From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Voyager Wave 2

Sky-Byte (Cyborg Shark)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/VSkyByte

Also in this wave is Rescue Bots Heatwave.


CAPSULE

Sky-Byte: Could you make a better Voyager-sized transforming shark than what Sky-Byte has gotten so far? Yeah, but it wouldn't homage the deeply flawed original Cybershark II design that got used for the first Sky-Byte, so the best we can hope for is "slightly less annoying than the rest." This is
a little better (and definitely more show-accurate) than the Thrilling Thirty version, which in turn was a little better than the original RiD01 version (which I didn't even bother getting). Mildly recommended.


RANT

Packaging: Same as previous Voyagers this year. The nameplate consistently has a Decepticon symbol rather than Predacon. That lines up
with how Cyberworld Sky-Byte has a Decepticon symbol, I suppose.


DECEPTICON: SKY-BYTE
Assortment: G1019
Altmode: Cybershark
Transformation Difficulty: 28 steps
Previous Name Use: RiD01, T30, Cyberverse, Cyberworld
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: Robots in Disguise (2001)

Packaging: Most of the robot is held to the tray by double-ties around chest and shins, and single ties on each arm. A double tie and a single tie hold the shoulderpad shell pieces in the lower left (they can be worked out without cutting the ties), the missile weapon is held by two ties in the
upper left (can also be twisted out), and a sprue with the pectoral fins is held to the right side of the inner tray by three ties. Yes, more than the usual amount of assembly required.
The instructions are a little unclear regarding which shoulderpad goes
on which side, but the box renders are sufficient unto the task.

