Set Price: $195 (U.S)

(NOTE: Because this is set consists mostly of redecoes, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the set and the color scheme, and merely compares it to the previous iterations of these molds. For a review on the original versions of G1 Autobot Blaster, Ramhorn and Eject (which is used for both Rewind and Solarbot) go here. For a review on the original version of G1 Soundwave, go here.)
 

Autobot Blaster (SG)

Allegiance: Autobot (Shattered Glass)
Difficulty of Transformation: Easy
Color Scheme: Black, moderately light flat gray, and some moderately dark gray, light gray, transparent dark red, very dark bluish purple, red, and flat light blue
Individual Rating: 6.5

    Blaster certainly goes for a duller, darker color scheme than his somewhat brightly-colored original version, with his evil Shattered Glass persona being mostly a couple hues of gray and black. That by itself would be a pretty boring color scheme, but it's the accent colors and HOW those colors are used that makes Blaster's color scheme interesting. The gray that is used for most of his main body and arms is actually NOT the usual blah light gray, but a rather flat, moderately light version of the color. Now, that's not exactly EXCITING, but it does look better and more fitting for a boombox than a milky gray. There's also stickers you put on his shoulders that-- though they sadly cover up existing paint details-- help emulate the "tribal tattos" SG Blaster has been shown to have in fiction. They're a light gray just a shade or two lighter than the gray plastic around them, so I wish they stood out more, but they DO look pretty cool, and help give Blaster a bit more individuality. Being that they're stickers, though, it's a bit difficult to get them on JUST right where they don't get "folded" slightly around the little sliding bits on his shoulders involved in transformation, which is a minor eyesore. On his black legs, there's a good amount of silver and moderately dark gray details, as well as a very dark bluish purple plastic used not only on his speakers, handle, and a few other minor details, but on his robot fists and gun too. It's a pretty nice color, though like with the grays, I wish it was just a TAD lighter to provide more contrast and so it could stand out from the black a little more. The flat light blue color on the chest is the most eye-catching of his colors, and really helps make this a "cool" color scheme, complementing the dark bluish purple fairly well. It's quite a striking color, to the point that I wish it was used a little more on Blaster. Blaster's gray head is also wonderfully detailed with paint-- he's got some black on the front portion of his head, red eyes, and some moderately dark gray on his forehead and around his mouth. It's a pretty good "evil" color combo. Additionally, Blaster has a few extra stickers-- like an extra SG Autobot symbol, and a cool "moon symbol w/ microphone" sticker-- that you can place anywhere on his body; there's no "recommended" area.
    No mold changes have been made to SG Blaster.
 

Autobot Rewind (SG)

Allegiance: Autobot (Shattered Glass)
Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Red, white, silver, chrome silver, and some black, light pale blue, dark flat brown, perwinkle, and light metallic pale gold
Individual Rating: 7.5

    "Evil" Rewind here has a mostly red and white color scheme, with the white mostly on his arms. Chrome silver is used on the usual parts of this toy that are chromed-- i.e., the weapons and some parts of the shoulders and main robot body. It's a pretty solid basic color scheme, though a bit "good Autobot-y" for a Shattered Glass evil Autobot. Apparently SG Rewind's color scheme is an homage to an unreleased G2 Go-Bot, Rumble. (And since there's the whole Rumble/Frenzy vs. Rewind/Eject thing going on, it makes sense in an obscure sort of way.) Some of Rewind's minor bits like his feet and head are black, and provide a nice contrast against his main colors, and I LOVE the light pale blue on Rewind's face, which helps tie him in color-wise to his boss Blaster. His cassette mode has an impressive amount of paint detail, with silver outlined with pale gold covering almost the entire mode, and with some black and dark flat brown detailing in the center to emulate the tape "reels". There's also a nice striped pattern here, and some measurement lines and "METAL POSITION" are written in gold, though it's difficult to pick out against the silver paint. For (optional) stickers, Rewind has a "Vinny's Motors" red-and-white sticker applied near the top of his cassette mode, along with some nice perwinkle stickers on his lower robot legs-- both call back to G2 Go-Bot Rumble, who had a similar "Vinny's Motors" emblem and leg details.
    No mold changes have been made to SG Rewind.
 

