Bot Reviews: Transformers: Age of the Primes Voyager Sky-Byte

After I miraculously managed to nab Haslab Omega Prime last year, I made it my mission to grab every modern update of Robots in Disguise 2001 characters, to go with him. That’s a small enough group of figures that I was able to get most of them on a single spin around TFCon 2025’s dealer room, including the newest member of the group, Age of the Primes Sky-Byte, here. So, why’d it take me so long to review him? Well, at the time, I got a bum copy with a broken shoulder, and it took me until now to grab another one. Shout-out to Comic Alley Toys in Oshawa, they got a loose one that I was able to grab for a decent price.

So, Sky-Byte. Out of all of the original characters created for Robots in Disguise, he seems to be the one with the most fan-favorite staying power. He was technically a villain, second-in-command to Megatron, and fancied himself a warrior-poet, quoting haikus as he terrorized the Autobots. But he was also somewhat inept, prone to panicking, and a bit too eager to get on Megatron’s good side. Plus, when push came to shove, he ultimately turned out to not be that bad of a guy, moreso someone who wanted recognition. He’d go on to appear in IDW’s comics, and the Cyberverse and Cyberworld TV shows, though, distressingly, those last two versions of him would forget the “poet with a soft heart” angle, and just go for “vicious killer,” as his characterization, for some reason. 

The fact that Sky-Byte’s had this staying power’s kind of funny when you consider that he was originally a simple repaint, done to save money. See, the tooling used for his original figure was first released in in 1999’s Beast Wars toyline as the Transmetal 2 version of the Maximal, Cybershark, and he was repainted into Sky-Byte for Robots in Disguise, because nearly all the bad guys in the line were recycled figures.

But Sky-Byte got so popular that we haven’t seen a new Cybershark since then, and it’s Sky-Byte that’s always getting the new figures. Back in the day, I had Transmetal 2 Cybershark, and my cousin had Sky-Byte, so do have some experience with the nostalgia this new version’s pandering to. 

Robot Mode

My immediate impression of this guy is that he’s huuuuge. It’s really funny that I just reviewed Studio Series 86 Hot Rod, who’s a tiny little undersized Voyager, and then went straight to this giant-sized fishman.

Sky Byte’s about as tall as Legacy Tarn, taller if you count the big fin at the top of his head, and he’s also a good deal wider and beefier in all directions. The bot’s got some real *presence*. 

The other thing about him is that he really feels like a carbon copy of the vintage toy, in terms of design and sculpting. He’s not an exact duplicate, I’ve seen comparison images online, he’s got adjusted proportions and whatnot (including a much smaller claw-hand), but the resemblance is startling, and immediately makes me remember my old Cybershark.

It helps that, unlike nearly every Transformers show before it (and plenty after it) the Robots in Disguise anime had characters drawn to be extremely toy-accurate, so this is what he looked like on TV, too. He’s a kibbly robot, with two giant shoulderpads of shark skin hanging off of him, and a shark-upper-torso hanging off his back, but we’ve fully crossed the threshold into “this feels like character design, instead of toy limitations” at this point. It helps that, on this version, that backpack all folds up and pegs together. 

One thing that the designers got really, really right with him is his sculpted detailing. See, Cybershark was a Transmetal 2 figure, and the whole idea behind them was that they were mutated bio-mechanical monstrosities, chock full of asymmetrical detailing. And sure enough, Sky-Byte’s got all kinds of sculpted little greebles across his limbs and torso, including a “face” on his chest, and they’re totally different on each side, as they’re supposed to be. This comes after Legacy Transmetal 2 Megatron and Tigerhawk both undersold that whole asymmetrical thing, so it’s good to see an update that understands the assignment. 

Uptop, Sky-Byte’s got a headsculpt with a huuuuge shark’s fin, and a face with the kind of toothy snarl on it that action figures in the 90’s loved to have.

I like that they also managed to make the face on him just a little bit “soft,” enough that I can buy that this is the insecure haiku-spouter from the show, and that he’s trying to be fierce. 