Robot Mode: While the original was a shade of purple, and the T30
version went even more purple, this oddly goes with a very dark purple while
at the same time Cyberworld Sky-Byte goes with blue. I suppose that's one
way to distinguish them (aside from the elbows). I kinda wonder if the designers were simply watching a copy of RiD01 with some color balance
issues, making the dark blue look dark purple. The shoulderpads are huge, if
a little more symmetric than in the original, and the head is topped by a really tall dorsal fin blade. The right arm ends in a robot fist, while the left arm ends in the bladed tail. Note, the instructions don't mention it,
nor do any pictures or diagrams, but you can fold two of the fins against one of the middle ones to create something more like a hand with three clawed fingers and a central thumb.
8" (20cm) tall thanks to the big fin on top, closer to 7" (18cm)
ignoring the fin, which is still pretty tall for a modern Voyager. The shoulderpad span is up to 7.5" (19cm) if flattened out. Mostly dark blue-purple, medium-dark gray, dull gold, and almost-white light gray, with bits of silver, red, and bright blue. The blue-purple plastic is used for
the head fin, shoulderpads, right forearm, the core and one claw of the left hand, the thighs, and most of the shark stuff folded up on back (other than some dark gray panels). Darkish gray plastic makes up the torso core,
shoulder roots, elbow joints, pelvis, kneecaps (including the transformation strut inside the shins), the ankle/heel pieces, a couple of backpack panels, and the struts that hold the shoulderpads. A sort of dull "antique gold" plastic is used for the upper arms, shins, the side claws of the left hand,
and the weapon that kinda sorta evokes the original toy's missile launcher.
The head itself is very pale gray plastic, as are the torso front, the right fist, the left forearm, the remaining claw (opposite the purple claw), and
the toes. The spark crystal in the center of the chest is made of the blue-purple plastic (you can see some unpainted bits on the inside of the
chest during transformation).
Note, someone who took the figure apart enough to remove the piece discovered that the chest's spark crystal has a molded Predacon symbol in negative relief on the back, which would have let it replicate the original's Spark Crystal if the piece had been cast in clear plastic. It's possible
that the decision to make it a Decepticon was done late enough that they couldn't retool the crystal, so they just made it opaque instead.
There's dark blue-purple paint applied inconsistently to the "hat" part
of the head, with the front part having paint on the underside of the edge while the back part not only doesn't have that underside painting it also has
a visibly different shade. It might be a matter of thickness rather than a different paint, though. There's a rather light, almost pearl, paint on the front edge of the helmet crest, the teeth, much of the left pec and center abdomen, and just above the ankles. There's also a lot of this silver on the beast parts. The face and part of the sternum are painted a light gold
that's probably meant to match the plastic but does not. The robot eyes and the fake cyborg beast eyes on the chest are red, including a circular
secondary eye high on the right side of the chest. The right side of the
chest is painted a medium-light blue, and the kneecaps are painted dark gunmetal. The spark crystal and a little round bit above it are painted pearlescent purple. No faction symbol, would've been nice if they could've added a Decepticon symbol if they were going to make the Predacon symbol invisible.
The neck is a ball joint with the socket in the head, mostly just
turning but a little wiggle range. Smooth swivel waist, and while the
backpack kibble doesn't really restrict the motion, it does make it difficult to get a firm grip to make the waist turn. Pinned hinge and swivel
shoulders, swivels just above the hinge elbows. Both arms have swivel
wrists. The right arm ends in a fist that can bend inwards on a
transformation hinge. The left arm ends in the tail-claw. The purple and light gray tines of the claw can fold inwards, while the two gold tines are hinged fo fold flat against either the purple or the light gray side (the toy is packaged with these claws flat). Pinned hinge and swivel hips, with very faint ratcheting on the "out to the sides" hinges. Swivels just below the
hip joints, hinge knees, and the feet-flat hinges are above the ankles. The toes can point down, but the heels are fixed. The shoulderpads are on pegs that are on hinges that can lift up and down, and the pads can be rotated around their long axes because the pegs are simple rather than D-shaped or notched. There is no spinning claw gimmick like the original had, unsurprisingly, although you can manually rotate it.
The fist can hold a 5mm peg, there's a 5mm hexagonal socket on the outer face of the right elbow, and there's a 5mm socket on each side of the back where the pectoral fins normally stay. Otherwise, it's all rectangular tabs and other nonstandard connections. The hand weapon stores inside the roof of the shark mouth using some tabs and slots in this mode, and on the tongue in shark mode using different tabs and slots.
Well, I suppose it's nice that they tried to include an homage to the original toy's missile launcher, even if actual shooting missiles have been largely off the table for Transformers for a while now. But this mostly
hollow piece of unpainted dull gold plastic is nearly the absolute minimum effort possible to get something that at least kinda looks like the weapon.
It has a short 5mm peg and mostly fits over the right fist, but it also
stores on the roof of the shark mouth using one set of tabs and on the tongue using another set. It's okay in shark mode, but kinda sad in this mode, best left stored on the roof of the shark mouth. A little over an inch (27mm)
long.
Slightly better as a right hand weapon are the pectoral fins, which normally peg onto the back, but a single one can be held as a sort of cleaver dagger, or both attached (top and bottom of the fist) as a vaguely bat'leth sort of melee weapon. The claw hand can technically grip one, but it's not a tight grip, and it's kind of gilding that particular lily. Also, when it did slip out of the claw, it took a weird bounce and I had to spend an annoyingly long time hunting it down. Each fin is about 2.25" (5.5cm) long including
the 5mm peg at the root, they're not identical, and like the head fin they
have lots of open parts...for once this isn't cost-saving, that's the
aesthetic Cybershark II went for. One has a trailing edge that looks like a canopener, while the other is serrated. When stored on the back, along with the big shoulderpads they give a vaguely dragonfly-wing feel.

