As I've said in the past, I don't care much for Shattered Glass as a concept, but every once in a while they'll sell a cool toy under that name and I'll buy it anyway. They could have marketed this toy as a Legacy toy under the name Diaclone Universe Delta Magnus, since that's basically what it is.

The box is a mostly plastic-free endeavor, though they did use some stretchy clear rubber bands to tie him down. I'm surprised at how mch obvious empty space there is in the box. The package is about 11" tall and 9.5" in width, but the toy inside is clearly only about eight inches tall. He's not even taking up most of the open, visible box window, and the way he's centered square in the box, with the window being positioned up and to the side, really served to emphasize how much empty space there is. It's a weird design choice.

Also, it's a good thing I'm not collecting sealed toys, because the tape on the bottom of the box was already cut. I got this straight from Hasbro Pulse, so I have no idea why or how this would have happened.

He comes with a big, red rifle, his shoulder launchers, a Matrix, and a big sword, all tied down to the inner cardboard. The extra robot head is tucked into a box indent near the bottom, and is wrapped in tissue paper. I like to think somebody at Hasbro was doing a quality check and realized the head was missing, and that's why the box tape was cut. But, I'll probably never know.

So, let's talk about Diaclone for a second. Back in the early 1980's, what we know today as the G1 Ultra Magnus toy was sold in Japan as Powered Convoy, essentially a variation on the regular Diaclone Convoy only with a car-carrier trailer instead of a box trailer. The cab was blue, and the trailer module was mostly grey with some blue and red and black. When developing The Transformers: the Movie, Hasbro wanted to adapt this toy for Transformers and intended to use it as Ultra Magnus. Early test footage was put together to pitch the movie to investors, and this was the color scheme used in that early animation.

Later, though, the color scheme for Ultra Magnus was revised to make him more closely resemble Optimus Prime. He was given the same basic red-white-blue color mapping, but it was applied differently, and it also used a much lighter shade of blue. The new colors tended to read more like a hero character to American audiences, but we've occasionally gotten tribute toys based on this early Diaclone version of Ultra Magnus, like a PVC figure in this color scheme as well as a Masterpiece variant, which I think was the first time he was officially inducted into the Transformers mythos proper and given his own name—Delta Magnus.

The stock head that comes with the toy is a wacky robot demon with skeletal teeth and Piranacon ears. Don't care for it. I wouldn't have bought the toy if it hadn't come with the Delta Magnus head.

The color mapping is interesting, because it's not just a straight color-for-color swap with the normal Ultra Magnus pallette. The white (front of the lower legs, fists, shoulder towers, pelvis) becomes black, except when it becomes dark grey (upper legs, biceps). The blue of the arms (shoulders, forearms) becomes red, as does the helmet, but other blues (the lower legs and feet, the chest) become a deep, dark blue. Weirdly, most of the red parts (the upper torso, the painted panels on the legs, the shoulder rockets) just stay red. It's pretty close in appearance to the movie test footage.

Somebody on Twitter has already demonstrated how it's possible to swap the red windows on Delta Magnus here with the blue windows on Kingdom Ultra Magnus, a move which arguably improves both toys. I might actually have to do this.

The sword is the same accessory as the one that comes with Legacy G2 Laser Optimus Prime, and it splits into the same four-inch sword and rounded axe-shaped thing. The instructions note how you can mount it to the roof of Magnus' trailer in vehicle mode. He also comes with the same Matrix that came with G2 Prime. All of these parts are cast in a translucent red that looks pink when you hold it up to the light. Note that the Kingdom Ultra Magnus toy wasn't actually designed to accommodate a Matrix, so there's no place to really put it into his chest. You could sort of shove it inside the truck cab, along with the small robot head, but it would rattle around a lot..

The de-armored, small robot is mostly blue, with grey upper legs and biceps, and a black robot head, fists, and lower legs, and red chest windows. He has a tiny purple Autobot symbol stamped on his left shoulder, but the tampograph is interrupted partially by the lines of the sculpt. The colors here are pretty accurate to Diaclone. They even gave the small robot yellow eyes! (It would have been cool if they'd thrown in a red version of Titans Return Full-Tilt to represent the Powered Buggy, but that would have likely driven the price up another twenty bucks.)

