Good news for non-US / Japanese residents as the e-Hobby and TFCC Solar Requiem sets are now arriving to members around the world. We received our set yesterday as you can see below,

Fun Publications US release of the e-Hobby Shattered Glass G1 Blaster and Soundwave set, which also comes with Slugfest, Ratbat, Ramhorn, Eject and Solarbot is now starting to arrive at doors in the US.  There is no word on when the international orders will be released, but given surface mail times we should get them by May.

The E-Hobby sets have been arriving since late January / early February.

TFW2005.com board member Masabon has posted some images of the just released e-Hobby and TFCC exclusive G1 Shattered Glass Soundwave Vs Blaster giftset. You can view the images here.

The official Transformers Collectors' Club have posted several tweets to try to give some clarification regarding the recent "Beast Wars Shattered Glass" comic preview which was posted online.  In the tweets the group stated "Lets clear up some things about the 2013 story BEAST WARS Shattered Glass... The SG Universe is now home to Classics Earth. Along with Classics earth, a few dozen Heroic Autobots and Evil Decepticons now reside in the Shattered Glass Universe. BEAST WARS Shattered Glass takes place in the distant past on Shattered Glass Earth and features the Heroic Maximals led by Ultra Mammoth Fighting against the Evil Predacons. WHO these Preds are will be revealed in Issue 49. The story focuses on the Classics characters. However, with this story taking place ON Shattered Glass Earth, there may be some cool twists..."

e-Hobby have updated their wbesite with a preview of the comic which will come with their forthcoming Solar Requiem set which is being produced in conjunction with the Transformers Collector's Club.  The set, for those who have forgotten, is the Shattered Glass repaints of Generation One Blaster, Soundwave, Ratbat, Slugfest, Rewind and the new character, Solar. The preview is the cover of the 10-page comic along with a a glimpse of one of the inside pages.  From the preview, which shows a normal characters mixing with the Shattered Glass universe characters it can be deduced that the events of the comic will take place after the events of this years Botcon Comic, Invasion. You can view the preview below.

Andrew "Hydra" Hall has tweeted, via the e-Hobby Shop Twitter account, that they have placed more sets of the Shattered Glass Vs set (Blaster and Soundwave) up for pre-order due to the number of customers who were unable to place their orders in time.

If you live in Japan and are after the figure you can place an order from the e-Hobby website here for 13,900 yen.

eHobby has updated their page with new images of the packaging for their shared exclusive Shattered Glass Blaster vs Soundwave set. Featuring a Shattered Glass take on the old-school Generation One packaging,

Part One Ltd have updated the e-Hobby Shop with images of Solatron, the final (fifth) Cassette transformer from the Shattered Glass Soundwave and Blaster set, based on the Last Autobot.

The e-HOBBY + TFCC Collaboration Shattered Glass Soundwave VS Blaster set is up for pre-order from the Transformers Collectors Club now.

e-HOBBY has also posted a packaging sample image of the toys.

On a related note, the Transformers Collectors Club has clarified a few things via their Twitter account regarding the release of this set: The EHobby is not build to order BUT we can order as many as we want. Confused? To clarify, our order has to be in BEFORE the Pre-order period is up on our end. So we could technically run out as we are not going to go heavy on these. We will do a guesstimate based on the first couple weeks of sales. We won't go overboard and cut it way short as we know many will wait till that last week. But we dont want to be way heavy either. So when you are able to, please get your order in.

e-HOBBY has updated their website with new images of the upcoming set of Shattered Glass Soundwave and Blaster (plus cassettes) and will be up for release through both e-HOBBY and the Transformers Collectors Club. The set contains Shattered Glass versions of Generation One Soundwave, Blaster, Ratbat, Slugfest, Ramhorn, and Rewind, as well as something named "Solar Bot" (Possibly an Eject redeco) as well as a new comic, and exclusive stickers to customize your toys with- including a long green sticker that you can fold over to become Soundwave's headband. This set is currently slated for a late January release through e-HOBBY, with a price/release date for the TFCC release to come.