Now, the original Sky-Byte may have been a repaint, but he was a well-regarded repaint, because of how elaborate his paint job was compared to Cybershark. Doing that on a modern paint budget feels implausible, but they mostly got it right here. He’s a colorful bot, with a combination of navy blue, mustard yellow, multiple different shades of gray and silver, and a bit of red and purple, all across him. He looks really lush. Comparing it to the original animation model and toy, he got it pretty close, too, he’s just missing some hits of brown on his shins, blue on his upper arms, and a red stripe on his chest. But I didn’t notice until I checked the images, and he looks plenty lush on his own merits.

Well, okay, I still wish the “Spark Crystal” in his chest was translucent purple, it’s opaque here, though, apparently it’s still got a sculpted Predacon symbol on the inside of it (I saw it when I tried to fix my previous copy), so I guess they changed their minds at some point about it. Also, the original figure had silver chrome in several places, which this version doesn’t bother with, but as anyone who owned a chromed figure from that time period knows, that’s a good thing, because that chrome was doomed to chip, crack, and shed sooner or later. 

In terms of his construction, there’s a bit of literal “Build Quality” to this figure, in that you actually need to assemble him when you take him out of the box, since he’s too big to fit on his own. His giant shoulderpads need to be pegged onto him, as do the shark’s fins on his backpack, with the latter actually coming on model kit-style sprues that you need to break them out of. I’ve got no idea why they included them that way, but it was easy enough to pop them off, and put him together, and those 5-millimeter connections do stay put. This is a big improvement over the original figure, which I remember having shoulderpads that loved to come off at the slightest provocation.

In fact, the whole robot’s remarkably solidly built. I was worried he’d feel kind of rickety, thanks to spreading his materials budget out over such a large bot, but that isn’t the case. He’s a bit on the light side in terms of weight, but not distressingly so, and his material quality and general stability (including on his feet) feels pretty on-par for a normal Voyager. There isn’t even much hollowness on him, just a little bit on the back of his lower legs, and a block in his shark-claw-arm that’s needed for transformation. That said, his tight joints do occasionally cause problems. Bending his knees the wrong way can result in his shins coming apart on their transformation struts, and bending his shoulders can make them come untabbed, but both cases aren’t really severe, and speak more to the tightness of the joints than the looseness of his transformation tabs. 

Speaking of that, onto articulation! I don’t have a strong memory of what the original Cybershark tooling was packing, but Beast Wars was the point where good articulation started being the norm. That said, this figure feels like it has to have a leg up on the original, if only because they weren’t doing omni-directional ankles or wrist swivels as a standard at the time, and he’s got both. Beyond that, he’s got a standard suite of swivelling knees, universal hips, a waist swivel, a ball-jointed neck, and universal shoulders and elbows. The fishman’s bendy!

Something I particularly appreciate is that his shoulderpads and shark head are both poseable, too, to ensure that they stay out of the way of his movement. Another thing I appreciate is that there’s additional articulation on his shark-claw-hand, with two of the four prongs being able to pinch inwards.

That articulation makes up for the fact that he’s missing the original gimmick behind the claw, though, which was that you could press a switch to spin it. Instead, it just swivels on a joint. Similarly, his lone non-built-in accessory, a yellow, square, double-barrelled weapon, originally shot missiles, but now can’t even host blast effects.

It’s also hollow on one side!

I don’t expect modern figures to have those spring-loaded gimmicks, but it’s still a bit of a drag to lose them. You can stash the weapon inside his shark-head-butt-flap, though. In addition, you can pop out his two fins, and have him hold them like a double-bladed weapon in his one humanoid hand.

When it comes to -Izer integration, too, he’s a bit limited. He’s got a 5-millimeter port on his humanoid arm, and the two ports that his fins fit into, and that’s about it. You could pop his shoulderpads off and use the 5-millimeter pegs that they’re on as an additional point of Weaponization, though. 

Transformation

Sky-Byte’s pretty much a shellformer. You’re folding up his robot body, extending his arms above his head, and then closing up his shark-body parts around him. I remember it being a bit fiddly on the original figure, and kind of a challenge. On one hand, the designers clearly went out of their way to take this previously rickety transformation, and make it solid and stable. On the other hand, it’s still a bit more difficult than I’d like.

