So of course the BotCon 2012 brochure goes up Christmas Eve. The timing isn't actually a genuinely terrible thing, since it's just a brochure; the registration itself won't happen until later. This is just information nobody can do anything real with yet.  But still, I am a creature of Internet Discussion and Speculation, and so the night Botcon brochures go up is sort of already basically Christmas for me already. But you have to pay attention to family! And open all their gifts! And not be starting threads with your phone about BotCon 2012's brochure while you're supposed to be paying attention to family and opening all their gifts!

Anyway, the theme this year involves the "mirrorverse" Shattered Glass Transformers invading the universe of the "real" Transformers.  Big war!  Etc!  And according to TVTropes itself, this is right up my gay alley.  (see "Author Appeal") I have to admit, multiversal bullshit is one of my favorite subjects.  Plus, dude, you cannot believe how many new Recordicons are now eligible in Recordicons.  I have now officially been given too much power.

Blah blah blah, SG Ultra Magnus leads a team blah blah blah there's also Overlord.  You know the drill.  Things.

Here's my completed Shattered Glass Nightbeat!  Finally I got the rest of the flames off the doors.  What's my secret?  Well, uh, I realized there was some extremely fine sandpaper in the paint box.  I misstook it for wax paper for the longest time, but I realized one side was a little rough, and I went to town on the doors.  Well, not really "to town."  I just had to get rid of the rest of the lingering flame deco shadow.  That shit was stubborn.

(And no, by "extremely fine" I don't mean I "went to town" on it.)

So, you know.  Some paint happened, after all that was done.  Most of the paint was extremely easy.  I mean, it's just flat black.  That shit paints itself.  It's that damn yellow mohawk I needed to paint that gave me trouble.  I must have tried that thing a billion times.  Yellow paint sucked.  Finally, I found my silver Sharpie, used that as a base coat, and then the yellow paint stopped just puddling off like Nightbeat was in the shower.  Still wasn't thick enough to actually make it look like the bright yellow it's supposed to be, but whatever.  It's done.

Jin Saotome was gracious in instructing me in how to put his decals on.  It was forever ago that Shawn Tessmann, the BotCon customizer guy, told me how these things work.  So Jin gave me a ringy-dingy, told me what's what, and the that was done.  ...at like 3 in the morning.  I keep late nights.  Mirrorverse Nightbeat was finally completed!

...until the next morning when I remembered that Cosmic Rust infections were part of his deco.  That was a few more hours.

Anyway, this is Shattered Glass Nightbeat.  There were some speedbumps, like when I had to cannibalize him some of Energon Hot Shot's knee/roofs because the alcohol crumbled the originals.  And the whole flame deco removal thing.  But I think he came out pretty nice, in the end.  And because most of him isn't paint, since he's just black detail on an unpainted toy, he transforms back and forth pretty seamlessly.  (It helps that, unlike the Animated Minerva I put together myself at BotCon 2011's customization class, this toy was put together by Chinese workers.  So it actually fits together well, and wasn't assembled by a moron.)

Hooray!  That's the only version of a Hot Shot toy I didn't own.   Cross that off my bucket list!

So I've been sitting on this extra Club Nightbeat for a few years, meaning to eventually kitbash it into Shattered Glass Nightbeat.  What's kept me from doing it for so long is that there was paint removal required, and after removing paint from Obsidian to make Rotorbolt, I felt confident in the procedure.

After all, the most important thing to remove is the tampos, right?  Those came right off Obsidian, no probs!  Like wiping spilled soup off the table.  If the normal paint doesn't come off, that's fine, since SG Nightbeat just needs to paint over everything with black.  It's just the flames on the doors that have to go before I can start painting him.

So I throw Nightbeat into a vat of alcohol.  It took Obsidian about 24 hours before anything began to fall off of him.  But 12 hours later, all of Nightbeat's paint is wiping off.  And, grargh, you guessed it, his flames remained.  Well, okay.  I took most of Nightbeat out, kept the doors in the alcohol and... it's been three days, I think, and I'm still trying to get rid of those stupid flames.  I have a brush and I have some paper towels, but the only tool that's making headway is my own fingernail.

It's quite infuriating.

Oh and apparently the alcohol made his translucent knee-roofs brittle and they broke.  But that is absolutely fine.  Really, it is.  As you can imagine with an owner of a Hot Shot Shrine, I have an extra Energon Hot Shot or two.  I'll just repaint and swap out those translucent pieces, no big.

Still.  Grrarghghglglgglllghrg.