Part One Limited have updated the e-Hobby Shop with toy images of the new Shattered Glass Sounwave and Blaster Toys, which as we previously mentioned use the Soundblaster and Twincast molds

e-Hobby have posted an image of what appears to be a Shattered Glass enspired 2-pack of Transformers Generation One Soundwave and Blaster.

The toys will most likely be recolours of the Encore Soundblaster and Twincast molds that e-Hobby have used previously.

The Planet Iacon have shared an image from weibo.com/botcon which shows some new re-colours of the third party Targetdoids of Optimus Prime and Rodimus in their Shattered Glass colour schemes from Botcon.  You can view the image below and can compare them to the original Botcon figures using our Transformers Toy Gallery section.

Thanks to Planet Iacon here's a first look at what appears to be Botcon 2012 Shattered Glass Generation 2 Optimus Prime. It's not confirmed whether this is the attendee 'freebie' or part of one of the add-on sets sold at the convention itself. This is a redeco of Reveal the Shield Optimus Prime using the same colour scheme as the existing Shattered Glass Optimus Prime from 2008's Botcon boxed set.

Some fans will see this as a nice node to the original set, others as a cop-out and futher indication that Fun Publications are running out of ideas for this years set.

This takes the list to.

BoxSet

• Gigatron (Overlord)
• Metal Hawk
• Soundwave - Shattered Glass
• Ultra Magnus - Shattered Glass
• Turbo Tracks - Shattered Glass
• Tredshot - Shattered Glass

Loose

• G2 Optimus Prime - Shattered Glass
• Octopunch - Shattered Glass
• ?
• ?
• ?
• ?

Custom Competition

• ?

Full Metal Hero's Stripe (or Minon to Transformers At The Moon members) has gotten his hands on the BotCon exclusive Hunt for the Decepticons Voyager Sea Spray repaint of Shattered Glass Otcopunch, and posted a pictorial review. Click here to view the rest of Stripe's images and read his review of the figure

Early warning for the review - Octopunch is my favourite Transformer and has been since I got my paws on him as a child, so expect some biased love for this toy.
I've wait 20+ years for a new Octopunch toy and whilst i'll openly admit that I wasn't blown away by this interpretation at first, having the toy in hand is perhaps the most excited i've been for a Transformer in years.

This is the third time we've seen this mold, and if you don't love it by now then you've likely already made up your mind about this figure. If you took the lunge on Seaspray and Deep Dive then you'll know what to expect and it really comes down to character and colour choice.

The colours on the toy are much better than early images suggested, and whilst the green of the hovercraft ring isn't what I would call 'Octopunch green', the use of blue, yellow and purple is really nice. Paint apps are decent, with only a few little missed bits here and there. One half of the crotch plate is missing the blue though. If you take the view that Shattered Glass figures can ignore traditional colours schemes, then the one chosen for Ock is perfectly acceptable and very cool in its own right.

I've grown especially fond of the head, and whilst I completely understand the calls for a new one, the blue breathing aparatus (like on the G1 pretender's chest) over the purple helmet really does have that Octopunch feel to it.

Transformation is smooth and easy (and yes I know I mistransformed the shoulder plates in some photos - I was too excited to have my Ock figure), and joints are reasonably tight. Overall the quality of the toy from a construction point of view is easily comparable to Seaspray and Deep Dive, and the firing missile launchers work fine.
My only real gripe is that the peg for the missile launcher is a bit too tight for him to hold them in his hand, although they fit on the forearm pegs just fine. The back plate where the deck of the hovercraft folds up is also a little finnicky at the bottom hinge and takes some effort to lock in correctly.

Octopunch is far from a must have for most fans, and anyone who already owns this mold has probably had their fix from it, but there is still something really special about him. Sure he's missing the tentacles, harpoon gun, crab chap and the pretender-ness of the G1 toy, but recent reimaginings over the past few years of Bludgeon, Skullgrin and Thunderwing have redecuated us in our expectations anyway. The little touches such as the tentacle decals on the chest, blue breathing mask and general coolness really sell the figure.

Dare I say - roll on a voyager sized Stranglehold?