I also have Sky Shadow!

I got him quite a bit ago.  There was a long dryspell of new Transformers (like a week or two) and I saw this guy in a store and I bought him, even though I'd planned to skip him.

He's pretty, at least!  It's hard to go wrong with black, silver, and red.  And he's Overlord from the pants down.  The top half transforms into a completely different jet.

I dunno.  I have regrets.  It's not that this toy is bad, but there were reasons I was skipping him.  I'm happy with the Sky Shadow I already had, and that Sky Shadow takes up way less room on a shelf (he's a Deluxe) and IDW comics based their design of him on that earlier toy.  I just don't need a giant-ass Sky Shadow.  It was a bad impulse purchase.

But here he is, anyway, for you to look at.

Like I said, he's not bad.  He's just surplus to my requirements.  And I have an Overlord now, who's mostly this guy anyway, but as a character I wanted.

So.

Back in the late Eighties, Japan didn't get Thunderwing.  Instead, they gave Thunderwing's oni-styled Pretender shell a new head and chest and tried to pass him off as a different, fully robotic character.  He was Black Shadow, whose function was Space Mafia!

...well, it is if you're not very precise at translating his function from Japanese into English, anyway.

No, he's "just" a space gangster.  Which is still space cool, but I think the phrase "space mafia" evokes the imagery of a single guy who is the ENTIRE friggin' space mafia.  He is all space gangsters combined.  That always pumped up  his reputation in my mind.    He was not a dude to mess with.  He runs everything, and not nicely.  Black Shadow is a one-man Illuminati, with guns.

And because Hasbro was on the Good Crack this year, not only did we get a new Thunderwing toy, but they also made sure he had an extra head and chest somewhere on the tooling so that we could get Black Shadow later.  Though he's "Sky Shadow" and his bio mentions nothing about gangsters or mafias or even racketeering.

Boooooo!

Ah well.  Never look a gift horse in the mouth.  Its head might end up under your bed sheets later.