TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2008 (Timelines) Shattered Glass Megatron & Divebomb

Prompted by the recent reveal of a 'new' Shattered Glass Megatron, fanmoded out of the uninspiring Siege tank mold with a few added parts, I realised that my write-up of the original BotCon toy was long past overdue... I mean, it's from an event in 2008, for crying out loud, so it's more than ten years late.

The Shattered Glass concept certainly has its detractors but, for me, the idea of Evil Autobots and Heroic Decepticons was a pretty obvious, just not entirely novel take on the franchise. I've often said that the mottos of the two factions' respective leaders are open to wilful misinterpretation: "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" could be offering the opinion that certain beings should not be considered 'sentient' - a parallel to the real world slave trade of old - while "Peace through tyranny" could be a rueful observation that only a world rigidly controlled can be considered truly 'peaceful', which echoes Beast Machines. Ultimately, Megatron wants peace, while Optimus Prime wants to reserve freedom for those who are deemed worthy of it.

And yet 'Shattered Glass', the comic book accompanying the boxed set, was a largely quite pedestrian tale which continued the adventures of Cliffjumper from the Collectors' Club membership magazine's ongoing story. It also did more with the Attendee Souvenir toys - particularly Megatron and Rodimus, sold at the show as a bagged set - than it did with the boxed set characters, and spent two of its mere 24 pages providing an infodump of the alternate history of the Shattered Glass version of Cybertron. Making matters worse, the Club had released a three page 'preview' of the comic ahead of the event - as an April Fool prank - which ended up being better (not least in terms of giving its characters discernible personalities) than the full comic published for the event.

 

All of which is to say that, if Hasbro are being a bit lazy with the Shattered Glass concept, it's not without precedent, to a degree. It wasn't one of BotCon's crowning achievements, but some of the figures - most notably those not part of the boxed set - were pretty good. So let's take a look at their Heroic Decepticon leader, Megatron.

Superlink Galvatron General

Once upon a time, when a TransFormers character got an upgrade, it meant a whole new mold. Think Powermaster Optimus Prime or, indeed, G1 Galvatron. In the Unicron Trilogy, however, upgrades came either in the form of one character combining with another, or a simple repaint. While this trilogy didn't start this trend (Robots In Disguise is to blame!), it certainly raised it to an artform, taking each of three different Megatron molds, and giving them a new paint job to create that line's Galvatron.

Strangely, though, Superlink started out with Galvatron rather than Megatron, and his repaint/upgrade gained a suffix to his name along with a very G1-inspired colourscheme.

Note that this is the smaller Japanese version of the model, rather that the upscaled US/European version.

Robots in Disguise Galvatron

Ah, me... Another repaint. I picked this up in Forbidden Planet on the same shopping trip that I bought RiD Ultra Magnus and Megatron. The friend I was with took one look at the packaging and suggested I should only buy one or the other (clearly more concerned about FP's rip-off prices than I was), but I wouldn't listen.

So, exactly how much of a fool was I?

Robots in Disguise Megatron

This is going to be a bit of an unusual one... Robots in Disguise, as a toyline, was a strange mish-mash of almost excessively humanoid Autobots and Beast Wars throwback Decepticons... or were they still Predacons... that's not entirely clear, as different characters had different insignias, and both traditional Decepticons and Predacons were represented. Indeed, some of the Decepticons were basically repaints of Generation 2 molds.

Megatron (and the slightly remolded 'upgrade', Galvatron) is very definitely a Predacon - as the prominent Spark Crystal will attest - but he's also very far removed from the true Beast Wars aesthetic.

Galaxy Force Dreadrock

Let's face it, Dreadrock is pretty weird. He's clearly some kind of military transport plane - hardly the most impressive choice of flying vehicle, though one which was revisited in the Revenge of the Fallen toyline - and his key-activated gimmick is a tail gun turret which isn't even hidden before it's activated. Tucked away, maybe, but certainly not hidden. The US/UK version of this, from the rewritten/dubbed TV series, was named Jetfire, possibly the most inappropriate application of that name in the history of TransFormers, and gave him an Australian accent...

Galaxy Force Sonic Bomber

Over the many years of the TransFormers franchise, one aeroplane has been used and reused as the basis for vehicle modes for the airborne 'bots. From Generation 1 mini-bot Powerglide to... er... Universe Ultra Powerglide just last year, the A-10 Tankbuster has been an unlikely, but generally successful, form of disguise for these transforming alien robots. With each new toy, the complexity of transformation improved. Unlike most others, though, Sonic Bomber's alternate mode doesn't try to match the A-10 as closely as possible - it's derived from that plane, without actually being that plane... Think of it as a Sci-Fi Tankbuster

Universe Darkwind

There's a funny series of coincidences to this thing... Or perhaps it's not as coincidental as one might think.

Back in 2007, the BotCon box set - Games of Deception - featured a Classics reimagining of Generation 1 Powermaster Dreadwind. Fans immediately began theorising about what this might mean. Would the soon-to-be-rebooted Universe/Classics 2.0 line feature Darkwing? If so, would the two combine into the fearsome superplane Dreadwing? All the evidence seemed to suggest a negative on both counts... Until Kitbashers discovered that, with the right paintjob, Universe Silverbolt looked eerily similar to the Generation 1 gloom-sayer. Very soon after, official photos of Hasbro's own interpretation surfaced. Frankly, both the home repaint and the official one were a huge improvement on the model's original Autobot colourscheme, so I vowed to pick this one up, despite its simplicity.

Universe Classics Powerglide

While the original Classics line reimagined Bumblebee as a sporty compact rather than a Volkwagen Beetle-like car (licensing issues, coupled with the obvious desire to repaint the same model as Cliffjumper, obviously), the updated form of Powerglide is still an A-10...

...Albeit a much larger one.

Powerglide has gone from being a mini Autobot (not much larger than today's Mini-Cons, but far less poseable than most) to being an Ultra-class figure with electronic lights and sounds. He's also developed a quite ingenious transformation, that folds the back end of the plane over itself. Bizarrely, though, he's still perfectly recognisable thanks to some very clever design than borrows just enough of the original's look, but updates it in terms of engineering.

Now, confession time: I didn't buy the official UK release of Powerglide. First and foremost, I saw this one - the Japanese 'US Edition' release - before I saw the UK version, but that's not the reason. I didn't buy the UK version because they got the colours wrong.

I know, I know, I'm such a G1 Fanboy. Gimme a break, he just looked wrong.

The Japanese version basically reverses the colours - red for white/grey - and results in a far more authentic Powerglide.