See, here’s the problem: Most of his shark-skin-panels have tabs and pegs on the inside of them, and they’re meant to fit in specific ports on his folded-up robot body. Lining them up and getting them pegged in can be a real chore, especially since most of the time, you can’t really see what you’re doing, since these connections are literally underneath his skin, and the best you can do is squint through the gaps at the bottom of the shark. There hasn’t been a transformation yet where I haven’t wound up wrestling with getting him pegged together. Another trouble spot’s his head, which is on a joint for the transformation, and if it pops out of place, getting it popped back in can be a pain. 

That said, once you do get him pegged together, it’s a really, really solid connection, but getting him there’s a journey. And, of course, it’s a cinch to undo everything when going back to his robot mode.

Shark Mode

The original TM2 Cybershark toy made a notoriously strange choice in this mode: He came pre-posed, bent into a sideways curve, like his whole body was turning. I remember early internet reviews giving him a lot of flack for that, and I understood why. There was even a previous Sky-Byte update in the Thrilling 30 toyline back in 2014 that had the chance to not do that, but it opted instead to pre-pose him mid-leap, curving downwards. So it’s great to see a version of this biomechanical shark mode that’s actually just pointed straight forwards.

The fact that you’re compressing him down into this mode means he doesn’t come off quite as ginormous as his robot mode, but this shark’s still got some heft to him.

The sculpting, as in his robot mode, goes nuts with the cyborg detailing. In this case, the motif is ripped shark skin, with technology beneath each tear. It’s also lovingly asymmetrical, which gives him kind of a funny face, because it looks like he has a different emotion depending on which side of him you’re looking at.

The colors were a spot where I knew there was going to be trouble. One of the things that made the original Sky-Byte such a beloved repaint is that he colored in all of the tech detail, adding lights, wires, and all kinds of tiny hits of paint. That wasn’t in the budget here, and all of his tech detail is uniform silver. I’m not really complaining, though, because he still looks really colorful and detailed in this form, and I think the solid silver tech is animation-accurate, anyway. 

Most of the yellow’s now hidden, save for some on the tail, and on the belly, making Sky-Byte primarily that dark shade of blue, with silver tech detailing poking out, plus different other shades of gray and silver, including a nice fade into dark gray on the lower half of the body. Finish it off with points of red for the eyes, and you’ve still got an oddly calm-looking apex predator. 

For build quality, this shark’s even more stable than in his robot mode, thanks to all of those solid tabs snapping everything into place.

For articulation, the biggest twist is just that he has any at all, for effectively the first time. At the back of him, his tail can swish from side to side. At the front of him, his fins can move, and his mouth can open. Most impressively, his head’s on a joint that lets it point downwards a little bit, giving him a fun bit of cartoony expressiveness.

That said, it does highlight the fact that he can’t elevate or stand up in any way, just kind of flop on his belly. Granted, I do find myself holding this shark in my hand and swishing him around a lot, but still, a stand or something would have gone a long way. 

For features, you can stash his fake missile launcher inside his head, though you’ll want to put it there when he’s in robot mode, since you have to tear his jaw open to get it up there in this form. You can also install it inside his lower jaw, so that it’s popping out of his mouth.

You can remove his fins, too, to access two 5-millimeter ports if you want some weaponization.

Plus, the original Cybershark had a really lame “flight mode” that was accessed by popping open the panels on the shark’s sides, and flipping open the extra claws on his tail, which you can also do here.

He does feel kind of threadbare features-wise in this form, but just being a well-sculpted, well-painted poseable robo-shark goes a long way, in my book. 

Overall

I really like this one. As an owner of the original Transmetal 2 Cybershark, seeing such a direct update of the original, with such specific quality-of-life updates really hits the spot for me. In fact, it’s funny how much of an equivalent exchange this figure is. You lose spring-loaded missiles, a geared spinning table, and some of Sky-Byte’s paint apps, and you gain more joints in both modes, a shark mode that isn’t pre-posed, a lack of chrome, and a general upgrade to stability and durability. Feels like a pretty solid trade-off to me. 

On his own, there’s a lot to like, too. He’s a weirdly huge Voyager that doesn’t seem to sacrifice any engineering to be that size, he’s well sculpted, painted and built, and he’s just a really unique character, well worth the pick-up. In terms of shark Transformers, he may, in fact, be the greatest shark around.