Yes yes, y'all!
Right. Where are we at? Earthrise and that, yeah?
Do you still need me to intro the War For Cybertron trilogy?
I think we get it by now, right? We know all its moves.
But check it out - somewhere beneath the now-familiar noise of the weapons and the exploding and the filth
lies a brand new little something huge called Commander Class!
Not that one.
Not now, Cyberverse not that one.
Yes indeed, the new and enlarged Commander Class debuted last year with Siege Jetfire,
standing somewhere between Leader and Supreme,
and honestly it felt like a bit of a shaky start,
'cos Jetfire SEEMED exciting!
The idea of a massive, toon-style Jetskyfireman sounds pretty dope,
but ultimately, it's just a big bloke, innit?
I mean, it's fine, but there is such a thing as TOO MANY accessories. We GET it.
Oh, God!
So I'll admit I was a little bit skeptical when they said the next one was gonna be Sky Lynx
'cos, forgive me, but I kinda thought we'd seen the last of Sky Lynx.
I felt like his surprise inclusion in Combiner Wars was Hasbro throwing him a last-hurrah farewell party
and the whole Sky Reign schticktuation did kinda feed into the idea that Sky Lynx is the kind of guy
that you have to find something for him to do.
Because how can a creature as freaky and far-fetched as friggin' Sky Lynx possibly survive,
in the post-millennium darkest timeline, without tacked-on gimmickry or a team of helpers?
Turns out he can't survive. He can flourish!
Oh my God. (laughing) What the Hell!
So this fantabulous eruption of stupid is Transformers Earthrise Commander Class Sky Lynx
in his sensational primary monster mode!
God, so, I don't wanna get too into the mechanics of this thing right away
'cos there'll be nothing else to say about the other modes,
but suffice to say, this is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen
- in the context of Transformers -
and not just 'cos it's big!
Remember when it was possible to be impressed by big toys?
I mean, it's big enough, but moreover it's an ostentatiously in-yer-face, fun-first, fetchingly full-on,
zero-humility confidence griffin!
Ahh! I can't stop grinning!
Check out this absurdly splendid and splendidly absurd sky kaiju
with its wondrous wingspan, kingly posture, and that winning serpenty smile!
Y'know what? We needed this, this year.
It's just got such presence and poise with this long slender neck, puffed-up chest
and triple tails! Shuttle butt... I dunno.
Anyway, being a Commander class quadruped, it demands roughly the same surface area
as the rest of my Earthrise dudes combined, which I'm happy to grant him, but, where!?
Where in this place? Where am I gonna keep it!?
Just an absolute table!
Definitely a two-hander an' all - not just from sheer size and serious substance
but also, you may find him to be uncharacteristically unsteady at first.
Like, Sky Lynx is famously two conjoined robot animals, I hardly think that's a spoiler,
but it can be tricky to get his ass end clipped on there properly.
I mean, once he's on, he's friggin' ON, but you just gotta be careful at first, okay?
Cradle him carefully please. Hold him gentle like hamburger.
Give him a little scritch under the chin. *petting noises*
You will find that he will treat you well.
Er, couple of accessories? I don't fully know what these are.
Sorta platforms? Radar dishes? Cannons? I dunno.
And I suspect the designers might not have been fully on board either,
seeing as they gave it a dedicated blending-in spot.
Whoosh! It's gone.
But I guess they make passable shoulder shooters,
and check it out! He's actually got exactly enough splodey spots up front to use every piece of this
cheeky disassemblable fire tree!
Like a fir tree, but with fire? Forget it. Too dumb for the room?
But check this out, you want dumb?
Just jam the entire thing in his gormless goose gob for maximum barf blast!
They do seem to have dialled back on the old Siege ports though.
Like, he's got a couple, he's got enough, but it's just weird to me that there's only one on all this fuselage
and none on the wings!? I dunno. I'm kind of over it.
Likewise the star map thing, I just... who cares at this point?
Hmm, hexagony! Should I have been cutting these out?
Uggghhh! I don't care!
As if Sky Lynx even needs accessories and paperwork
when he's already over here being the weirdest thing ever in the dopest way possible!
Isn't that enough!?
Just the sheer charismatic abandon of this thing really brings home the unlikeliness
of the original Sky Lynx toy even ending up in the Transformers toyline to begin with!
Because he truly is the original obvious outlier.
The most conspicuous not-from-Takara nonconformist!
I mean, how did we get from Optimus Prime to this?
I think that's my favourite thing about Sky Lynx
'cause whatever you do with him, he's always gonna have that feel of being just some random-ass toy
that Hasbro decided to throw in with the assortment 30-something years ago.
It's kind of a robot, right?
Product!
That's the game. What you gonna do?
He just is and will always be, in the parlance of our times,
some whole other shit.
Ahh... never change.
But do transform.