Ramhorn (SG)

Allegiance: Autobot (Shattered Glass)
Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Periwinkle, light flat gray, silver, dark metallic gunmetal gray, chrome silver, and some red, metallic teal, black, and dark flat brown
Individual Rating: 6.3

    The Shattered Glass version of Ramhorn is pretty much a reverse color-swap, with his color no longer being a rusty red but rather a cool perwinkle. I quite like this main color, as it not only attracts the eye, but it-- along with the light flat gray paint on his head and mechanical details on his stomach-- ties him in as another of Blaster's evil minions. Both colors also go together and contrast against each other fairly well. As is usually the case, much of Ramhorn's paint is on the front of his cassette mode, which has silver rectangular stripes around a dark gunmetal outer stripe and a rectangular box nearer to the "core" of the cassette. The gunmetal gray bits are bordered by a very nice metallic teal color, which obviously complements the perwinkle plastic well. Like with Rewind, he has black and dark flat brown paint near the center to simulate the "spools" of tape inside-- all in all, it's an impressive amount of detail that looks great. Additionally, he has the usual chrome silver on his missile pack weapons. There's also a little black on some connector points on the legs, and some nice red paint on the eyes, but they don't contribute to the color scheme much. In terms of stickers, Ramhorn has a "RIRRIB" sticker, a nice riff on the classic "RIRFIB/RIBFIR" debate (Rumble is Red/Frenzy is Blue or visa versa) by saying that "Rewind is Red, Ramhorn is Blue", a nice little in-joke. He also has a sticker of mechanical detail that can be put on the blank side of his main body, which is a way of making more clear his homage-- apparently he's an homage to Rumble from the IDW movieverse comics, which... I still would never have gotten if the TFWiki hadn't mentioned it. It's kind of a stretch, but it's a good color scheme, so whatever. (On an outside note, I didn't put this sticker on my copy as I didn't feel it "fit" with the rest of him-- so it's not in the images above.)
    No mold changes have been made to SG Ramhorn.
 

Ratbat (SG)

Allegiance: Decepticon (Shattered Glass)
Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Dark navy blue, light glossy gray, silver, light metallic silvery blue, chrome gold, and some black, dark flat brown, white, and dull yellow
Individual Rating: 7.6

    Shattered Glass Ratbat is, of course, not a new mold, but given that I've never reviewed the G1 Ratbat mold, I'll essentially be treating this toy as a new mold for the purposes of this review. Ratbat's cassette mode is SOLID, with only some folds on the sides and a few cracks even giving one the hint that it's not an actual mini-cassette (well, as long as you don't look at it from the backside, but this applies for all the cassette tape minions). Ratbat's main color is a very dark navy blue, and the silver and light metallic silvery blue lines really contrast against and complement the dark blue quite well. There's also some black lines around the tape reels and on some other minor outlines and details. Like the other cassettes in this set, Ratbat has black and dark flat brown in the center of this mode to simulate you being able to see the actual "tape" inside.
    To transform Ratbat to bat mode, you basically unfold the sides of the cassette tape mode, as well as the tiny legs and ears from the side, as well as push up on his small head. The legs are a bit pathetically small even for a bat-- they're basically just his feet-- but all things considered (especially for a rather 2-D G1 cassette toy) Ratbat looks pretty good in beast mode, with his proportions somewhat on point. (His wings could stand to be wider/bigger, but they're not annoyingly small.) Although his cassette tape mode was rather free of mold detailing, in bat mode Ratbat has a pretty impressive amount of detailing here for a G1 toy, with hinges, pistons, and the like all molded quite well into his wings. His main body, however, is relatively free of the stuff, with only a few basic details. I wish his wings had some paint detailing to bring out all those details, but the glossy gray works well on the main body as a contrast color (thank goodness it's not the bland light milky shade of this color), and the white eyes really contrast well against the dark blue. For stickers, beyond a Shattered Glass Decepticon symbol, Ratbat also comes with two yellow-and-black stickers for his chest to both mix up the color scheme a bit more and make it obvious that SG Ratbat is essentially Batman (he even goes by "Bat-Bot" publically and has an alter-ego). It's a fun identity for this "polar opposite" of the original devious Ratbat, and the color scheme certainly works better for a bat than Ratbat's default pinkish purple. Unfortunately-- and this is a rather big unfortunately-- there aren't holes in the chest stickers, and there NEEDS to be to store SG Ratbat in a cassette tape holder or in Soundwave, so you kind of have to "punch" your own holes, which can wrinkle the stickers a bit. That was a big oversight, there. As with the other cassettes, Ratbat has two weapons that can be plugged into the two holes in his body to form a sort of dual-cannon backpack. The chrome gold on the back cannons looks pretty good and is another neat contrast color, but there's odd pointy peg-like protrusions below the main cannons that look sort of odd, since they don't actually peg into anything. For articulation, Ratbat can move side-to-side at the wings at two points, back-and-forth slightly at the midpoint on each wing, and up-and-down slightly at the neck, each foot and each ear (though the ears are VERY loose and tiny pieces, to the point where I worry about easily losing them-- it's also hard to get them to stay straight and symmetrical). In case you haven't been keeping track, that's pretty darned good for a G1 cassette toy.
    No mold changes have been made to SG Ratbat when compared with the original.
 

