One of the oddities of the line was that Takara released a few variants that appeared even in the US version of the TV show, but weren't picked up by Hasbro for release in the Western markets. One such figure was the blue repaint of Shadowhawk/Divebomb, and the somewhat limited nature of its release put the so-called 'Cosmo Type' on my radar.
Beast Mode:
Much as I like this mold - it's one of the few times a sleek and convincing bird form has yielded a halfway decent robot mode that doesn't just end up with the bird's entire wings on its back - I have to confess that, having written about it once before, I struggle to say anything new about it... It's a blue version of the Superlink Shadowhawk/Energon Divebomb mold.
This surely bodes well for eventually getting round to the figure in its original colourscheme...
The obvious advantage this figure has over most beast-type Airazors, for example, is that it's a fully robotic bird, and clearly has some combination of mechanical and jet propulsion, since some of the details at the back could be afterburners, while the wings feature details on the fronts that could be intakes as well as turbines around the midpoint. While the wings are fairly thick, they look somewhat believably aerodynamic, and the joints that allow them to open out and raise up add to this effect.
The bright blue plastic is coupled with both darker and lighter blues - the latter bordering on lavendar, both in plastic and paint - with smaller applications of orange at the back. The translucent plastic 'feathers' on this version are a greenish-yellow, making for an interesting contrast with the surrounding plastic. The layout of the paint applications is much the same as those of the BotCon figures, but with a couple of additional applications and less variety in colour. For example, the wings here have bands of dark blue paint wrapping around the backs of the wings right near their ball joints, and the paintwork around the Energon Star port at the back is all in the same dark blue, where the Buzzsaw/Laserbeak iterations split these between blue and grey.
While I neglected to photograph it, the Energon star and weapons naturally attach in exactly the same way in this mode - the former on the round port at the back which contains the Decepticon insignia, the latter on each side of the bird's neck.
Robot Mode:
Just as there's not new much to say about Shadowhawk's beast mode, there's little of any unique import to say about his robot mode... It's a blue version of the original, with paintwork in lighter and darker blues... and it looks pretty good. Sure, having the bird's legs hanging off the shoulders is not ideal, but it's lower-profile than having unreconfigured wings hanging around back there, meaning he takes up somewhat less shelf space.
The weapons, again, function exactly the same as on the other versions of this mold - they can attach to his forearms as blades/tonfas, or joined to form an elaborate sword/axe/boomerang weapon that fits snugly in his beak/claws. The Energon star fits onto the chest port and does no better a job of being a magnifying glass for the Decepticon insignia behind it than it does on any other version of the figure.
I think my only complaint about this version of the figure would be the paint job on the head sculpt. Molded in the bright blue plastic, the details on the front of the helmet are painted with the darker blue paint, while the battlemask is painted with the lighter blue. The eyes, meanwhile, are painted in a pale green which, I'd imagine, is intended to resemble the translucent greenish-yellow of the Energon weapons... but there's virtually no contrast between the pale green and pale blue paints. Since the eyes are so small - little more than slim lines just below the brow piece of the helmet - they pretty much get lost. Admittedly, I had similar problems discerning the eyes on the BotCon figures, but that was more to do with surface area of paint than lack of contrast.
One curious difference between this version of the mold and the BotCon exclusive repaints is the stability of the feet. While both Buzzsaw and Laserbeak have to be tilted forward slightly to avoid falling over backwards, this one stands far more easily... In fact, going by my photos, he even manages to remain standing with a slight backward lean. Not only that, but I managed to get him standing on one foot, with the other leg raised. Sadly, posing him in a high kick is well beyond the capabilities of such slender feet.
One thing I liked about Takara's Superlink line over Hasbro's Energon was the inclusion of collectors' cards with each figure, though the limited releases, such as this, Ariel Paradron Type, Roadbuster Wild and Galvatron General all came with completely unaltered cards that didn't even reflect the altered colourscheme. That being the case, I do rather wish Hasbro had released this repaint - they did produce 'Command Ravage', a slight redeco of Takara's Command Jaguar Desert Type, but none of the other Terrorcon repaints - since the additional cost of importing this could then have been avoided. Aside from this, the only repaints made available were even more exclusive - BotCon 2006's souvenir set of Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, add-ons to the Dawn of Futures Past set... And, given Hasbro's propensity for mining their back catalogue to bulk up the movie lines, I'm a little surprised this never got repurposed as store exclusive movie repaints.
I'm honestly still not sure which version of this mold is my favourite. I can say for certain that literally the only reason I bought his version was that it was described as being a limited edition. That said, TFWiki describes it only as having had a "somewhat-limited retail release" and TFU.info says it was "available in Japan in 2004", so it's unclear how 'limited' it actually was. Normally, a figure is only considered to be a limited release if it was only available through certain stores (such as the myriad US and UK Toys'R'Us exclusives), but no such details are provided. Apparently this version was named 'Blackout' in the Energon cartoon, though Hasbro never released it as a toy. These days, the white Energon version is fairly easy to find - at least in the US-based secondary market - but this version rarely seems to appear, which tends to indicate Cosmo Type was genuinely limited.
As underachieving as this mold is in retrospect, it's still pretty impressive compared to some of the more recent toys in Hasbro's output. It's easily one of the best bird-type TransFormers ever made, and a really fun toy. While the limited editions such as this are hard to come by now, I'd say it's still worth tracking down at least one iteration of this mold... and I'm very happy to have all four in my collection.
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