Today I went to the Columbus Toy & Collectible Show here in town.  I was alerted to its existence by my pal Robowang, who had a table there.  So off I went.  I kinda wanted to find an extra Beast Machines Mirage to make myself a Devcon, which I didn't find, but I still came home with some stuff.

EDIT: I got one off eBay not long after writing this, so thanks everyone who's offering me a Mirage, but it's been taken care of.

It was a much larger show than I was expecting.  (Heck, it was bigger than some of the earlier BotCons I've been to.)  I was also pleased with how many Transformers were about.  Robowang's friend Rich was there adjoining his booth space, and from him I got this Henkei! Mirage.  It's a, what, magazine-exclusive toy from Japan?  Something like that.  Anyway, the reason I care about it is because he was repurposed as evil Shattered Glass Mirage a few years ago.  And the reason I really care about it is because I put SG Mirage in a Recordicons strip I drew a year ago.  He's the only guy in that particular strip who actually exists as a toy that I don't already own.

So Rich sold him to me and I put an SG Autobot symbol Reprolabel on him.

And then on the way home, I found the next wave of Young Justice figures for my wife!  So, like, score.

Once upon a time there was a guy named Thundercracker. He was just a boring ol' redeco of Starscream.  (Or vice versa.  S'hard to tell.)  Starscream was way popular and managed to be one of the first handful of original Transformers toys that got second and third toys.  Starscream got a Classic Pretender toy, an Action Master toy... but Thundercracker was kind of a nobody, so he didn't get that kind of attention.

But when he did get that kind of attention, yikes!  As I said, he was kind of a nobody.  So unlike Starscream, who was important enough to keep his appearance mostly intact during those years, Thundercracker could apparently look damn near like anything!  And so, after Generation 1 ended in North America, and Action Masters continued in Europe, Thundercracker got his second toy.  And, oh lord, it is probably the craziest damn color scheme you'll ever see on a Transformer.  He was purple.  And maroon.  And blue.  And green.  And gold.

It is a color scheme so insane that it crosses the threshold from insane terrible into insane awesome.

Who will dare to homage Action Master Thundercracker?  Certainly not Hasbro!  What retailer would carry this thing?  I mean, look at it.  No, this task would fall to Fun Publications, who could probably target just the very handful of people who'd care about the homage.  And, y'know, hopefully avoid the folks who look at it, go WHAT THE HELL, and then continue on about their day.

Technically, this BotCon toy is Shattered Glass Thundercracker, Thundercracker's mirrorverse counterpart.  You're allowed to be crazy colors in mirrorverses!  And so he  has a red Decepticon symbol on his shoulder.  But, dude, c'mon.  Action Master Thundercracker.  The Holy Grail of insane Transformers callbacks.  The one you thought they'd never do, and by "they" you mean "EVERYONE ON EARTH."  BotCon did an admirable job matching the colors on Action Master Thundercracker's nonstransformable figure to this Classics Seeker mold.  The Action Master didn't have arm-guns or proper wings, so those kind of end up whatever the plastic sprue breakdowns allowed, but otherwise he's spot-for-spot accurate.

But my favorite thing is his jetmode.  Action Master Thundercracker never had a jetmode, because, y'know, he was an Action Master.  And so we finally get to see what kind of cracked-out jet mode Action Master Thundercracker would transform into.  And the answer is... yeah, pretty cracked out.  His wings are purple, his body is maroon, his intakes are randomly green, and then right down the middle of his nose the colors swap from maroon to purple.  That's my favorite part.  I love that there is absolutely no attempt at vehicle mode cohesion.  This toy is all about robot mode accuracy to something that never was really supposed to have a jet mode.

(Oh, hey, stealth homage.  His wings are done up like the wings to Action Master Thundercracker's "Solo Mission Jet Plane," his Action Master transformable exo-suit.  Neat.  That might also be where the green intakes are from, who knows.)

One small flaw in this toy being Shattered Glass Thundercracker and not the original Thundercracker proper is that it negates the awesome and/or tragic story that would involve such a drastic color shift.   I mean, consider Thundercracker, the fictional character.  For millions of years, he's this dark blue and black and silver guy.  Pretty conservative.  But then, out of no where, he's this purple and blue and green and every other color monstrosity.  What's the story behind that?  Did he have a stroke?  Is this a personal visual statement?  Is he attracting a mate?  Did someone paint him up like this as a gag and he's too colorblind to notice?  Did he lose a bet?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Shattered Glass Megatron was my favorite toy from BotCon's Shattered Glass year.  And because BotCon simultaneously hates me while loving me with great booth real estate, here comes a toy to replace him.  Curses!  I don't want to replace my Megatron!  My Megatron is great!  That is a dumb idea!

