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.
I really wanted to be able to repurpose this guy as normal Octopunch (I’m a sucker for all the weird guys who became prominent in the late comic era) but I just couldn’t do it. He looks just like Seaspray, plus I will always think of the Octo vs. Octo scene in the comic. Which I liked, but it pretty much cemented the guy as boring “normal” SG Octopunch.
True. It’s much easier for me to repurpose toys who don’t have any fiction. But we got many many panels of him beating up on the guy I want to repurpose him as, so that’s who he is in my mind.
If they’d given him a new head no force in the universe…not even a red Decepticon symbol…would have kept him off my Mayhem Attack Squad. Though I still would have hated the alt-mode for the character.
Or you could do like the rest of us and just put him on the Classics shelf, slapping on a faction symbol replacement if need be.
Heck – you’ve done plenty of repurposing of non-SG toys as SG characters, so why not do the opposite, which seems to have been clearly intended by making the deco so similar to G1 Octopunch?
I’m tempted to just delete this comment because you obviously didn’t read what I wrote about this. But then you might not understand why your comment is missing and then repost, so here we are.
I did actually read your writeup – I definitely get the whole rationale behind what you’re saying, being someone who’s fairly obsessed with canonicity/lore/what’s right as far as fiction/displaying stuff goes. And I’ll agree with the idea that if it had been portrayed as Classics Octopunch, I’d probably enjoy it slightly more.
It’s probably easier for me to say that since I haven’t actually read the comic yet though and don’t have many SG toys in the first place. I guess I’m just looking from the toy-only POV where the only thing that visibly makes this guy SG is a red faction symbol. (Kinda like how SG Thundercracker’s deco doesn’t suggest he absolutely has to go with SG, despite the fact he’s shown up in fiction there)
It’s kind of annoying when I talk specifically about putting him on a Classics shelf, you bring it up as the obvious thing I should do that I hadn’t thought of.
Thing is, I collect Shattered Glass. I have a few shelves devoted to it. Not putting one of the few specifically-dedicated Shattered Glass toys on it? Kind of defeating the purpose of the whole exercise.
Fandom is an inherently self-defeating pursuit of perfection.
Adam Savage talks about how being a fan means striving to achieve a specific outcome… “But really if we’re all going to be honest with ourselves than I have to admit that achieving the end of the exercise was never the point of the exercise to begin with.”
DUCKS.
After Kick-off this guy is my clear favorite from this year, I just wish they gave him a more interesting personality as well. With the simply evil Tracks and this guy being described as completely average I feel like this year lacked the crazy alternate personalities of previous Shattered Glass stories. Granted, not everybody in the universe needs a personality quirk, but I think giving this guy a Pirate-ish personality might have been fun. With cowboy Bludgeon, pirate Octopunch, and maybe a luchador themed SG Stranglehold, they could have been a ridiculous trio…in an awesome way of course.
I’m surprised you don’t have the Blood upgrade that make Bludgeon, you know, G1 Bludgeon.
Bludgeon’s head is fine. Like Skullgrin and Thunderwing, it’s a robotic head that matches the rest of his body, rather than being a different, clashing aesthetic.
Well, he looks a lot better than I thought he would. That’s a plus. But I have a feeling my SG Shelf is going to be missing Octo here. I just can’t get motivated to pick him up, which blows because 2 years from now, when he’s 10 bazillion dollars on ebay, I’ll totally need him to complete my SG 2012 shelf….*sigh*.
Also – seems I don’t have him in my hands and can’t peer at him with me own peepers – are those actually ducks on his chest? Or does the design just resemble ducks?
DUCKS!
Resembles.
They’re tentacles that have an unfortunately duck-shaped arrangement.
Wow, didn’t see the ducks until people mentioned it and now I can’t in-see them. :-/
Speaking of that trident, how keen is it that they’re redecoing (and retooling?) that mold into pre-earth Depth Charge? That feels like it had to have been planned from the mold’s creation. As soon as I got a Space Case I considered just stickering over the faction symbols and repurposing it as such unofficially— it’s so exactly the right shape!
I think of Depth Charge as wider, but it’ll do. My ideal non-beast Depth Charge was a redeco of Cybertron Jetfire.