No idea what the vehicle mode looks like, because I've completely forgotten how to build it. Oh, okay, fine. It's a bunch of Motormaster-style nonsense involving plugging the shoulder armor into the robot feet, unwrapping the chest armor... plugging the feet armor together, that I remembered. (As an aside, I do love the colors used for the Shattered Glass instructions. Mostly a muted midnight blue with hot pink callouts for the transformation steps. Absolutely YES. My aging eyeballs are loving this. I would be fine if all Transformers instructions were printed in these high-contrast colors from now until eternity.)

So, truck mode has a blue cab, a mostly blue trailer, with a touch of red on the roof of the trailer (and, if you equip him as show in the instructions, a big red gun and a couple of red rockets and a big red sword). I don't hate it at all. Same deal with the pentagon-shaped spots on the trailer, but no Autobot symbols. I'm going to have to break out the Toyhax stickers.. Delta Star stickers for Delta Magnus!

I had thought this was going to feel like a decadent purchase (fifty bucks is a lot—getting the Diaclone crew like Spin-Out and Road Rage is one thing, but this is arguably the most expensive non-character I've ever owned). In fact, though, I really, really like this toy a lot. Because the color scheme isn't tied to a well-known media character, my brain isn't just going "oh, that's Ultra Magnus" or "oh, that's Optimus Prime" and without that instant association, instead I find myself getting lost in the details of the sculpt. At the same time, though, Diaclone-colored Ultra Magnus got about fifteen seconds' worth of screen time in the movie test footage. A pen pal of mine sent me a copy of it even before I'd found the Internet, so it's something I've been familiar with for a long time. Diaclone Ultra Magnus is a thing. It's really cool to own a toy in these colors, especially without having to break the bank and go for the Diaclone edition (or the Takara reissue, which is also quite spendy—the eHobby edition sells for around $600 nowadays).

So, yeah. He's neat.

Zob (also got a big box from NECA toy, and I suspect it's my Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang members and Rock Soldier troopers)

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> As I've said in the past, I don't care much for Shattered Glass as a concept,

It’s a really dumb concept. A mirror universe with everyone we care about
existing but where all motivations are reversed would require a history
that somehow has all those beings in the same positions as in the main
universe. That doesn’t work.

>but every once in a while they'll sell a cool toy under that name and I'll
> buy it anyway. They could have marketed this toy as a Legacy toy under
> the name Diaclone Universe Delta Magnus, since that's basically what it is.

They were clear that this was Delta Magnus, SG Ultra Magnus and Magna
Convoy(?) all in one, with SG UM taking the lead.

> The box is a mostly plastic-free endeavor, though they did use some
> stretchy clear rubber bands to tie him down. I'm surprised at how mch
> obvious empty space there is in the box. The package is about 11" tall
> and 9.5" in width, but the toy inside is clearly only about eight inches
> tall. He's not even taking up most of the open, visible box window, and
> the way he's centered square in the box, with the window being positioned
> up and to the side, really served to emphasize how much empty space there
> is. It's a weird design choice.

It’s a shitty box. I think it was designed with one expectation of
materials and executed with another.

The plainer Selects boxes are way more appealing, and that’s kind of an
amazing thing to say.

> Also, it's a good thing I'm not collecting sealed toys, because the tape
> on the bottom of the box was already cut. I got this straight from
> Hasbro Pulse, so I have no idea why or how this would have happened.

In the shattered glass universe, MISB stands for Mint In Sliced-Open Box.
Part of the concept.

> He comes with a big, red rifle, his shoulder launchers, a Matrix, and a
> big sword, all tied down to the inner cardboard. The extra robot head is
> tucked into a box indent near the bottom, and is wrapped in tissue paper.
> I like to think somebody at Hasbro was doing a quality check and
> realized the head was missing, and that's why the box tape was cut. But,
> I'll probably never know.

Quality checks seem so unlikely.

> So, let's talk about Diaclone for a second. Back in the early 1980's,
> what we know today as the G1 Ultra Magnus toy was sold in Japan as
> Powered Convoy, essentially a variation on the regular Diaclone Convoy
> only with a car-carrier trailer instead of a box trailer. The cab was
> blue, and the trailer module was mostly grey with some blue and red and
> black. When developing The Transformers: the Movie, Hasbro wanted to
> adapt this toy for Transformers and intended to use it as Ultra Magnus.
> Early test footage was put together to pitch the movie to investors, and
> this was the color scheme used in that early animation.
>
> Later, though, the color scheme for Ultra Magnus was revised to make him
> more closely resemble Optimus Prime. He was given the same basic
> red-white-blue color mapping, but it was applied differently, and it also
> used a much lighter shade of blue. The new colors tended to read more
> like a hero character to American audiences, but we've occasionally
> gotten tribute toys based on this early Diaclone version of Ultra Magnus,
> like a PVC figure in this color scheme as well as a Masterpiece variant,
> which I think was the first time he was officially inducted into the
> Transformers mythos proper and given his own name—Delta Magnus.

