaraTomy's legal team cringe.  Also something easier to paint.  Dang.  I ain't good at tiny details.

The two Autobot Recordiguys in the eHobby Shattered Glass set are Rewind and Ramhorn, and both borrow their color schemes from Rumbles.  SG Rewind is patterned after the unreleased G2 Go-Bot Rumble and SG Ramhorn is patterned after the comics-only movie universe Rumble (who was a little blue rhino partner for Soundwave).

SG Rewind is stalwart in its attempt to homage G2 Rumble.  In addition to the base colors, there are a trio of stickers which seal the deal.  Two of them go on his legs and mimic the sculpted shapes on G2 Rumble's legs.  The final one says "VINNY'S MOTORS" and goes on Rewind's back.  That's going the extra mile, and I appreciate it.

SG Ramhorn is in blue with some gray accents to make him look more movie-segmentedy, plus he comes with a sticker that gives him more chunks of movie innards striped down his midsection.

Since these are new guys to the set and to everywhere, they get their personalities here.  Rewind is, uh, a hunter/tracker guy who's gathering Cybertronic wildlife so SG Blaster can have a bunch of animal dudefriends like Sir Soundwave.  Ramhorn is one of these Cybertronic wildlives.  I don't think either are particularly very SGy in concept, but whatcha gonna do.  I think SG Rewind should be like the dude from Memento, personally.  It feels like a better twist on who normal Rewind is.  And Ramhorn... I dunno.  I do like that he's given "Chaos Generator cannons" that seriously fire random, unpredictable things.  That could be a source of fun.   Like, *blam* rubber chickens!  *blam* confetti!  *blam* actual bullets!  *blam* Liam Neeson!

Colors- and homage-wise I definitely can't complain.  Getting their appearances from G2 Rumble and Movie Rumble is an interesting choice.

Shattered Glass Slugfest is the last of the pre-existing characters in this eHobby set.  The rest of the dudes are all new to the universe.  SG Slugfest was one of the first Recordicons to get the spotlight, as he showed up in the first Shattered Glass text story, "Dungeons & Dinobots."  While regular Slugfest is dumb and really insecure about it, Shattered Glass Slugfest is dumb and pretty self-confident -- not in an arrogant way, but in an adorable way.  I picture SG Slugfest as a Transformers version of Andy from Parks & Rec, though with less talk good.

Slugfest is given two stickers to use if you wanna.  One's just a "Dinocon" label.  The other's a restraining bolt, which was used on him in his first appearance.

The toy itself is one of the more fun Mini-Cassette toys, mostly due to its spring-loaded stegosaurus plates.  Unfold the head and tail and they pop right up.  SG Slugfest's colors are kind of like Grand Slam's, but without seeing if SG Overkill is blue and gray like Raindance, it's hard to say if that was intentional or not.  (I suppose that could be up to me, considering I draw these guys.)   Slugfest's weapons were silver in the prose illustrations, like Grand Slam's, but they're copper chrome on the toy.  It makes him less like Grand Slam, but even if that were the original intention, the copper really makes him look pretty and less monochrome, so I'm totes okay with it.

I've seen some folks express worry that placing the restraining bolt sticker over the hinge joint on his neck means that it would rotate along with the joint when the toy is transformed.  For me, this hasn't been the case.  It's seemingly stayed in place.

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.

Out of the entire set of SG Soundwave vs SG Blaster and all their new little dudes, Soundwave was the most surplus to my requirements.  I already had two Shattered Glass Soundwave toys, and one of them already sort of looked like this.  I mean, I understand why they're making him, what with this being a purposeful reuse of the Soundblaster/Twincast reissues, plus this being meant partially for Japan, where they don't have BotCon sets with SG Soundwave in them.  But, you know, personally, he wasn't a big draw.

BUT I STILL LOVE THIS GUY A BUNCH.  I'm not entirely sure why.  Maybe it's the attractive colors?  White with shock blue with hints of green just stands out.  Maybe it's that all of the crazy van deco is brought over as sticker detail.  Maybe it's that SG Soundwave's a fun-ass character.  He's got a headband  and says "righteous" all the time.

And so ultimately I suppose I welcome him.  I think BotCon's Soundwave will be my display version of the character since it remains my favorite; it's an SUV, so it doesn't transform into a simple box representing obsolete technology.  I do lose the interaction with the Recordicons, but I plan on keeping them all displayed outside his chest compartment anyway.  Chest storage is for tape guys you lost the weapons to.

