I have two to talk about today!  I didn't write up a post for SG Soundwave, since he kind of bugged me.  Conceptually I'd been looking forward to him more than most, if only because I want an up-to-date pal for my SG Ravage, but his execution left me cold.  The head looked off to me, plus the idea that you have to buy his trademark headband separately sounds like an actual strawman scenario someone would cook up to malign Fun Publications.  There may be very good reasons for it, but there's still this nasty taste in my mouth.

Today's SG Treadshot reveal makes up for it.  My favorite things in every BotCon set tend to be the absolutely insane toy nobody else would have thought of or asked for in a million years.  Treadshot is this toy.  Waaaaaay back when, there was a toy in Armada called Side Swipe.  It was a very terrible-looking toy.  It remains a punchline amongst Transformers fans.  And because Hasbro loves us very much, they redecoed it not once but twice, and just barely.  They changed the blue once to maroon and once to purple.  These were not desired figures.

But the maroon one's name was Treadshot.

I have no idea what the thought process was that led FP to creating this figure, but Shattered Glass Treadshot is colored like Armada Side Swipe but with Treadshot's hood stripe.  It uses the Jazz mold's alternate head which hasn't been used yet at retail.  And it's pretty damn glorious.  I don't know why it exists, but now that it does I am super glad.  It is craaaaaaazy.  It makes the whole BotCon charade feel less cynical.

(Plus there's this part not-so-deep inside of me that wants to believe that the original Universe Treadshot and this SG Treadshot are the exact same dude.  Universe Treadshot was from a random, unspecified universe, and he was packaged versus an unspecified Ultra Magnus who seemed like kind of a tool.  Plus his symbol was the same maroon as the rest of him, making it neeearly SG Decepticon red.  Their stories could easily sync up.  It would delight me to no end to find out this 2003 Universe guy was from the Shattered Glass universe all along.)

Today's BotCon 2012 toy reveal was Shattered Glass Tracks, an evil Autobot.  He's last year's Reveal the Shield Turbo Tracks toy in red, black, and blue, so you can also use him as Road Rage if you don't care for that whole mirrorverse deal.  (If you want to read about the origin and history of the red Tracks that would become Road Rage, here's a good page for it.)

There's not a whole lot to say about the BotCon toy.  It's a pretty straightforward redeco.  It looks like a red Tracks, which is the point, and a goal that's kind of hard to miss.  It's not like Tuesday's Overlord, over which one could argue mold use and head sculpting and color layouts.  This is straight up an existing variant Tracks color scheme put onto a newer Tracks toy.

So.

The first of the BotCon 2012 toys has been revealed! Whether you hate or love this guy seems to depend on what forum you're on, but let me present my feelings. Because this is my blog! It's what you're here for!

Overlord is ROTF Bludgeon with a new head. I really really love the ROTF Bludgeon toy. I also really like Overlord, mostly (okay, only) after his big showing in Last Stand of the Wreckers. So on the face of it, this is great news.

I am not entirely sold on him being a samurai. Since I'm only familiar with LSOTW Overlord, I think of Overlord as this evil crazy immoral jerkwad, and samurais are usually portrayed as honorable warriors. And so there's a characterization dissonance here, for me.

However, this is how my brain has coped with this.  We all know Overlord got all skeletonized (yet still operational) by Ironfist at the end of Last Stand of the Wreckers.   In my personal canon, this is the body Overlord has after this event, after having pieced together new body panels to cover himself up like patchwork.  The head is a perfect match for Nick Roche's rendition, so that helps smooth things over.  So very pouty.

I don't have an Overlord, but I'm gonna!  And he's gonna be a monster.  A pouty monster.

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.

If you're in or near Columbus, Ohio, and want to go grab a copy of Shortpacked! Book 4, there are some copies at The Laughing Ogre.  I'm still in the middle of mailing out the preorders, and when I work through a bigger chunk of those, I'll put Book 4 up in the store.  But in the meantime, if you're local, you've got an advantage.