I have the Masterpiece toy, because I have a hoarding problem, obviously.
It’s really nice.

> The stock head that comes with the toy is a wacky robot demon with
> skeletal teeth and Piranacon ears. Don't care for it. I wouldn't have
> bought the toy if it hadn't come with the Delta Magnus head.

I do like the extra heads they have been including. Apparently the original
SG Ultra Magnus was the Deluxe RTS Laser Prime mold, using a pre-existing
alternate head, and I have no idea who that head was meant for.

> The color mapping is interesting, because it's not just a straight
> color-for-color swap with the normal Ultra Magnus pallette. The white
> (front of the lower legs, fists, shoulder towers, pelvis) becomes black,
> except when it becomes dark grey (upper legs, biceps). The blue of the
> arms (shoulders, forearms) becomes red, as does the helmet, but other
> blues (the lower legs and feet, the chest) become a deep, dark blue.
> Weirdly, most of the red parts (the upper torso, the painted panels on
> the legs, the shoulder rockets) just stay red. It's pretty close in
> appearance to the movie test footage.

The Masterpiece Delta Magnus ends up with a much nicer color scheme in
vehicle mode. A lot less blue in the trailer, because of the open spaces,
which gives a better balance. But they were working with the mold they had
here, which isn’t a G1 Ultra Magnus design to begin with, and working from
the robot mode first.

> Somebody on Twitter has already demonstrated how it's possible to swap
> the red windows on Delta Magnus here with the blue windows on Kingdom
> Ultra Magnus, a move which arguably improves both toys. I might actually have to do this.

Link? I’m curious about how it looks better, as it sounds worse to me. Cab
windows or super-mode chest windows?

> The sword is the same accessory as the one that comes with Legacy G2
> Laser Optimus Prime, and it splits into the same four-inch sword and
> rounded axe-shaped thing. The instructions note how you can mount it to
> the roof of Magnus' trailer in vehicle mode. He also comes with the same
> Matrix that came with G2 Prime. All of these parts are cast in a
> translucent red that looks pink when you hold it up to the light. Note
> that the Kingdom Ultra Magnus toy wasn't actually designed to accommodate
> a Matrix, so there's no place to really put it into his chest. You could
> sort of shove it inside the truck cab, along with the small robot head,
> but it would rattle around a lot.

Ultra Magnus was never destined to carry the matrix well in any universe,
figuratively or literally.

> The de-armored, small robot is mostly blue, with grey upper legs and
> biceps, and a black robot head, fists, and lower legs, and red chest
> windows. He has a tiny purple Autobot symbol stamped on his left
> shoulder, but the tampograph is interrupted partially by the lines of the
> sculpt. The colors here are pretty accurate to Diaclone. They even gave
> the small robot yellow eyes! (It would have been cool if they'd thrown
> in a red version of Titans Return Full-Tilt to represent the Powered
> Buggy, but that would have likely driven the price up another twenty bucks.)

Was Magna Convoy meant to resemble Delta Magnus’s cab? I guess so… Magna
Convoy is from a really dumb storyline where transformers were divided by
color and he led the Blue Brigade or something.

> No idea what the vehicle mode looks like, because I've completely
> forgotten how to build it. Oh, okay, fine. It's a bunch of
> Motormaster-style nonsense involving plugging the shoulder armor into the
> robot feet, unwrapping the chest armor... plugging the feet armor
> together, that I remembered. (As an aside, I do love the colors used for
> the Shattered Glass instructions. Mostly a muted midnight blue with hot
> pink callouts for the transformation steps. Absolutely YES. My aging
> eyeballs are loving this. I would be fine if all Transformers
> instructions were printed in these high-contrast colors from now until eternity.)
>
> So, truck mode has a blue cab, a mostly blue trailer, with a touch of red
> on the roof of the trailer (and, if you equip him as show in the
> instructions, a big red gun and a couple of red rockets and a big red
> sword). I don't hate it at all. Same deal with the pentagon-shaped
> spots on the trailer, but no Autobot symbols. I'm going to have to break
> out the Toyhax stickers. Delta Star stickers for Delta Magnus!