In addition to the stickers which recreate Soundwave's van deco (and it still works, because us old timers remember plugging stickers all over our Walkmans as kids) there's also a sticker provided to give Soundwave his trademark headband.  You fold it over lengthwise, which is kind of tough to do precisely, and then there are perforated slots at strategic points along the headband so that you can loop the whole thing around his head and attach the ends over each other.  It works pretty well.

The only snafu is one localized to my toy.  Apparently some Chinese factory worker got some black paint on his fingers while painting the die cast feet and got his identifying marks all over Soundwave's inner thigh.  It's completely obscured in robot mode, but it was a fun surprise in cassette recorder mode.  I'll probably take some turpentine or something to it later.  Or, more likely, I'll never bother, because, as mentioned, you can't see it in robot mode, and that's how he's stored in the box once he gets put away in storage.

A few years ago, Shattered Glass Ravage was this new thing and I'd been asked to write a short tech spec bio for him to be published in the Transformers Collectors' Club magazine.  This was before he got a toy.  Until then, he was just a guy I'd made up over New Years Eve and then started a Twitter feed for because it amused me and because I thought it heretical that there was no SG version of Ravage because Ravage is awesome.  In the following issues, the Transformers club folks asked me to write additional bios for SG Ratbat and Steeljaw.

Normal Ratbat, to me, is the stick-up-his-ass fuel auditor who hilariously managed to worm his way into the Decepticon leadership position in the Marvel Comics.  Everyone hated him.  He was an accountant!  And yet, y'know, an accountant is an important job.  And so my idea was to flip that.  What's a charismatic but completely frivolous job?  Why, SG Ratbat was a self-help guru.  A famous one who everyone liked.  He was a celebrity.  He was a secret alcoholic (addiction to low-grade fuel).  I really liked the idea.

But then it kind of got blown away by Jesse Wittenrich's accompanying art for the character, which I hadn't seen prior to getting the issue myself, of SG Ratbat done up in blue and gray and gold, y'know, for funsies.    And I was like, whoa.  Obviously, SG Ratbat is... you know who.  What's this self-help guru crap?   And so once I started drawing Recordicons, I made sure to marry the two portrayals.  During the day, Ratbat was a famous philanthropist and author, but at night he patrolled the city skies as Bat-Bot.  I literally couldn't pass up drawing that stuff.  You know me.

And so here we are, years later, and we have a damn toy of him.  E-Hobby, Japan's outlet for exclusive redecos of Transformers stuffs, likes to come out with new-character redecoes of Generation 1 reissues, and they'd just done a pair of Twincast and Soundblaster.  So who do they do those two guys as?  Apparently, the answer is to partner up with the Transformers Collectors' Club and give us SG Blaster and Soundwave and a smattering of SG Recordicons, including Ratbat in his Bat-Bot colors.

These are toys for me and me alone.

So here's my friggin' Transformers Caped Crusader guy, in plastic, here in front of me, for realsies.  A neat addition to SG Bat-Bot's look are the chest stickers they give you which paste on either side of SG Bat-Bot's chest rubsign, which pushes the homage a little further.  I liked it so much I retooled SG Bat-Bot's design to include the stickers in his next Recordicons appearance.  You do gotta be careful with them, though.  They cover the tape spools in his chest, and the gun accessories you peg through there could poke through them a bit if you're not precise.  Oh, and always put him back in the cassette tray stickers-face-up so you don't puncture them.

Did I mention he appears in a comic illustrated by Hidetsugu Yoshioka?  My character, this guy I helped make, drawn by him?  Oh my lord, man.  This world is nuts.

See? A rut. First Octopunch, then SG Prime, and now these guys.  I left them all for last, and now this feels like a big hate parade.

I feel about the Shattered Glass Junkions the same way I did about Shattered Glass on its debut year.  I wanted to add to my existing armies and not start new ones.  I was really excited when we found out about Hasbro making Junkions.  Junkions with three heads, even!  That was guaranteed a souvenir set of some sort.  And it meant I could double the number of Junkions from three to six.  Maybe we'd even get a new head or something, who knows.

But naw dawg, have some mirrorverse Junkions.