Anyway, to bisect the big beastie, you just unclip it at the front, sort out some giblets, and Bob's yer menagerie.
Now, full honestly, the parts are clearly less than the whole.
That is, they are fun as a pair, but they just don't quite have the same animal magnetism.
Like, the bird boy's definitely a downgrade with these dumb little patheto-legs
and I do like this cat thing, but it realy feels incomplete. It just kinda plateaus and stops.
God, imagine being not as cool as the most amazing thing ever. What a travesty.
So get a load of this enormous astro egret!
Oh, Sky Lynx. Why are you this?
Just a glorious garish white and golden goose,
fully bringing the flair with those signature gilded auto badges!
Why does he have those? Why's it only him that ever gets to have those?
What is this, Year of the Horse?
Face is disarmingly dashing with that carefree croco-bird smile
but the windows do mildly bother me - like, is it eyes or a visor?
Like, are they all actively ocular?
Is it just these two, or just the middle one?
Where do I look!?
Wings are fiercely flappy with mad multi-hinge motion!
Love these wonderful blue extendo-feathers but I'm not crazy about HOW they extend.
Like, I get that this big ugly empty groove is physically necessary,
but it doesn't look ANY good and it simply must affect his flappage.
Whoops! Popped both his wings off while trying to prove how good they are.
And I dunno if this is just me, but there is something kinda concerning
about all the moving monster parts being coloured in this sinewy crimson.
Like, it kinda gives me the impression that he's secretly some kind of naked bleedy skeleton dragon
wearing the shuttle like salvaged armour. Do I just need to lay off the Dark Souls?
Like, look at this mad muscular neck with all segmented vertebrae,
the slightly silly skinny chicken legs with little She-Ra shorts,
and this killer tail swingin' free back here like some insane flailing deathblade!
Why does it come off though? I don't get that.
Like, look at the clip. It's definitely supposed to come off.
Why?
But look, whatever this avian aerial ace is supposed to be,
it's a wonderfully realised and superbly stylin' cosmo cormorant!
A magnificent mecha magpie.
One extreme emu!
A kickass cassowary.
I've got loads of these.
One glorious gosling!
Uhh, a booster rooster?
Like a bone marrow sparrow?
Wing commander? Like - Commander class... the video game, Wing Commander...
wing, like a bird's wing.
Simply,
And on the other paw is this giant lion thing!
Or lynx, I'm assuming? Ugh. please tell me they're not just called Sky and Lynx.
Now this big blue bozo always felt kinda secondary to me,
but, okay, he's all right.
Just a silly robot space panther with a giant golden face and a cocky popped collar.
Really feels more like a Power Rangers thing - like some kind of landlocked
animal-themed aircraft carrier boundin' out the mist with a belly full of spaceships.
I am kinda living for it though! It's certainly a solid slab of cyber cat with hearty heft and good strong colours.
Look at that blue. Phwoar!
But being the legs of the operation, it is clearly all about the stompers.
Like, he's got these big daft paws with roller tread toe beans
and these gigantic hip rotators are mightily manoeuvrable and honkinly chonky!
Not sure where I'm at with the knees though -
like, I get that they're anatomically accurate backward-pointing feline pouncy paws,
but it's just a little weird that he's got two sets of knees and they all go THAT way.
I do quite like these cheeky outward shoulders though
(shouting over joint noise) AND I DO ENJOY A GOOD LOUD RATCHET!
Jaws are actually a tiny bit terrifying -
like, these teeth just come off like dispassionate, deadly points on a jagged metal maw with a nightmareish bite!
Not totally sure what these under-chin blaster things are supposed to be.
Let's say they're thematic.
Shuttles and that, right?
Bit of a weird ass end as well - like, he's got two tails and one gigantic cat cloaca with a convenient entry door.
You can actually hook up a pretty sweet slide between the bum flap and the belly ramp
which is also available for sinister supervillain entrances and/or Thundercats hideout mode.
So, the individual animodes are pretty fun but it's fair to say they work better as a whole.
Like, everything the cat can do, the combined thing can still do, while also having wings and a dragon head
and call me ignorant, but does Sky Lynx just not make any sense as a character? Like, as an organism?
Are the bird thing and the lion thing different guys? Different beings?
Are they teaming up? Are they a couple?
Or is it like, one creature that can divide itself?
I think the answer is: don't answer that. It's a toy. It's the ultimate example of "it's a toy".
It doesn't matter and I do not care!
'Cos what, am I gonna do my research? As if.
Am I gonna find out through the fiction?
Am I gonna watch Season 3? Ugh.
Now KISS.
So, to get to the vehicle mode and the "vehicle mode",
you just collapse 'em down until they're boring now.
But you know yer boi loves a shuttle, and God this one's a treat!
