But, still, it was another version of the Classics Mirage mold which, at the time, was fantastic - stable and poseable to an extent matched by few other Classics figures then or since. I have to confess that a hologram version is a bit of a novelty - there was a similar Binaltech version, described as the "Electro-Disrupter" version, released by e-HOBBY the same year, and Takara Tomy produced their own take using this very mold in 2009 - so clearly there's a market for this sort of thing... but it does seem more than a little bit niche...
Vehicle Mode:
The Club's interpretation of a hologram version of Mirage takes a far simpler, almost monochromatic approach - virtually the entire thing being cast in translucent blue plastic, with only a couple of (visible) parts cast in opaque cyan plastic. This makes for a very strange-looking car - 'hologram' almost in the sense of those holographic projections in some Sci-Fi movies and TV shows where they're made to look deliberately unnatural with a ghostly blue hue. It almost looks like a schematic, due to the way the might catches edges more than it does the flat surfaces... so it's as much a Blueprint Mirage as a Hologram version.
While I can understand the monochrome approach, it does make this version of Mirage among the most boring. Both the Binaltech and Takara Tomy Henkei! Henkei! figure were multi-colour - the latter including dark translucent grey and, bafflingly, some chromed parts - and are far more eye-catching. This one features no paintwork and precious little variation in colour provided by the varying thickness of the plastic.
And that's where this this really falls down - partly as a result of the decision to go monochrome. Classics Mirage had a very cut-down, sanitised set of sponsorship decals, but this has almost nothing decorative. It almost comes across as the Club's attempt at a Lucky Draw-style figure, but using translucent plastic rather than gold/silver chrome... and it just doesn't have the same impact. It looks pretty, I guess... but I rather wish they'd gone with some colourless plastic as well, to represent the white on the original version...
The one decorative feature he has is one of the old-style silver-bordered, temperature-sensitive stickers, which had been applied to all the figures in the Games of Deception boxed set from that year, though not the other supplementary figures like Elita-1, Springer, Alpha Trion and Weirdwolf. I wouldn't say Mirage has closer ties to the boxed set than any of the other figures (except perhaps Alpha Trion, who doesn't even feature in the comic), so it can only be down to the fact that he was the only other Classics mold - the others were from Galaxy Force/Cybertron.
Robot Mode:
Well, if you were hoping for more colour variation in robot mode, you'll be sorely disappointed - aside from his knee joints, the lower torso assembly, the elbows and the neck, Mirage remains predominantly translucent blue. The use of the opaque cyan plastic for certain joints is down to structural concerns - as well as being a different colour, it's a different consistency, slightly softer, so it's more durable. Translucent plastic does have a reputation for breaking more easily than opaque plastics...
Sadly, this means he's no more interesting in robot mode, and still has the 'blueprint' look to a degree. Cast in translucent plastic, all the details of the face are lost, though it appears to me that the lightpiping for his eyes was cast in a slightly different shade of translucent blue, as they stick out just a little better than the rest of his face. Not sure if that's actually the case, or just some sort of optical illusion.
This figure was also packaged with a large, translucent orange, textured plastic box, intended to represent the 'stealth box' that appeared around him in the pilot episode of the TV series, as he reappeared on the Decepticon's ship and shot up their controls. It's a very strange size, though - at about 10x10x10cm (approx 4x4x8"), it's barely wide enough to accommodate him while holding his gun, let alone posing, but a good 5cm/2" taller than it needed to be. I can only assume it was some kind of standard size container that the Club repurposed. It's the texture of the plastic, more than anything else, that suggests that - it feels like something you'd buy in a cheap stationery shop, but without a lid.
I can't say I actually read the bio card provided with this version of Mirage when I first bought him, but I'd have to say it's probably one of the better ones the Club produced... That's not to say it's particularly good or in any way outstanding, just that it's fairly short and to the point. Of course, it doesn't quite match up with either his G1 or Classics bios, but that's to be expected, and it probably says more about PTSD than it does about Mirage himself, even though it barely hints at that. It does better than some Timelines bios, in that it at least mentions his weapons and abilities, albeit only referring to them in part of a single sentence: "Equipped with an upgraded form and modified weapons, including an enhanced version of his invisibility mode..."
Since Hologram Mirage wasn't even part of one of the souvenir 2-packs, I don't even have the excuse that I had to get him to get the figure I really wanted. Good as this figure is, I'm not sure, in retrospect, that it would have been worth whatever inflated, secondary market price I paid for it. G1 Mirage is one of my favourite characters simply because of the phrase "Unsure of Autobot cause... can't be fully trusted." at the end of his bio, and the Classics version toned that down considerably. I also bought the Universe Drag Strip repaint and (a knockoff of the) movie repaint Fracture because this is still one of the best molds to come out of the Classics line... I'm just not sure now that this particular iteration is as much of a must-have as it must have seemed to be when I bought it.
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