Galaxy Force Chromia White Version

(Femme-Bot Friday #62)

I've waited quite a long time for this one... Originally released back in 2005 and packaged with part of the Japanese DVD release of the Galaxy Force TV series, Chromia White Version is a homage to the Japanese G1 (specfically Super-God Masterforce) release of Minerva - a toy which was repainted and released in the West as Nightbeat.

Rather foolishly, I decided against ordering this figure when I first became aware of it because I hadn't quite got to the stage in my collecting habits where I wanted to try to focus on Femme-Bots and, let's be honest, Chromia was hardly the best toy to come out of Galaxy Force. Nevertheless, she became one of my Holy Grail figures a few years later - after I'd bought a BotCon repaint and the standard version - but became impossible to find online until earlier this year, when a pair of them turned up on eBay, minus the packaging and the DVD.

It's entirely possible this is actually a knockoff... though I'm not aware of this figure having been knocked off, let alone this version of the figure and, to be honest, cost aside, I'm not too fussed.

Let's have a closer look...

Galaxy Force Chromia

(Femme-Bot Friday #7)

I've noted in my write up of BotCon 2009 Elita-1 that this mold was essentially a bit rubbish - pretty much the worst kind of shellformer - yet it ended up being quite compelling in-hand as it was so cute. Considering I didn't want that figure at the time (she came 'free' with BotCon 2009 Razorclaw to complete a couple of previous BotCon sets), I ended up quite liking her, and so my quest to find her progenitor, either GF Chromia or Cybertron Thunderblast, began.

The secondary market being what it is, a crappy figure from an old toyline became rare and expensive, so it's basically taken five years to track one down at a price I'm comfortable paying and without the rather pointless addition of Cybertron Sideways and Brimstone as 'purchase incentives (or was it the other way round?).

But why all this hassle to pick up a figure that isn't even that good?

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2009 (Timelines) Banzai-Tron

I have to confess that the whole Action Master phenomenon passed me by completely. I'm not even sure they made it over to the UK, though I wasn't really looking for TransFormers by that point. The idea was that certain Cybertronians lost the ability to transform through use an a new kind of fuel - probably the weirdest, not to mention (oxy)moronic decision in the entire history of the TransFormers toyline - and thus equipped themselves with transforming partners of one kind or another - in the case of Banzai-Tron, a kind of TargetMaster who was a robotic crab.

This Timelines homage to the Action Master was an attendee extra figure for BotCon 2009's 'Wings of Honor' storyline, packaged with Skyquake, and uses the Superlink Shockfleet/Energon Mirage mold, even though the original toy showed no boat-like elements.

Superlink Shockfleet (Energon Mirage)

Boats have been quite an unusual alternate mode throughout the many TransFormers franchises, and it's not hard to see why. The shape of the average hull tends to mean a large number of panels hanging off the robot mode, or an incomplete vehicle mode...

...Or, in cases like Shockfleet, both.

TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2009 (Timelines) Elita-1

As mentioned in the Razorclaw entry, Elita-1 turned up at BotCon 2009 as an Attendees Only souvenir piece. Also like Razorclaw, this is her second appearance at BotCon, the first being in 2007's Games of Deception comic. All told, she was a rather pointless character without a toy, so it was surprising that we've had to wait two years for this to emerge, as a seemingly random addition... I haven't seen the Wings of Honour comic, but I'd like to think there were a few more interesting 'bots to use as 2009 souvenir figures...

The name comes from the fleeting appearance of a female Autobot in the G1 cartoon episode where the Aerialbots go back in time and see the start of the war on Cybertron, meeting an Autobot named Orion Pax - who later becomes Optimus Prime - in the process. Elita-1 was rebuilt from the wreckage of Orion Pax's companion. More recently, of course, Elita-1 has been attributed to one of the biker-bots in Revenge of the Fallen. The biography supplied with this model is a complete waste of time, saying as it does that Elita-1's origins are unknown to all but Grimlock, the leader of her team, and he's not telling. I'm not sure who decided that even constituted a biography but, frankly, I'd rather a poorly-written bio than the waste of card and ink she was given.