Mirrorverse Junkions who borged a bunch of guys I like into more mirrorverse Junkions.

It just wasn't what I wanted from these molds at BotCon.

At least they're attractive.

Man, I'm kind of annoyed with myself that I somehow saved the BotCon toys I like the least for last. I was on a pretty good roll of "Woo"s and "Yay"s, and now we're in this rut where it feels like I hate everything. That's not true! It's just that we're to the stuff I didn't want to talk about immediately.

Shattered Glass Ultra Magnus I'm not unkeen on.  He's a new character!  And he uses the mold's second head that Hasbro hadn't used yet.  It's a translucent skull, because, yo, bad ass.  Reportedly this is an "evil Optimus Prime" noggin that Hasbro would have attached to their eventual Nemesis Prime use of the mold.  It's a pretty villainous head, so it works well for SG Ultra Magnus.  The Diaclone Powered Convoy colors work well here, too.  Red and blue are usually heroic colors, but with their specific hues and with all the black and gray, it comes off as evil enough.

My only complaint is the relative tininess of the toy.  He's plumped up in the comic, because his opposite number is Treadshot, the huge Deluxe Jazz mold.  It feels  uneven.  The smallness is something I complained about with the original use of the mold, and it's relevant with Magnus, too.  But not as relevant as it is with BotCon's other use of this mold.

Geez, Shattered Glass Optimus Prime!  I dunno what BotCon's historical fascination is with upgrading their guys as less impressive toys, but yikes.  SG Prime used to be a Voyager.  A good Voyager!  One of my reluctant favorites of the 2008 set.  He was the centerpiece of my Shattered Glass Autobot shelf.  When I eventually put this new version of him in his old toy's place, you wouldn't even be able to see him.  Bumblebee can see over the top of his head.  It's just not a great upgrade.

Size aside, the toy is decoed marvelously.  There's paint washes everywhere.  But I'd rather his new toy had the presence of the old toy.

Now, Optimus Prime only appeared in the comic as a head on a screen, so my brain hasn't really registered yet that he's this body now.  So I'm probably good to keep the old one on the shelf until he eventually appears in a future story and reminds me.  Let's hope that's a long way off.

We got a Shattered Glass Jazz years before we got a "Classics" Jazz, but I was pretty fine with that.  We were bound to get a "real" Jazz eventually, and we did!  And now we'll get a new Jazz every year until the end of time.  But this Shattered Glass Octopunch business, I just dunno.   I don't expect many Octopunches.

It'd be forgiven if SG Octopunch were a neat character.  No, his stated personality on his profile card is that he has no personality.  He's average, boring, a regular joe.  He pointedly has no amusing quirks.  I imagine that's partly because there's isn't much personality in the original Octopunch to mirror.  His appeal has always been that he's a crazy tentacled diver monster, like something out of Scooby Doo.   (His mirrored self obviously should have been a guy who drives around in Soundwave with Ravage and solves mysteries.)

(He'd be very big on traps.)

Seriously, if this guy were the real Octopunch and I got to see him in the comic in action as the real Octopunch, he would have been my favorite toy of the set.  As-is, I'll still enjoy him, but it will be a dulled enjoyment, mostly because I have both an SG and a Classics display, and it's pretty obvious between the two where this guy goes!  If/when I put my SG stuff away, then Octopunch can go hang out with my Bludgeon.

Begrudgingly.

Knowing all the while that it's just my stupid fanon.

But it is a good toy!  A very pretty toy.  Again, wacky late Eighties colors like Spinister, with the teals and purples.  I like the mold better as (an) Octopunch than I did as Sea Spray, from whom this toy was redecoed.  And he doesn't have a new head, but the paint job done on his noggin makes the idea of a new head redundant.  With the oxygen tubes around his chin painted blue, that makes his head look more like a separate, dome-shaped piece, akin to the original.  And you can give him Terradive/SpaceCase's trident if your Octopunch needs a trident.  (The original Octopunch toy didn't have one either.  It was made up for the comic.)

The only part of the deco that I wish were different were the seafoam chest and upper arms.  Octopunch in the comics was colored unlike the toy, with a solid yellow torso and upper arms.  With yellow instead of seafoam, he would have been absolutely glorious.

But then, SG Octopunch isn't supposed to be absolutely glorious.  He's supposed to be forgettable and average.  So.

Good choice, I guess.