TransFormers Collectors' Club BotCon 2009 (Timelines) Skyquake

There are a number of figures in my collection that I can look at and genuinely wonder what ever possessed me to buy them... and there are figures in my collection that are flawed in some small but critical way. Thankfully, either one are rare occurrences particularly since, on the rare occasion I shop in bricks-and-mortar toy shops, I can give any figure I want a quick once over in the box, to see if I can spot any obvious flaws.

I've not always had the best of luck with TransFormers Collectors' Club figures, and particularly BotCon figures bought via the Club shop after the event, but this figure - part of one of the souvenir sets from BotCon 2009 - would certainly fit into both categories were it not for the fact that he was packaged alongside Banzai-Tron, an excellent reimagining of a G1 Action Master using a bonkers Energon mold.

Wings of Honor didn't interest me a great deal, but it was nice to effectively get a bonus figure along with the one souvenir toy I actually wanted. Aside from these, the only figure from 2009's set that's even on my radar is Scourge, made using the Galaxy Force Noisemaze mold.

(And, yes, I know Elita-1 and Razorclaw were available at the 2009 show as well, but they were additions to Games of Deception and Dawn of Futures Past, respectively, not Wings of Honor)

SXS Toys A-06 & A-07 Replacement Weapon Sets (TF Prime Skyquake & Dreadwing)

One of the most irritating things about the TransFormers: Prime toyline was the 'Powerizers' weapon gimmick shoehorned in to every single Voyager class figure. Each one had the potential to be reasonably impressive, but the scale was off - some too small for the character, others too large - and they seem to have been designed to replace the character's forearm, without there ever being a means of attachment included... Optimus Prime and Starscream, for example, ended up with oversized handguns that featured their own forearm detail, while Megatron's fusion cannon was just too big for his arm. And while the LED-lighting gimmick was interesting enough, it never actually worked as intended due to the way the weapons were constructed, and the geared mechanisms were almost all unreliable.

Still, Third Parties can often be relied upon to fill in where Hasbro's budgets cut things out, or where their fixation on gimmicks causes disappointment and, while Dr. Wu crafted the lion's share of weapon accessories for mishandled TF Prime toys, SXS were the only ones to produce accurate plastic interpretations of the enormous, two-handed cannons wielded by Skyquake and Dreadwing, and it only took me about three years to finally cave in and buy them...

TransFormers: Prime Skyquake

TransFormers Prime started its run killing off one of the Autobots, which pretty much set the tone for the series. None of the other key characters actually died, but the show certainly didn't shy away from killing off a less central character in the service of the story.

...And so, the first Decepticon to properly die was Skyquake... and while his brother, Dreadwing, may have had frequent appearances in the remainder of the series, he was only really interested in getting revenge for Skyquake's death and almost ended up in the G1 Thundercracker role of not being entirely behind Megatron's plans for tyranny. Skyquake only appeared briefly, but was utterly in Megatron's thrall, to the extent that he wouldn't consider Starscream his leader, even with Megatron out of action. Yet, since the series' first casualty, Cliffjumper, presented only a single opportunity for a repaint - as a zombie version - Skyquake and Dreadwing were more sensible chance to reuse a mold from TF Prime's limited character roster.