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Series: Legacy Evolution
Allegiance: Decpticon
Categories: Deluxe
Year: 2023
Prelude: Remember the time when Transformers were all about the boy robots and only those lame Go-Bots had girl robots? And remember when the Autobots added some girl robots, but at least the Decepticons remained all-male? Well, those times are long gone, because the Decepticons are all about the girl power these days, too. Enter Shadow Striker, who is kind of like Crasher from the Renegades, only with less laughter and more killing and maiming. Let’s say go!
Robot Mode: Let us start with an interesting fact. The original Universe (2003) Shadow Striker was a retool of Robots in Disguise (2001) Sideburn. And this Legacy Evolution figure here, which was released in 2023 (20th anniversary, yeah!), was then retooled into Legacy United Sideburn one year later. I guess Shadow Striker has now come full circle in a way.
Now while Shadow Striker has always been a female character, she has never worn a generically female Transformers body. No high heels, no curves, no lipstick on her face. She is quite clearly a car-former, what with having an engine on her chest (the actual car engine, too) and wheels on her thighs and her back. She also carries the roof and windows of her car mode as a shield on her right arm. Despite being billed as Cyberverse Shadow Striker, this figure far more closely resembles her Universe incarnation and RID Sideburn. Apart from the head, that is, which is a pretty close match to her Cyberverse look.
Articulation is good, no complaints, just a single peculiarity. Her shoulders are not connected to her torso, but rather to the wheels on her back. It doesn’t impact her range of articulation, it just means that you have to move the joints a bit a differently when you want her to raise or spread her arms. Not a flaw, just something peculiar. Also, the bulky shield on her right arm and the cape-like car doors on her back make the figure look a whole lot stockier than it actually is.
Shadow Striker carries a blaster as her weapon, which can also double as a short sword, and she can attach the bumper of her car mode to the end, making it look more like a crossbow. Another callback to the original Universe figure and RID Sideburn. If you don’t want to use the bumper on the gun, you can attach it to the left forearm. The blaster can be stored underneath one of the door panels on her back.
Bottom line for the robot mode: pretty cool. The resemblance to Cyberverse Shadow Striker is mostly in the colors and the head, to be honest, the rest is pretty much Sideburn. Overall, though, a nice figure. Not revolutionary, but nice.
Alternate Mode: While the robot mode far more closely resembles Universe Shadow Striker, the car mode is a pretty good match to the form she wore in the Cyberverse cartoon. Kind of a cross between the old Dodge Viper and a generic futuristic sports car. The transformation is pretty straightforward, the only vaguely difficult part is to get the roof to tab in properly without it popping off the arm it’s attached to.
The car looks pretty cool with the big engine on the hood and there are no visible robot bits to be seen. Okay, if you look at the undercarriage, it’s hard not to recognize part of it as the robot legs, and if you look real closely through the red-tinted windshield, you can spot Shadow Striker’s head in there, but those are minor things at best. A buddy of mine would no doubt be enraged by another example of clip-on tires, but the painted rims at least distract from that.
No place to store the blaster, sadly, you can only mount it on top. Well, you can technically attach it to the rear bumper, but that just looks weird. So bottom line, a pretty cool car mode, a much closer match to the Cyberverse version of the character, and no real flaws.
Remarks: For the longest time the Decepticons didn’t have any females among their numbers. There was lots of fanfiction, usually including female Seekers, but nothing in official canon. The Beast Era featured females among the villains, in Animated we got a canon female Seeker, and finally, in Cyberverse, we got multiple female Decepticons, some of whom weren’t even Seekers. Case in point, Shadow Striker, who can trace her name back to the original Universe toy line in 2003, but didn’t actually get any decent media exposure until Cyberverse, where she had a decently-sized role as a Decepticon warrior who had been left for dead by Bumblebee, only to be pieced back together by Shockwave into a Frankenstein-like monster with little but revenge on her mind.
I skipped Shadow Striker when she first came out, but when a bunch of Legacy figures were for sale on Amazon, I snatched her up after all. I don’t have a particular connection to the character, but she is interesting for her role in Cyberverse and the callback to the original Universe line, and a pretty good Deluxe-class figure, too. So while I wouldn’t call her a must-have, far from it, she is a very decent Transformer and I have no regrets buying her.
So bottom line: not a revolution, but if you like cool car robots, female villains, or just obscure characters with a bit of interesting history behind them, then Shadow Striker is worth a look or two.
Rating: C+
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