Transformation: The head leans back to become the dorsal fin, the arms raise up into the head's position and with some fiddling on sliding rails
lock together to make the tail (the one fist folds into a gap inside the
other forearm). The legs collapse upwards via the struts inside the boots
with the toes becoming the shark lower jaw, and then...soooo many panels to massage into place. Like, most of the outer surface of beast mode is just panel massaging. As with an annoyingly large number of modern designs,
there's tabs inside the panels that need to go into slots you can't see and which need to be lined up really well or you're just wasting your time
smashing pieces together. No matter what I did, I couldn't completely eliminate all gaps between panels, the best I could do is have it look good from one side. The shoulderpads, being merely pegged on, tend to come off during transformation.
Going back to robot mode, you'd think it'd just be a matter of pulling panels back apart and unfolding, but once you get some of the panels in place they're rather hard to get back out without feeling like something's gonna break. And the shoulderpads will fall off every few seconds, might as well leave them off until done.

Altmode: Unlike more recent Sky-Bytes, this returns to the 2001
animation model by having the head of the shark in mostly purple (well, dark blue in the animation) and some silver, but not the light blue or bare metal skull that later ones (including Cyberworld) have adopte. That's because the original embraced the fakeness of the shark face on the chest, while the T30 version tried to make the shark face be the actual chest, and Cyberworld followed suit. (The difference may have been a nod to Hellscream, the
original Cybershark retool that launched its face as a weapon to reveal a
more robotic skull underneath.) Anyway, it's molded to look like a robot
shark that used to have a convincing organic shell, but it's been torn away over time, revealing obvious mechanical bits after the fashion of the
original MechaGodzilla. The left side of the face looks almost normal with only a little bit of mechanical stuff showing, while the left side is all ripped up and parts look not just like the skin was removed, but like bulky patches have been stuck on. The body is straight in "cruising" position, rather than trying to replicate the arched body of the original Cybershark II mold. (For those too young to remember, the whole "skin peeling away from mechanical parts" motif was the Transmetal II theme, as was having a clear "spark crystal.)
10.5" (26.5cm) long, mostly dark purple and silver, plus some gunmetal
and the colors of both robot forearms. Most of the shell is dark purple plastic, except for the side chunks where the pectoral fins attach, which are dark gunmetal plastic, and the light gray lower jaw. Roughly the last 3.5" (9cm) is just the robot forearms, although the right fist is hidden inside
the left forearm.
Lots of silver paint and some dark gunmetal paint on the exposed metal bits on the purple shell pieces. The eyes have silver "whites" and red
pupils. No faction symbol. The underside isn't really hidden, so a lot of robot mode paint and plastic colors are still kinda visible.
In addition to the expected articulation (jaw opening, the pectoral fins being on pegs so they can rotate, and the claw/tail retaining its claw and wrist joints) there's a bit more articulation here. The head can tilt down about 40 degrees and there's a sort of sleeve inside to keep this from making
a gap. Too bad the rest of the body can't bend the same way to make a "balancing on the tail and looking forwards" pose. The two robot elbows are lined up in back, so the tail can thrash back and forth about 45 degrees
either way before the forearms hit shoulderpad shell pieces. The top of the head can also disconnect and lift up on a transformation hinge, which is necessary if you want to get the mouth open or all the way closed with the missile weapon stuck onto the lower jaw. Without the weapon attached, the lower jaw can go in too far, leading to an...Overbite.
Other than the sockets dedicated to the pectoral fins, the only
connector accessible in this mode is the 5mm socket on the right robot elbow. If you don't want to leave the gun in the shark's mouth, it can kinda be
wedged onto that socket at an angle. No real viable flight base connection point. However, the center of mass is reasonably close to being below the dorsal fin, so you could loop some wire or thread through one of the holes in the fin and hang the shark from the underside of a shelf (which is what I
will be doing). The three holes in the fin give options of more or less
level, a little nose-down, and a little more nose-down.

Overall: Decent robot mode, sometimes frustrating transformation that
can lead to the beast mode having significant panel gaps. The sad thing is that I'm a bit more enthusiastic about the Cyberworld toy than this. Oh,
this is objectively a better toy, but at three times the cost and a much
higher parts count I don't think it's actually three times as good. The
curse of Sky-Byte...interesting character, flawed toys.


Dave Van Domelen, should probably review Heatwave next before moving on
to a different line or size class.

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