Solarbot

Allegiance: N/A
Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: White, transparent sunny yellow, chrome silver, silver, and some black, dark flat brown, metallic bright yellow, metallic gold, and moderately dark silver
Individual Rating: 7.2

    Solarbot is another redeco of the G1 Eject/Rewind mold-- apparently a toy called "Solarbot" was teased on some early G2 packaging, but it was removed for the "final sales" versions and it was otherwise not known what it would have looked like. This is the Club's take on it-- he's basically the "prize" the two teams are fighting over in this set. His color scheme is very much based on being "solar", with white and a transparent golden "sunny" yellow both being his main colors. Both colors complement each other exceedingly well, and really help emphasize his properties. Plus, the transparent plastic on the body looks cool, what with being able to see the "inner parts", especially since most of them are white. Like with Rewind, Solarbot has some silver chrome on his weapons, shoulders, and main body. For his cassette mode, he's got silver outlining with some darker silver paint nearer to the center of the mode, and-- like the other cassettes in this set-- some black and dark flat brown in the center to make it look like you can see the recording tape inside. He's also got some really neat metallic bright yellow lines around the silver paint portions of the cassette mode, which really looks stunning to the point where I wish it was used more on this guy. As one last color, Solarbot has some metallic gold on his visor and faceplate in robot mode. For stickers, Solarbot just has one small one-- a little transparent "sunburst" symbol you can put pretty anywhere you want to.
    No mold changes have been made to Solarbot when compared to Rewind/Eject.
 

Soundwave (SG)

Allegiance: Decepticon (Shattered Glass)
Difficulty of Transformation: Easy
Color Scheme: White, moderately light milky blue, dark transparent blue, and some chrome silver, silver, moderately light metallic blue, black, and moderately light green
Individual Rating: 8.5

    Soundwave is the only SG character in this pack that has had a previous toy-- and like that BotCon 2012 exclusive, his color scheme is loosely based off a white "Music Label" music player Soundwave Takara released a while back. Thus, he's mostly white, though blue is a secondary color. He's got three different shades of blue-- a dark shade used for his transparent chest/tape deck, a milky moderately light version of the color used for his lower arms, and a rather nice metallic shade of that same color used on his head and the tampoed details on his legs. All three shades look good, and complement each other somewhat nicely. Beyond the basic blues and whites, there's also a bit of chrome silver on the buttons, around the "rim" of the chest, and on his missiles. He's also got some black here and there, particularly on his feet and hands. Soundwave has an impressive amount of G1-esque tampoed detail-- from the silver, red, black, blue, and green paint apps on his knees, to the black-and-blue details on his shoulders, to the silver-and-black details on his weapons and upper right side of the chest, it all looks quite good and breaks up the white and blue pretty well so there's not one overly large area of any one color. The light green and metallic blue go together particularly nicely, especially on the knees but also on his head, where they contrast and complement each other pretty nicely and help to differentiate Soundwave's face from his normal G1 coloration. (That said, I'm not a fan of the white faceplate.) For stickers, SG Soundwave has a SG Decepticon symbol, as well as stickers of "I heart Rock N' Roll", "SND WAV", a black guitar against a red circular background, and a stylized "Cold Slither" band symbol-- all of which were on his BotCon 2012 exclusive, and which can be placed anywhere you want on the figure (or not), with no "set position" for any of them. (The pictures above are just where I put them on mine.) Soundwave also comes with a long green band sticker that can be wrapped around his head, but it's a sticker, so you can't just take it off-- and transforming him to cassette player mode damages it, so this sticker was pretty ill-conceived. Mine soon broke, which is why it isn't in the pics above-- a real shame, since it's practically SG Soundwave's trademark "thing".
    No mold changes have been made to SG Soundwave when compared with its original reissue.
 