Out today was the comic book store edition of BotCon 2011's Transformers Animated adventure.  Be sure to hit up your local comic book store for that!  In addition to like 16 extra pages of content, there's photos of my Animated Minerva toy and ... okay, a half-page ad for Shortpacked!.  There's nothing new there on that front, really.  Just figgered I'd mention it.  But the story itself is fantastic and amazingly-rendered, and I recommend it.

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!

I've got a few hours before we gotta head over to the theatre, so I've got a little time to crank out more photos and words about the BotCon exclusives I haven't given specific attention to yet.  I'm in the middle of packing away toys for our move in a few weeks anyway, and I can't box away some of my Animated stuff until I get them photographed with their BotCon redecoes and/or retools!  I can't help it.  It's my compulsion.

So here's Lockdown and his BotCon counterpart, the Stunticon Wildrider.  For being a dark gray redeco of a black toy, they look pretty different, which is nothing short of amazing.  (Note: My Lockdown is a little custom-painted.)  The silver and burgundy definitely distinguish him, and the most recognizable part of of Lockdown, his lantern-shaped head, is replaced by a new one.  Wildrider has a pointier jaw with jagged teeth and a little helmet.

Another nice thing about Wildrider is that he's the "Blazing Lockdown" mold, which means he comes with the chainsaw instead of the hook.  I never got the chainsaw version, so that's an extra bonus for me.

Despite Wildrider's feral appearance, he actually sounds like Dr. Smith from Lost in Space.

I kid, mostly.  We got our G2 Breakdown last year, so it's nice to have the first BotCon exclusive of Breakdown which isn't in his G2 colors, as much as I love my cyan and magenta.  It's just... his regular colors are kinda boring.  I never dug the off-white.  And the BotCon exclusives are basically the only reason I know Breakdown exists, so I have no nostalgia for it.  Honestly, out of all five of the Animated Stunticons in the box set, Animated Breakdown is probably my least favorite.

...which is made up by Animated Sideswipe being so awesome.  Sideswipe was one of the at-show souvenir add-ons, bundled with Toxitron.  Unlike Breakdown, Sideswipe IS in his G2 colors, which are his G1 colors (red and black) reversed.  The original G2 Sideswipe toy had a green launcher and a few green stickers, and the Animated version ramps up the green to beautiful effect.  It's really a great combination, the bright green and the black and the red and the white.  It's not a color combination we get much.

Why is Animated Sideswipe in G2 colors?  I imagine it's 'cuz that mold's already been in red as Rodimus.  (It's already been in black as Black Rodimus, but not a lot of people have that, and it's pretty different anyway.)  Plus, well, G2 Sideswipe colors are just objectively better than G1 Sideswipe colors anyway.  There, I said it!  I've never owned a G1 Sideswipe, since I picked up a G2 Sideswipe in my late teens and never saw a reason to pick up any of the G1 reissues as they've been paraded out in the past decade, 'cuz, well, why?  I already had the better version!  Sideswipe didn't really do anything until the Marvel G2 comic anyway.

Another nice thing about this pair is the head.  It strikes a great compromise between both of their head designs.  Breakdown's head looks like Breakdown's (animation model) and Sideswipe's head looks like Sideswipe's.  It's amazing what a little hedging and color differences can do.  And they both kind of deserve the dour expression on their face, what with Breakdown being an unhappy nervous wreck and Sideswipe being a bitter ol' cop.

(Neil Ross did a great voice for him at BotCon 2011's script reading.)

Plus, you know me and mold reuse.  Reuse a mold once, and I shrug.  Reuse it a dozen times and suddenly I'm compelled to own all of them.  That collector mentality kicks in.  It's why I own 30 Dinobots.  And if you think I'm happy with my four Animated Rodimus reuses, wait 'til we get to my Animated Cybertronian Ratchet reuses.

'Cuz folks need to know Duncan's ongoing feelings on all things BotCon Thundercracker!  Equally as important as catching up with Conquest or that black guy.

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.