Sibling rivalry

So, as you can see, I managed to get my hands on Botcon 2012 Shattered Glass Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus! I'll do full individual reviews of them later, but I just wanted them to have a bit of a spotlight here.

Firstly, for the uninitiated, these are Shattered Glass transformers, meaning that they hail from a universe where everything is reversed, primarily the morality of the characters, leading to evil Autobots and good Decepticons. In most universes, Optimus and Magnus are two brothers, top-tier autobots who fight for the freedom of all sentient beings and what-not. Here, Optimus is a despot on the level of Hitler, and Magnus is his former right-hand general who (much like most Starscreams) tried to usurp leadership from his brother. Optimus recently upgaded his body in the style of G2 Optimus, and Magnus, who has been plotting his return from exile, has done the same. Oh, and he also has a skull face, since his brother ripped off his actual face.

The toys themselves look great. Optimus already got a toy back in 2008 in the original SG set, which I really should have bought. It was a repaint of the Classics voyager mold, and still goes for $500+ on ebay, also helping to keep the cost of the box set high. Fun Publications decided to throw a bone to all of us who didn't buy '08 SG Prime and wanted to fill the evil hole in our collection by repainting last year's Reveal the Shield "G2" Optimus Prime deluxe mold. It's basically what you'd expect, as it doesn't change any of SG Prime's colors - still purple torso, grey legs, and battle damage everywhere. I like the gaudy, huge SG Autobot logo on the hood. Another neat addition is the new text on the nose of the truck. '08 SG Prime had "'Till All Are Gone" emblazoned on his cab fairing, and this toy has a similar twisted quote: "I shall stand...all shall fall." I do wish the bas-relief Matrix in his chest had been painted like Magnus' is, but I guess they used up all the paint apps on other areas.

As for Ultra Magnus, he didn't have a preexisting toy, so we didn't really know what to expect. Turns out that they decided to use the Diaclone colors of the original G1 Magnus toy (called "Powered Convoy") for the evil version of this character. Also repainted from RtS Optimus Prime, this toy was given a new head mold that was already designed by Hasbro (and has actually not been used by Hasbro yet!) - a very evil, skull-faced take on the traditional Optimus head design. He looks very sharp, and, to be honest, is the best looking version of the mold I own (thus far).