Slugfest (SG)

Allegiance: Decepticon (Shattered Glass)
Difficulty of Transformation: Very Easy
Color Scheme: Light pale reddish orange, light milky gray, dark red, and some light pinkish red, black, dark flat brown, light blue, and chrome copper
Individual Rating: 5.9

    Like Ratbat, Slugfest isn't a new mold, but he's the first time I've reviewed this mold on this site, so I'm treating this like a full review. In cassette mode, Slugfest looks slightly above-average for your G1 Cassettebot, with the square shape pretty well-accounted for. The dino legs are the really telling bits, and that's mostly only because they're of a different color and thus stick out realy easily; if they had been the same color as most of the rest of Slugfest, they'd barely be noticeable. Slugfest's head is also partially visible, especially with the blue eyes, in the lower right-hand of this mode. It's also a bit skinnier than the rest of this mode, so it sticks out a bit in that manner, as well. The rest of this mode is pretty solid construction-wise. SG Slugfest's color scheme is mostly a fairly nice "tomato-y" pale reddish orange, with a bit of light milky gray on the legs. Unfortunately it's that very bland milky shade of gray, and it does stick out as I already mentioned, but at least it... well, I can't come up with other any positives besides contrast, really. As with most Club exclusives, Slugfest has an impressive amount of paint, with dark red surrounding most of the "core" of his cassette tape mode, with light pinkish red stripes closer to the center-- both colors contrast and complement each other (and the reddish orange plastic) fairly well. There's also some black around the circles, some lettering, and some black and dark flat brown paint apps near the center to make it look like you can see Slugfest's "tape reels". Unlike with the other color schemes in this set, SG Slugfest's color scheme doesn't appear to be an homage to anything in particular, it's just a more "Autobot-y" good guy color scheme than his original sickly green.
    Slugfest's transformation is very straightforward and simply consists of unfolding his beast parts out from the sides of the tape mode, but a nice surprise is that little stegosaurus plates (unfortunately of that light milky shade) pop up on a spring once you unfold both Slugfest's head and tail. In stegosaurus mode one has to, of course, take into account that it's a G1 toy and a cassette tape toy, so he's pretty 2-D. That said, from the "preferred" view it looks pretty good proportionally, with his plates being a bit small and his tail a bit too short and stubby, but otherwise he's fairly proportional. From the side with all his cassette mode paint apps he looks pretty nice, but his other side is rather plain, with no paint apps visible at all except for his blue eyes (which really contrast well with the orangish-red-- I wish that paint was used a little more). Beyond a SG Decepticon symbol, he only has two small stickers that really don't help vary up his colors, either-- he has a yellow "DINOCON" sticker to distinguish him from a DinoBOT, and he also comes with a little yellow-and-green restrainer bolt sticker as well. Nice touches, but again, they don't exactly cover up much real estate. Although his detailing is a little simplistic by modern standards, he's fairly detailed by G1 standards, with a pretty good amount of metallic plating and mechanical bits detailed on his "plain side" and stomach, as well as on his legs. Slugfest also has two big chrome copper hip-mounted guns that can be plugged in in this mode-- they look pretty good and complement his main color well, but like with the other G1 cassette-bots his weapons can't be stored in tape mode. He can move up-and-down at the head and tail, as well as back-and-forth at both pairs of legs (as one, each pair is one piece).
    No mold changes have been made to SG Slugfest when compared with the original.
 

    The SG Soundwave vs. SG Blaster set is a pretty awesome addition to the collection for those who can't get enough of the G1 cassette players and cassette minions, AND who have the spare change to be shopping for Transformers Club-priced exclusives, as it IS a fairly expensive set (though not outrageously so-- it DOES come with a lot). Of course, be aware that you're buying G1 molds and thus their proportions and articulation aren't up to modern standards for the most part, so if you only deal with modern molds this set is obviously not worth your consideration. However, even if you have the previous versions of these molds, the color schemes and details on these guys are pretty good and quite different (and in most cases superior) when compared to the originals, and worth your money-- again, assuming you fit the criteria mentioned above.

Reviews by Beastbot

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