Bot Reviews: Transformers: Legacy Evolution Deluxe Cyberverse Universe Shadow Striker

There aren’t enough female Transformers in general, and there especially aren’t enough female Transformer villains. Throughout the 80s, I’m pretty sure we literally only had Nightbird, and she wasn’t even a proper Transformer! Things have gotten marginally better in the modern era, but only marginally, and one interesting effect of these attempts at improvement has been how many female characters get plucked from d-list obscurity, and made into something important. 

Shadow Striker’s a prime example of this. Her original figure was a limited-run 2003 BotCon exclusive, a repaint of the Autobot Side Burn with a new headsculpt (this’ll be important later).

Described as a self-sufficient criminal, Shadow Striker had a couple appearances in convention comics, but stayed obscure. There was also a Bayverse version of her, a tiny little repaint of G1 Wheelie, released in a two-pack with a Bumblebee minifigure, with a bio note describing them having an intense rivalry (again, this’ll be important). Again, she was fairly obscure.

This changed in 2018, when the Cyberverse television show began airing, and made her a member of the core cast, the creators seemingly reaching for whatever villains were available.

This new version of her was a hardened warrior, who’d been rebuilt into a misshapen form after an accident, and who carried a specific grudge against Bumblebee for causing it, calling back to that little movieverse bio note. This television role would also net her a few new toys, though like a lot of the Cyberverse figures, they were simplistic gimmick toys, rather than proper poseable collector pieces. 

More interestingly, in 2019, IDW’s rebooted Generation One comics decided to import the Cyberverse version into their story, again, seemingly out of a search for more female Decepticons.

This version of Shadow Striker was a loyal lieutenant of the Ascenticons (three guesses who they become), and a member of Team Stream, the ad-hoc squadron of baddies that also contained Flamewar, and which served as a chaotic, fun part of those stories, with Shadow Striker playing the straight woman a lot of the time.

My love of those comics led me to this new version of the character, released in Legacy Evolution in 2023, and doomed to shelfwarm for a lot of the following two years. She was a controversial release, for reasons I’ll get into below, but also because the figure itself had a reputation as being kind of not great. Good or bad, I still wanted to find out for myself, and now you will, too.

Robot Mode

So, the big thing about this version of Shadow Striker is that, like Legacy Chromia and Windblade, she’s billed as being the “Cyberverse Universe” version, i.e. the character from the TV show. However, like Chromia, what we’ve actually got is a figure that isn’t accurate to the show, and in Shadow Striker’s case, is instead a hybrid of all of her designs, put together.

To be more specific, everything below the neck on Shadow Striker is mostly based on her original BotCon figure, i.e. a repaint of Side Burn, and this was clearly done so they could then retool her back into Side Burn later on in Legacy (which they eventually did).

Now, I personally don’t mind this, because I’m down with the more old-fashioned Classics/Universe/Generations design school of being based more on vibes than media accuracy, but I can understand why this is a dealbreaker for some. Fair enough!

It helps, for me, that it’s a body that suits the character really well. It’s technically not asymmetrical, unless you add her accessories (more on that later), but Side Burn’s odd proportions really suit a robot who’s supposed to look a bit odd. She’s got legs with long, skinny shins, reminding me of Bumblebee Movie Shatter, a snatched waist, a blocky torso with an engine block, and most interestingly, two panels of car parts hanging down her back that, instead of looking like leftover vehicle bits, read to me as some kind of cape, or waistcoat.

An obvious downside to her design is that her arms seem just a teeny bit too small for her, and a little too far down on her torso, but it’s a) very mild, b) again, sort of fits with her vibes, and c) is even less obvious if you kit her out with some equipment. 

Maybe it’s the fact that she was made to be retooled into a male character, but I also appreciate that they somehow made Shadow Striker read as female, without feeling the need to give her exaggeratedly feminine traits. I’d be remiss, though, if I didn’t mention that I’ve seen plenty of instances of fans deliberately mistransforming her chest slightly, so it sticks out more. To each their own!