But, see, a while ago Fun Publications scribe Jesse Wittenrich painted up his War Within Springer to be Galvatron, and it really really worked.  It was a pretty amazing idea that you have to see to believe, because, dude, who'd believe it otherwise?  A helicopter guy?  Meh!  But it does work.  And I guess it was such a great idea they decided to off Megatron and bring him back as that Galvatron design.  And now there's a toy of it.  A toy of it that came with something I really wanted, Shattered Glass Thundercracker, so it's not like there's any skipping it.

So here he is!  Galvatron's admittedly a very pretty toy, but his prettiness isn't my problem, it's the kicking of Megatron's toy the curb that's my problem.  Evac's always been a good toy, no matter who he's been redecoed into, and Galvatron's no exception.  Galvatron's probably even the prettiest of all of them.

(It's been noted that SG Megatron's Rumbler tank arm cannon thing can still attach to Galvatron's arm.  There's a 5mm peg on Galvatron's right arm and a 5mm screw hole on the underside of Rumbler.  So there's that continuity of arm-cannons going on as well in Galvatron's favor.)

So what I think I'm gonna do, since I'm not prepared to put my Megatron away, is use SG Galvatron as... Galvatron.  The "real" one.  Universe Galvatron's way too tiny and Energon Galvatron, the guy who I'd been repurposing as G1 Galvatron before, is way too big.  SG Galvatron's the right colors (sans the eyes) and he strikes the middle ground, size-wise.  He's neither a midget nor a giant.

Thus, I have not wasted my money, nor have I spurned one of my favorite toys.  Everyone's happy!  Kind of!

Merry Christmas by ~zibanitu6969 on deviantART

Yesterday I said Punch/Counterpunch was ambitious.  The other Transformers Collectors' Club exclusive, Shattered Glass Cyclonus, is not.  He doesn't try to have a newly tooled head that has a transformable hat, nor does he try to be a guy with two different robot modes.  He's just a redeco.

This isn't a bad thing!  In fact, it makes him a soothing beacon of light in the shadow of P/CP's unfortunate mishaps.  He's safe, so nothing went wrong.  Unlike P/CP, he didn't try to fly too close to the Sun with his glorious wax wings.

Shattered Glass (mirrorverse) Cyclonus is in Hot Rod colors.  Well, minus the flame deco, I guess, probably because Shattered Hot Rod got to keep them.  So Shattered Cyclonus is in bright red, orange, and a warm gray, just like "normal"  Hot Rod often is.  His colors were decided on before anyone knew there was a Universe Cyclonus toy to get a redeco out of, so in order to map his color layout onto the Universe Cyclonus toy, there had to be some awkward paint applications.  For example, they had to paint his upper thighs orange to match his lower thighs.  The orange paint here is applied kind of unevenly, resulting in some patchy areas there where the gray underneath shines through.  And then there's the expected problems of painting bright orange over dark red, but whatcha gonna do.

It's still a terribly attractive toy.  Not as attractive as I thought it would be, since I was expecting a slightly darker red, but still he's a pretty little dude.  I prefer him to my normal Cyclonus by a lot.  But, again, times infinity, you know me and my orange.

Shattered Cyclonus's partner is Krunix.  There's a story here, and it's long and convoluted and fannish, but I'm going to try to relay it anyway.  Back in the Marvel Comics Headmasters miniseries, Cyclonus was supposed to appear in some panels, but instead the artist drew his Targetmaster partner Nightstick in his place.  When this story got ported to the UK, they noticed the mistake, wite-outed Cyclonus's name, and put in a random new name.  So this giant purple Nightstick dude became "Krunix."  As you can imagine, Krunix is a very obscure dude.  (Or was.) (Okay, he still is.)

So years later Shattered Glass happens, and since there's so many goddamn Targetmaster partners named Nightstick, the name Nightstick gets applied to Ricochet's Targetmaster partner.  You can't also call Cyclonus's Targetmaster partner "Nightstick," since it's taken, so they grab "Krunix."  This is awesome.

Anyway, I love this toy.  Universe Cyclonus is an amazing toy in any deco, and he comes with a fanwank accessory.  I'm still of mixed minds about him, but only because of the fiction.  Shattered Cyclonus only ever did one thing.  He assassinated Megatron.  (Because normal Cyclonus is super-loyal, get it???)  And Megatron was dead.  But Primus resurrected him as Galvatron, in a new body.  A new body that is not Shattered Glass Megatron's, which is my absolute favorite toy of that year's BotCon set.  That toy is now obsolete.

So Cyclonus basically got rid of one of my favorite toys.  Screw you, Cyclonus!  *shakes fist*