Dave's Combiner Wars Rant Wave 5-ish Sky Lynx (Space Shuttle/Dragon) Permalink: https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/VSkyLynx Finally gave up on ever seeing this in a store, being both a tail-end charlie AND in high fan demand. Bought it from an Amazon reseller for $36 (but part of a big enough order to get free shipping). https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeC6 is the set of limbs that supposedly go with Sky Reign, and the Wreck-Gar Legends figure is sort of in the cohort: https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/LegendC5a Note, this isn't the last Combiner Wars toy I'll be getting, as I intend to get the Victorion gift set once it goes on sale, and probably the Computron set. CAPSULE $25 price point in principle, good luck finding it under $35. Sky Lynx: Interesting idea and a good update visually, but has some engineering issues that make the combiner core unstable. I might go so far as to recommend it if it weren't scalperbait, but as it stands, this is one of the rare cases where expense (in money and/or time) affects my rating, bringing it down to a mild recommendation. RANT Packaging: Same as the rest of the Combiner Wars Voyagers. The accent color of Sky Reign is a sort of dull gold. AUTOBOT: SKY LYNX Component: Torso (Sky Reign) Altmode: Space Shuttle Transformation Difficulty: 19 steps Previous Name Use: G1, Cybertron, TFPrime Previous Mold Use: None Weapon: Ego Function: Inspiring Awe Motto: "You may applaud now, if you wish." SKY LYNX often talks about himself as one of the most accomplished AUTOBOT warriors. Now that he has mastered the power of combination, he really has something to brag about. His new combined form, SKY REIGN, is a ferocious Combiner beast! Headcanon time...everyone else got zapped by the Enigma of Combination to become a combiner, Sky Lynx just willed himself to become a combiner via the sheer power of his ego. Packaging: In dragon mode, with the wings folded up to fit inside, and his tail tucked in. Six ties on the dragon, one each on the two bladed weapons. Completing the dragon mode requires snapping the two weapons on either side of the tail stub. This is not shown in the instructions, but there's enough pictures and drawings with them in place to make it clear how to do this. Assembly Note: The side tail fins point the "wrong" way (hypercritical rather than swept-back) in shuttle mode, but this seems to be intentional so as to look better in Sky Reign mode. They're not pinned on, though, and you can turn them around if you'd rather prioritize the non-combiner appearance. Dragon Mode: The G1 toy split into a "prehistoric bird" and a lynx, but the combined mode was generally just considered his robot mode. But as a non-separating critter with wings and legs and a serpentine head, I'm gonna call it a dragon, so there. It does a good job of emulating the G1 combiner mode, with a clear demarcation between the shuttle-bird on top and the headless lynx on the bottom. It's a nice mix of retro-chunky mecha details and more animalistic flourishes, such as the molded feather shapes on the wingtip pieces. Stretched out it's about 11.5" (29cm) from snout to tail tip, with a wingspan of 8.5" (22cm). It's red, white, and blue with a few bits of silvery gray and metallic gold. White plastic is found on most of the shuttle shell parts, the armor over the hips, and the combiner peg latches on the limbs. Red plastic is used on the upper leg cores, the lower legs, and a segment of the neck. The wingtips, claws, and torso core are bright blue plastic. Light silvery gray plastic is used on the rest of the neck "skeleton," on the mid-limb joints, part of the forelimb (where the claws connect to the legs), the tail support strut, and the swords that make up the end of the tail. Other than the printed Autobot insignias (small red on the rump, large red with gold borders on the undersides of the wings), the only paint used is gold, something they can get away with thanks to the high contrast of the plastics themselves. Gold on the inside of the lower jaw, various window details on the head and neck (some of which are his "eyes"), stripes along the sides, tech greebles on the butt, a bit on the belly, and the thruster nozzles in back. Articulation is good, but several joints on mine were very loose, and I've had only partial success using floor polish topcoat to stiffen them up. The jaw opens, the neck has two hinges and a swivel in between them, plus a hinge for the flap at the base piece so it can get out of the way. The base joint is a little loose, leading to Sky Lynx's whole neck and head swinging down with little provocation. There's another hinge for transformation, but that's supposed to be locked down in this mode. The wings flap up and down, and the wingtips can fold forward and back. The tail can lift up and down on a double-hinged strut with soft ratcheting. The front hips are ratcheting universal joints, but the forward/backward swivel was very loose on mine. Stuff swivel above the "knees" (all four legs have digitigrade design with the mid-limb joints actually being ankles), ratcheting hinge "knees" and fairly loose hinges for the claws. However, the claws in front can't fold up higher than where they should sit for a standard stance, so that's okay. The hind legs have smooth swivel hips, stiff long-axis swivels above the "knees," soft-ratcheting "knees," and smooth (and floppy) hinge claw joints that collapse too far. The swords are meant to become the tail here, but there's vehicle mode 5mm peg holes still available for