Another legitimate complaint: She’s shorter than Shattered Glass Flamewar, when their vibe in the rebooted IDW comics was very much “short gremlin, and her taller, more serious minder.” The most I can say to that is they definitely didn’t have the surprise breakout characters of that story in mind when designing her. A shame, really.

Uptop, her headsculpt is the most Cyberverse thing about her, featuring a frowny face behind an angular, narrow helmet, and asymmetrical eyes, her left one being a round device installed after her initial destruction. Maybe it’s my fondness for the IDW comic, but the specific angles on her helmet make me think more of the art in its pages than the Cyberverse show, which is what I’m after, so I’m fond of it.

Shadow Striker’s colors are another area where they went purely with her Cyberverse appearance, in that she’s almost entirely a deep, Decepticon-looking purple, with black as her secondary color. For accents, she has bits of silver (including a faction symbol on her left arm) and red that really works with that purple. In particular, I like how the engine block on her chest is just done in shiny paint, instead of chromed like on the original. It’s a good-looking set of shades. 

Build quality, meanwhile, is a land of highs and lows. The highs are that she’s very stable on her feet, and all her joints are really tight. Maybe too tight, in fact, especially since it exacerbates a problem in this mode: Her backpack, which her arms are actually attached to, doesn’t like to stay in when you pose them. It’s not going to come out if you, say, pick her up and shake her about, but if you swivel her shoulders, you might have to pop the whole assembly back in. It’s not too annoying, but it’s a sign of various miscalculated tolerances.

Beyond that, she’s plenty poseable, though, and includes a few bonuses. She’s got ankle tilts and rockers, knee swivels, thigh swivels beneath universal hips, a waist swivel, swivelling wrists and elbows, universal shoulders above bicep swivels, and a ball-jointed head. Poses that she’s particularly good at include using her long legs to stalk around, and/or folding her arms behind her back, formally.

In addition, that petticoat made of car parts that I mentioned earlier has a joint halfway through each strip, so you can even make it billow. There’s some dynamism here!

For accessories and features, there’s a lot going on here, and not all of it works. Let’s start with her riot shield. It usually stays plugged into her right arm, on a 5-millimeter port, since it was permanently stuck there on the original Side Burn tooling. It’s cast in clear red, painted purple, and adds a lot of mass to her.

It’s got another case of odd tolerances, though: The 5-millimeter peg that connects it to her arm is really tight, and the friction hinge that connects it to the shield is really loose, so you’re liable to rip the hinge off if you remove the shield. You can immediately pop it back together, but it doesn’t feel great, y’know? At least the shield’s got a 5 millimeter port on the front of it, too, for weaponizing. 

Her next accessory’s an odd one, it’s literally just the back bumper of her car. It doesn’t really have any place to go here, but you can attach it to her other arm, to add to her asymmetry. In fact, it blends so well into her left arm, that I thought I’d lost it for a little while. It’s also got a port on it, for additional weaponizing or blast-effecting. 

Finally, she’s got a little handheld pistol, based on Side Burn’s, but with the twist that it’s got a 5-millimeter barrel at the end, instead of the bladed assembly the original had.

Also, oddly, there’s a little tab on the handle that you need to slide through her fingers for her to hold it, meaning not just any Transformer can borrow her gun.

She’s also capable of holding it sword-style, which doesn’t make much sense, until you remember that it’s a 5-millimeter peg, so you can build her a sword, especially if you’ve got any substantially long blast effects.

For another characterful feature, you can peg her gunsword in behind one of her coattails, like a concealed quick-draw piece.

Lastly, that bumper that doesn’t do much? You’re meant to attach it to the end of this weapon, too, because doing so makes it so it’s shaped like the other missile launcher the original figure came with, which was formed from the bumper. 