Overwhelmingly blue. And doesn’t store a bunch of Masterpiece cars, thus
leading to an inefficient use of shelf space. But not bad. I like him. Not
sure why I bought him, but I like him. Also bought shattered glass Blurr,
while ordering the Velocitron toys that were in stock… but not IDW Blurr. I
have no idea.

> I had thought this was going to feel like a decadent purchase (fifty
> bucks is a lot—getting the Diaclone crew like Spin-Out and Road Rage is
> one thing, but this is arguably the most expensive non-character I've
> ever owned). In fact, though, I really, really like this toy a lot.
> Because the color scheme isn't tied to a well-known media character, my
> brain isn't just going "oh, that's Ultra Magnus" or "oh, that's Optimus
> Prime" and without that instant association, instead I find myself
> getting lost in the details of the sculpt. At the same time, though,
> Diaclone-colored Ultra Magnus got about fifteen seconds' worth of screen
> time in the movie test footage. A pen pal of mine sent me a copy of it
> even before I'd found the Internet, so it's something I've been familiar
> with for a long time. Diaclone Ultra Magnus is a thing. It's really
> cool to own a toy in these colors, especially without having to break the
> bank and go for the Diaclone edition (or the Takara reissue, which is
> also quite spendy—the eHobby edition sells for around $600 nowadays).

On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 2:20:23 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> They were clear that this was Delta Magnus, SG Ultra Magnus and Magna
> Convoy(?) all in one, with SG UM taking the lead.

That's a serious hodge-podge of concepts. I don't even know who Magna Convoy is. Maybe this toy isn't meant for me.

> In the shattered glass universe, MISB stands for Mint In Sliced-Open Box.
> Part of the concept.

*slaps forehead* Of course! I should have guessed.

> I have the Masterpiece toy, because I have a hoarding problem, obviously.
> It’s really nice.

I really had to limit my Masterpiece collecting to just media characters. Each of them is so expensive that I simply can't justify spending $120 on a police car Sunstreaker or a red Skids. Those characters don't exist to me.. I'll drop $20ish on a Diaclone version of a neo-G1 toy, but that's eminently more affordable in my mind. I mean, I'm also collecting Super7 stuff and NECA toys now, and that's only been a thing for two or three years. Plus, I'm still building my vintage G1 collection. Gotta prioritize.

> I do like the extra heads they have been including. Apparently the original
> SG Ultra Magnus was the Deluxe RTS Laser Prime mold, using a pre-existing
> alternate head, and I have no idea who that head was meant for.

> Link? I’m curious about how it looks better, as it sounds worse to me. Cab
> windows or super-mode chest windows?

I like it because it changes the window chest on Magnus from blue to red, which is more animation accurate. I think they switched all the windows out, because it wouldn't make sense to just do some of them.

I can't find the tweet in question now. There are so many people talking about Delta Magnus that Twitter has been rendered unsearchable. There really needs to be a way to seach my browing history, or tweets I've liked, or something along those lines. As it stands, Twitter just throws things on my feed (including people I've never heard of before, and have never followed) and then they vanish.

> Ultra Magnus was never destined to carry the matrix well in any universe,
> figuratively or literally.

I love that the Masterpiece toy can carry one, but doesn't actually come with one. It's so appropriate somehow.

> I like him. Not sure why I bought him, but I like him.

That's exactly where I'm at. I am imagining doing a shelf of Diaclone characters some day. He will look nice on that shelf.

> I wonder how much the Masterpiece goes for?

Looks like you can get him for around $150-160 right now, which seems reasonable, since I remember Ultra Magnus being closer to $190 when he came out. I ended up getting the tiny little Marissa Faireborn figure for like $20 separately, because I couldn't not have a Marissa figure.

Zob (she hangs out with my G1 Technobot toys)

> > Ultra Magnus was never destined to carry the matrix well in any universe,
> > figuratively or literally.
> I love that the Masterpiece toy can carry one, but doesn't actually come with one. It's so appropriate somehow.

Poor Ultra Magnus. It's funny how right both of you are. It would be neat to do a pie chart showing the time frame that everybody actually held the matrix. You know something's off if Wildrider has a bigger piece of the pie than you do...

I know we've talked about this before, but it's just so odd the path that Ultra Magnus went. You would think that when Hasbro saw the Diaclone toy they must have been excited, basically an upgrade of one of their best selling toys - combiner elements - interaction with other toys = $$$. Then they had no problem with him being basically a red herring in the movie and then an annoying mother-in-law in the cartoon. Almost 40 years later, and he's still not very popular. It just seems like such a waste.

