Beast Wars Sky Shadow

Robot Mode: The first thing Sky Shadow reminded me of when I saw his robot mode was the creature from Alien. He's very ugly, but in a cool, scary way. No way to mistake him for a good guy. As a Deluxe class figure from the Beast Wars line one expects Sky Shadow to be highly detailed and very posable. Which he is. Absolutely no complaints on either front. And the color combination of green and blue with some orange and red thrown in fits him very nicely, too.

Sky Shadow weapons are integrated into his body and non-removable. There is the cutter/pincer/claw that forms his right arm. It's two of the wings from his beast mode, which can grab/cut enemies with the help of the lever on top. Then there is the missile he shoots from his mouth. I'm not a big fan of mouth missiles, so I tend to just leave it out, but it doesn't hurt the figure any, either. Sky Shadow carries another pair of wings on his chest, which can presumably do a lot of damage in close-quarter combat. And finally he's got the beast mode head on his left arm.

Regular readers here at TFU know that one of my pet peeves when it comes to Transformers is hands. Sky Shadow doesn't have any, at least at first glance. One arm ends in his wing-cutter, the other in the beast mode head. There is a trick here, though, as a set of claws is molded into the wrist behind the head, giving him a almost normal hand. He can't hold anything with it, but it's there. I only noticed this after I'd already completed the pictures, but I'll try to capture an image of this feature for later addition.

So all in all Sky Shadow presents us with a finely sculpted, very posable, and rather versatile robot mode. No complaints on this front at all, though whether or not you like the look of this figure is, of course, entirely subjective.

Alternate Mode: As a Fuzor Sky Shadow transforms into a hybrid of a lizard and a dragonfly. The lizard provides the largest part of the body, while the dragonfly is only presented by the wings and the shape of the tail. Speaking of the tail, the end of it is Sky Shadow's robot mode head. Thanks to its rather inhuman nature and it being upside down you don't immediately notice, but it's there. Which means he can also shoot his missile from out of his tail. Not bad.

Most of what I said about the robot mode applies to the beast mode as well. Very nicely sculpted, very posable, and the color scheme works well, too. The animal fusions Beast Wars came up with for their Fuzor subline ranged from really cool to extremely strange, but to me at least Sky Shadow ranges much closer to the former than the latter. A great-looking, nicely strange beast mode.

Remarks: Sky Shadow so far has but a short cameo in the IDW Beast Wars comics to his name. The figure was used in the Japanese Beast Wars Neo series, though, with a new paint job and using the name Drancron. Here he was a Blendtron, a servant of Unicron, and isntrumental in reviving the devourer of worlds near the series' finale. Drancron also appeared in the IWD Beast Wars comics, but didn't have a much bigger role there than his western counterpart Sky Shadow.

As a figure I found Sky Shadow to be surprisingly nice. I'm not a hundred percent sure what I like about him, but despite his near-complete absence in any media (if one discounts his Japanese counterpart), I find myself strongly in favour of him. It all depends, of course, on whether or not you like the Beast Wars series in general and the Fuzor concept in particular, but if you do, then Sky Shadow is definitely one for you.

Rating: B+