attaching other weapons. One on each rear hip, one on top of each wing, and less useful ones on the underside of each foreclaw. Transformation: To vehicle mode, the head and neck collapse inward to become the mid-fuselage and cockpit. The tail section easily folds up, and the wings flip backwards and the blue wingtips swing back to help hold the wings in place. Stowing the legs is a bit trickier. Well, the rear legs are easy enough: collapse the claws, swing the legs back, swing the lower leg parts together behind the body. But getting the front legs inside the opened up chest chamber is a bit trickier. The swords are supposed to peg under the wings, I find them more stable and better looking when connected to the rear hip peg holes. To get to combiner torso mode, don't stow the legs under the shuttle, instead rearrange them into combiner thighs (front legs) and torso sides (rear legs). The back end of the shuttle folds out to reveal the combiner beast head and form the chestplate. Vehicle Mode: Well, it's a space shuttle on top of a chunk of stuff, which is correct for the character. Unlike real space shuttles, there's extra tail fins at about the 45 degree point between the wings and the top tail, slightly reminiscent of the Cybertronian mode Blast Off's array of finlets. Amusingly, some little wheels are molded on the underside, but only two, with the front end supported by some leg armor details. As noted earlier, the tail fins point forward which looks kinda stupid, and I've found the combiner mode looks okay with the fins reversed, so I recommend doing that. 7.5" (19cm) long and with a wingspan of 5.25" (13.5cm), making it feel pretty small for a space shuttle. Most of the blue and gray plastic is concealed in this mode, with the shuttle predominantly white with gold paint and the underchunk being red and white with some blue and gray visible. The big Autobot symbols are now on the tops of the wings, but there's no completely new deco visible. The shuttle's surface is full of tech greebles, but between white plastic and lack of paint they tend to be invisible from arm's length or farther. No articulation to speak of other than flapping the tail fins, it's reasonably stable all things considered. The wing-mounted 5mm peg holes are noe on the underside and kinda close to the peg holes on the underchunk, so the fit is a bit tight if you want to load up all the spots. There's no spinnable wheels or movable landing gear, although the dragon mouth can still open. Combiner Mode: In the instructions, the dragon head just sort of kinks back a bit and forms a tail, but it's also possible to rotate the head around to become more of a backpack, which I prefer. Near as I can tell there's no way to lock the shoulder roots into place, so they're going to rotate more easily than the actual intended shoulder joints. Also, rather than include a waist joint or some other trick, the side of the legs with the visible screws faces forward, rather than the niftier molding of the other side. To make things worse, the ratcheting of the hip joints is very weak, I had to fill each joint with Future polish to make them even minimally acceptable. The lynx head missing from the inseparable beast mode is present as the combiner head, with a blue high collar and the head made of unknown plastic dipped completely in gold paint, with blue eyes painted over the gold. The small Autobot symbol from the engine cowling of shuttle mode is now a small badge on the right pectoral, and the top tail fin becomes a sort of armor piercing sternum. The gold of the thruster nozzles merges into gold paint on the abdomen. There really is nowhere I can find to attach Wreck-Gar on the chestplate, but if you put the swords on the hands of the crossbow mode I worked out (see Wreck-Gar's own review) it becomes a more impressive bow...as long as the arms don't flop down, that is. Unfortunately, at least with Wheeljack and Hound as arms, there isn't enough clearance to let Wreck-Gar's side peg fit into either fist. I found an alternate way to shove him into the backpack front-down and turn the rear thrusters into shoulder cannons for Sky Reign. Or, you know, bunny ears. The two swords combine by putting the hilt of one in between the blades of the other. Amusingly, Wheeljack's sword can go into the tip of the super-sword to make a super-duper-sword. Stability is about as bad as I expected in the shoulders, but my fix on the hips seems to have been enough. As with most combiners, there's no real unified color scheme here, made worse by the decision to make a bunch of pre-existing G1 characters into the rest of Sky Reign instead of designing characters who might make more sense with Sky Lynx. Here's a picture of the combined mode with my mods, apologies for the quality, I already packed up my photo-taking setup (not that it's big enough for this anyway). http://www.dvandom.com/images/skyreign1.JPG Overall: Well, it's interesting as a way of finally breaking the standard design of Combiner Wars, but really needed a few more pegs and stronger ratchets to work properly. If I could be confident it would be warming shelves like Onslaught and Scattershot currently are doing, I'd recommend getting it for the novelty, but if it remains scalperbait I can't really suggest people go to the extra effort and expense required to get this. Heck, Takara's doing a gift set, if you're already willing fork over the premium, might as well wait and get the Takara set. Dave Van Domelen, will be hauling most of his boxes full of Transformers down the street to the new house tomorrow.