With the Ron Friedman draft of the movie recently discovered, I'm excited for the actual script to be released because maybe we will get some more insight to this. We know that Floro Dery drew up the eventual Orion Pax character model as Ultra Magnus. If that was indeed the intention for the character, it puts an interesting spin on the movie. Imagine the scene of Perceptor relaying the Decepticon invasion to the same crew but now they are basically all carbots without a significant leader-sized bot. Their situation becomes more desperate, and then the passing of the matrix becomes more of a "this is definitely temporary" rather than "you're a huge commander type and deserve the matrix" exchange. Then it would change the character of Ultra Magnus more into a tragic figure who did the best he could from the failure of a bot who should have been capable in the movie. Of course, Hasbro steps in and says, "hey this is actually Ultra Magnus". To which Ron says, "this huge toy? You know that Ultra Magnus doesn't actually do much in the movie right? He just fails, then dies, then disappears." And Hasbro says, "yup, sounds good, put him in!"

Hmm, now that I think about it.. Ultra Magnus literally does NOTHING after the Junkions reassemble him. I wonder if at one point the intention was for him to stay dead. Like, his character model (the Orion Pax one) was drawn up in the same vain as Arblus in that sure, he was in the movie but he's just a plot device who won't actually get a toy.

BJN

On Thursday, February 16, 2023 at 7:34:15 AM UTC-7, Brian Nelson wrote:

> I know we've talked about this before, but it's just so odd the path that Ultra Magnus went. You would think that when Hasbro saw the Diaclone toy they must have been excited, basically an upgrade of one of their best selling toys - combiner elements - interaction with other toys = $$$. Then they had no problem with him being basically a red herring in the movie and then an annoying mother-in-law in the cartoon. Almost 40 years later, and he's still not very popular. It just seems like such a waste.

So, here's my thinking about what probably happened during the events leading up to The Transformers: the Movie. Hasbro already knew a few things were going to happen in 1986. They knew they were running out of serviceable Diaclone molds, but there were a handful that were worth salvaging—the Scramble City toys, Metroplex, and Ultra Magnus. They also knew they wanted to kill off Optimus Prime, so in a way, the Ultra Magnus toy was a perfectly logical replacement for him—a similar-but-different design with a new trailer and a new transformation gimmick.

But, I think what happened was that the movie started going through so many revisions that Hasbro didn't quite know what was going on with Ultra Magnus. Was he going to be the replacement leader, or wasn't he? From a toy design standpoint, he's the logical choice, certainly. Galvatron was designed to match the height of the Ultra Magnus toy, so the two could be rivals in the toy world. But, somebody like Flint Dille probably thought it would be cool to subvert expectations and take the expected role away from Ultra Magnus. This left Hasbro with uncertainty as to how to market Ultra Magnus and Galvatron. Not only did they probably not want to spoil the surprises of the movie, but they may not have even known for sure what the final decision for the characters actually was.

So, Hasbro took a safe approach, marketing Ultra Magnus and Galvatron as the new "City Commanders," a title that could basically mean anything. The title implies that Ultra Magnus is in charge of Metroplex and the Scramble City guys, but perhaps not much else (and by extension, Galvatron is in charge of Trypticon). But, it's nicely ambiguous, because a City Commander could easily exist alongside Optimus Prime, or in place of him. Galvatron's toy catalog description that he "fights to lead the Decepticons" is also kind of ambiguous, because it could be interpreted to mean that he is a rival of Megatron's who challenges his leadership.
It does seem odd that Floro Dery would have created an original design for Ultra Magnus if Hasbro already knew they were going to use the Powered Convoy toy to represent him. But, maybe the decision to import a Diaclone toy to use as the Magnus character was a late decision. It's odd that Ultra Magnus is the only major character from The Transformers: the Movie who is based on an existing Takara toy. It's hard to imagine that he wasn't meant to be an upgrade for Optimus Prime at some early stage, before he spun off into his own character. Hasbro seemingly went out of their way to eventually distance Ultra Magnus from Optimus Prime as much as possible, never acknowledging the very Optimus-like small robot mode within the context of the fiction. To completely ignore an entire transformation for one of the toys was virtually unheard of. (I've always thought the all-white alloy coating from "The Return of Optimus Prime" was a way of finally featuring this toy, but I suppose it could just have been a coincidence.)

Zob (Commander-class Ultra Magnus when?)