Beyond that, she’s got a total of eight 5-millimeter ports across her body, including one right behind her head, an interesting place to put these. Between those, and the customizability of her weaponry, she’s nothing if not flexible when it comes to what you can do with her pile of stuff.

Transformation 

I’d heard this was a sore spot many people had about this figure, that it was an unreasonably difficult transformation. In person, it’s…somewhere in the middle? It’s a weird one for a carformer, that’s for sure, beginning by hyper-extending her spine and backpack really high up, and then folding all of her limbs inwards to build a car around that long strut. 

That’s where the difficulty is, as both her legs and arms have multiple little tabs they need to plug into, or the whole thing won’t hold together. It can be tricky getting them all plugged in, but also, I’ve pretty much got it down pat at this point, it just doesn’t have great handfeel to it.

There’s also a bit of partsforming here, technically. I say technically, because you can just leave the roof-shield on her arm when transforming her, but it’s easier to get her arms into place if you pop it off. That, and you need to attach her rear bumper piece. And that’s the only actual issue with the transformation that I can’t solve, because the bumper piece is supposed to sit flush against the back of the car, but just wont line up with the rectangular tabs it’s supposed to stick to. At least it stays on there fine, thanks to a 5 millimeter port, it just doesn’t sit flush like it’s supposed to.

I’ll say this much, though. The original figure  is notorious for having a difficult, badly-designed, complicated shellformer of a transformation (I owned the Side Burn version at one point, so I remember), so this an objective upgrade over the original. 

Car Mode

So, the original BotCon Shadow Striker, and the Side Burn it was repainted from, changed into a Dodge Viper. Funny story there: It wasn’t originally licensed, until Dodge presumably came knocking on their door, at which point, some kind of deal was hashed out. I talked more about it in an article I wrote about the history of real-life cars in Transformers, over on the Transformers Wiki Community Blog. Anyway, I guess that whole situation scared HasTak off, because outside of the exposed engine block on the hood, this car definitely goes out of its way to otherwise look nothing like a Dodge Viper. In fact, when I look at the specific shapes on the hood, I actually see a visual homage to the little Revenge of the Fallen Shadow Striker’s vehicle mode, a nifty little thing to include. 

The sculpt’s pretty ambiguous about whether this is an Earth Car, or a Future Car, but the colors definitely scream Future Car, what with the deep purple, red windows, and silver and red accents. She’s also got blue headlights, and painted red taillights. It’s the wheels that look the most futuristic, though, colored black, with red techie-looking highlights partially covering the hubcaps. 

In terms of build quality, presuming you got everything pegged in during transformation, the car stays together pretty well. I feel like there’s a bit of a gap between the back of the roof and the rear doors, though, that I always squeeze down a bit. And, as mentioned above, the rear bumper sticks out a little bit, but it’s a symmetrical kind of sticking out, so it’s less noticeable than you’d think. 

For features, she rolls just fine on her four wheels. Beyond that, nearly all of her 5-millimeter ports are hidden, save for the one on her roof. Her gun can’t really store anywhere on her, but you can mount it there for an attack mode, and continue to trick it out with flame effects. 

Overall

I think this figure’s decent, but flawed. That said, I can also see why other people outright dislike it. I don’t mind the conceptual choice to basically make her a Side Burn pretool that also qualifies as a homage to multiple Shadow Strikers, but I also get why one would rather she get her own bespoke design, especially since she’s not really the Cyberverse version, like it says on the box. In terms of how the figure actually is, she’s got a bunch of little tolerance issues with her joints, accessories, and transformation, and is a bit more fiddly than she should be. But none of it’s a figure-killer, and there’s enough goodness here, between her flexible accessories, good articulation, and other little neat things. Still, this is a “fine” rating, and not a “great,” and if you’re not specifically after the character, it’s skippable, but worth getting if you need any Shadow Striker, or just want to buff up your ranks of Evil Women. 

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