TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2010 (Timelines) Sharkticon: Air Shark

The Sharkticon that turned up in the Energon toyline certainly wasn't a traditional Sharkticon. Rather, it was a Decepticon, named Sharkticon, who happened to transform into a spacecraft that resembled a shark. Anecdotally, the craft was intended to resemble the Nemesis, the Decepticons' ship from G1... though it looks nothing like the recent Titan class toy. Just to add to the confusion, the mold was repainted in Takara Tomy's TransFormers United toyline in 2012, to be the Axalon, the Maximals' ship from Beast Wars.

Before that, however, the Collectors' Club repainted him for BotCon... as a G1 Sharkticon. Or, as it turned out, three Sharkticons, in a three-pack of toys identical but for the text on their respective bio cards: Air Shark, Land Shark and Sea Shark.

I knew I'd bought this figure, along with Sky-Byte, at an event... but couldn't remember for the life of me which event it was, and ended up having to search one of my old blogs to identify that it was AutoAssembly 2010, so this fellow is long overdue for a write-up. Let's get on with it, shall we?

Vehicle Mode:

I've never understood the comparison between this and the Nemesis from the G1 cartoon, nor the Axalon repaint, but there's no denying this looks pretty damned good as a more traditionally shark-shaped Sharkticon. The choice of pastel colours seems a little counterintuitive - it certainly doesn't suggest any level of threat - but I suspect that's a symptom of the frequently washed-out colours of the G1 cartoon. What's odd is that the nose of the craft has pale purple paint on it, but then pink plastic has been used elsewhere. This almost makes it seem as though FunPub were hedging their bets, Hasbro's Sharkticons tended to feature more pink (up until the Studio Series '86 toy) while those released in Japan always used purple instead. As with the Energon toy, elements like the tail, fins and cannons are molded in a slightly rubbery plastic, which led the warping in several places, since these were originally sold in a plastic bag rather than with any solid packaging.

The grey plastic of much of the front of the craft has a metallic shimmer, but a flat grey - in much the same tone - is used for things like the side turrets and the central block. The raised bridge section is molded in translucent orange plastic and capped/framed with more of the pastel blue.

Paintwork is naturally focussed on the topside, with silver trim around the tip of the nose section, and a massive Decepticon insignia over the purple paint, while many of the smaller details on the nose section are picked out with an acidic, almost fluorescent green. The tail section and underside are largely unpainted, apart from some silver on and around the raised 5mm ports that conceal a couple of screws and on the shark's 'jaw'. It seems to be that, overall, Timelines Air Shark has fewer paint applications than the original Energon toy, not least because the original had painted trim on all the fins... but I have to say it looks more coherent, and the grey base really suits the mold and lets more of the sculpted detail shine through. I'm tempted to say it would have looked better in darker tones, because even a shark in these shades looks more 'cute' than anything.

Robot Mode:

I've always been a big fan of the Energon Sharkticon styling. It absolutely revels in its anime/Power Rangers influences and the backpack, while hopelessly bulky, makes for an impressive cape as well as being perfectly functional storage space for his 'Hypermode' weapons.

In a lot of ways, this new, lighter colourscheme further emphasises the Super Sentai villain energy, while also paying homage to the G1 Sharkticons. What's rather strange, though, is that the body and thighs of this figure are molded in a grey plastic that does not feature the metallic shimmer component used for the vehicle mode parts that become the robot's backpack.

The pink strip running across the chest is topped with a silver panel, in reference to the beast mode jaw that traditionally folds down to reveal a Sharkticon's robot mode head, while the blue paint over the chest vents is there seemingly to represent the spikes protruding from their jaws. Pale green paint has been applied to the raised details on the fronts of the shoulders - quite sloppily on one side of mine, where there's a splodge of green on the rim of the right shoulder as well. Silver paint has been used as a background for the belly details, with the raised circular details picked out in red, and then the entire front of the pelvis has been painted in the pastel purple. Below that, there's no more paint until the feet, which are topped with silver. This is definitely missing a few paint applications when compared to the original Energon toy.

Naturally, there's no change to the functionality of his 'Hypermode' weapons - they extend out from the shark nose/cape in either mode, and can be rotated around such that he... ahem... shoots from the hip in robot mode.

While the head sculpt of this figure remains the same as the original Energon toy, I'd have to say that I prefer the lighter, simpler paint job on this version. Silver paint over the face lets more of the detail show through, and the use of translucent orange for the light piping gives his eyes a fiery look, far more impressive and imposing than the dark green of the original, and making for an interesting counterpoint to the rather cutesy colourscheme of the robot.

For such an old mold, and one which got four different uses for BotCon 2010 alone, I'm surprised by how tight all the joints are (worryingly so in the case of his right elbow - I may have to loosen the screw!), and how well it stands up to more current figures in terms of articulation. The waste of mass that is the vehicle mode's nose section is frustrating, but its use as weapon storage somewhat mitigates this.

The precise colour choices, both for plastic and paint, are a little odd - not to say outright counterintuitive - but, overall, this is a decent repaint of a figure from 2003. It's almost a shame that there were no discernible differences between this figure, the Land Shark and the Sea Shark. Given the price of each figure when I bought it (if I remember correctly, the individual Sharkticons were £10-15 more expensive than Sky-Byte, which struck me as insane), there was nothing to compel me to buy all three other than their bio cards. Even just a change to one of the tertiary colours, such as the green highlights on the nose section or the robot's shoulders, would have made choosing between them - or buying the full set - a more rewarding option. As it stands, this and Sky-Byte were the only ones I bought, and the choice of Air Shark was largely arbitrary.

The Energon Sharkticon mold was great fun for its time, and its poseability is only let down by the way the feet work - or rather, the way they don't work. It's almost ironic that, when I wrote about that toy, seven years after it was on the shelves, I felt that a 2010 remake of it, at the height of Generations, could have been a great improvement... While, looking at it now, as Legacy limps towards its closing chapter, I rather hope they don't try to make a new one, because there's no way it would be anything like as elegant as this version. Improved foot articulation just wouldn't be worth the inevitable sacrifices.