It's just everything! It's large and chunky and weighty,
it's got little wheels, detailing's delectably show-offy, boosters are blasting, tail fin's gigantic,
cockpit's great, if a little pointy, it's cosmic!
Gotta say though, the wings are a little bit wibbly. On the wibbly side.
Like, they're all joints all in a row, and the only things holdin' 'em there are these tiny catches
which are truly pathetic, and check out this loading bay, I love this!
You got these gorgeous slender doors which theatrically open out to reveal this
Definitely worth two dedicated parts.
But come on, it's still great! It's so joyfully nerdy and righteously resplendent with the golden detailing,
the actual vintage NASA logo - God knows that was a surprise -
and check out that name tag!
He knows.
And then you got this other thing that goes under there, and it's really, really under there.
It's literally just a platform! Just a blocky-ass, bland-ass travel slab that's 100% in service of the shuttle,
full submission, total bottom with nothing of its own going on.
Oh. 'Cos it's...
lion down.
So I mean, it's got a lot of wheels, I guess, in a weirdly back-heavy sort of way.
Like, those powerful paw treads end up way the hell back here
but that's okay, because it turns out they're completely for show
and the actual wheels are just underneath. I'm fine with it. Robots in disguise.
And it does actually roll extremely well so I guess it does the thing that it's for.
Doot-de-doot-de-dooooo!
Ooh, the full-size fakeout underside doot-de-doo. How utilitarian.
I dunno, though. I don't feel like it really cashes in on the power puma's heavy duty industrial potential.
I mean, the original one was motorised, so that at least gave it some action, some joie de vivre,
but this just feels like packed-away mode. It's the most boring thing that Sky Lynx does, but that's okay too!
'Cos this bit alone has like three other things it can do that are way better than this.
Such as:
Now, if you've seen the show before you may know that
baseformers and city modes and that are very uninteresting to me.
I mean, I own both Fortress Maximuses, I've got every Metroplex - never transformed 'em.
It just doesn't work for me.
Big robots - brilliant. Big robots doing basic yoga all over my carpet - you've lost me.
However, Sky Lynx's shuttle dock situation's totally proven a bit of a sleeper hit!
Like, if you can believe it, this was actually what tipped me over into buying it.
Cool-ass transforming launch pad with all ramps and inter-playset connectivity
and this sick-ass centrepiece of a giant shuttle?
I'm in like Buzz Aldrin.
I dunno, man - this just got me. It's pretty much brought the whole War For Cybertron thing together for me!
I'm finally glad I picked up all those Micromasters
and like, you don't even need to attach Ironworks or whomever -
you just put 'em near it and you've got the makings of a city.
It's magic!
(panicked hooting)
So, it's clearly the cat thing doing all the work here -
the shuttle just stays the same and perches precariously on this shallow but dedicated booster base.
"Shallow but dedicated". That's my new Tinder bio.
And there is something about this that really pulls off a certain sense of scale and impressiveness!
It's crammed with neat details
like these massive fans and all pistons and cheeky treads for that potentially portable illusion.
Doot-de-doo
aaahhhhh sHIT
Legs are still wildly visible but it doesn't have to be a whole thing.
They make decent little towers for like, radar arrays and gun emplacements and adorable battle stations.
And check it out, you got this little garage storage area where some Micromasters can chill out.
Is it "garridge storeidge" or "gahraaj storaaj"?
And I love this heinously steep ramp where they can really get to work loadin' up that
I just - I love this.
Like, he doesn't necessarily NEED to do this but it still doesn't feel like forced gimmickry.
I don't get that same vibe that I did with Combiner Wars, like
"Ooh, better jam another mode in there so he's got something to do."
It feels like an organic bonus mode that just happens to fit in with the base theme play scheme.
Maybe it's because it doesn't just look like a bloke sitting a bit weird,
or maybe it is merely the presence of a shuttle,
Oh God.
It's happened.
I like base modes now!
[dramatic music sting]
Welp...
So, Goddamn! Earthrise Sky Lynx is puttin' on a clinic!
This thing has, in the mose minor way possible, actually kinda changed my world a little bit.
This is the figure that made Earthrise make sense!
It made base modes in general make sense.
It made Sky Lynx on his own terms make sense, in as much as that's possible.
'Cos it doesn't matter who he is, what he means, how he works, whether he fits in -
he's too beautiful to fit in! He's designed NOT to fit in.
He's designed to be a great toy.
He's a playset, he's three different monster modes, he's a spaceship,
and a whole heartful of magnificence!
So cheers for watching! Please do subscribe and smash me a like
and in a world full of Starscreams, be a Sky Lynx.
Okay! God, that was fun.
Thank you to everybody on the Patreon squad over here for keeping the channel going for another month.
You're good people!
And extra special thanks specifically, for no real reason, to Jake Amaya!
You Amaya favourite.
Mic drop?
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Limited appeal, keeping it real.