Banzai-Tron (Botcon 2009 Attendee-Only Exclusive)
Vehicle ModeRobot Mode
Allegiance: Decepticon
Size: Voyager (comes in a 2-pack with Skyquake)
Difficulty of Transformation: Hard
Color Scheme: Moderately dark gray, dark royal purple, and some transparent orange, light orange, black, dark red, dull metallic gunmetal gray, and light green
Rating: 9.6

(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to Energon Mirage. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of Energon Mirage here.)

    Banzai-Tron is an homage to an obscure G1 character of the same name, who was an Action Master originally and thus had no alternate mode. This exclusive version of him gives him a gunship-boat thing as an alt mode, which is just as good as anything else! Most of the focus of the paint app placement has, appropriately, been on the robot mode to make it as accurate as possible to the original Banzai-Tron. The dull gray quite honestly makes for a rather dull main color, but when you add in all the accent colors on the toy, everything really pops-- the dark purple looks good enough, but that light green and light orange... yeah, it may not be realistic, but it looks DARN good against the purple, gray, and bits of black that make up most of Banzai-Tron's plastic colors. The transparent orange used for the toy looks almost as good as an accent color, as well. The placement of the paint apps is fairly varied and particularly striking in robot mode. It's also pretty accurate compared to the G1 toy, particularly on the head and chest. He REALLY looks like Banzai-Tron, especially considering that the head mold isn't changed and was never meant to be the character in question. A nice touch is that the symbols on the side of the boat mode are a Cybertronian font that, when translated, spell out "TO THE VICTOR GO THE PROFITS", a perfect summation of Banzai-Tron's philosophy.
    No mold changes have been made to Banzai-Tron, though as is the case with most Botcon exclusives, his electronics have been gutted.
    Botcon 2009 Banzai-Tron is one of the best Energon molds in a fantastic, eye-catching color scheme and a great homage to boot. It's hard to see where you can go wrong here, assuming you have the dough to be in the market for one of these exclusives. My personal favorite of the Botcon 2009 exclusives.


Banzai-Tron Bio:
FUNCTION: Mercenary
MOTTO: "Victory is the most profitable business."
To call Banzai-Tron pragmatic would be an understatement. His spark contains a deep-seated desire to acquire wealth. To that end, he has recently taken on the study of an ancient Cybertronian martial art form known as Crystalocution, which focuses on attacking an enemy's metal fracture points. So practical is this Decepticon warrior that he has decided to forgo the more mystical aspects of learning the art, and instead has focused only on its deadly methodology. When criticized about this, he curtly responds "There is no profit in spirituality." In gunboat mode, Banzai-Tron can travel at speeds up to 260 KTS. His primary weapons are four missile launchers. The two launchers on the front can double as energy blasters. He also carries four short-range rockets with adjustable power settings that can be set from stun to disintegrate. Sometimes he becomes too focused on profit and fails to see the larger scope of events around him.
Strength: 8.0
Intelligence: 7.0
Speed: 8.0
Endurance: 8.0
Rank: 5.0
Courage: 10.0
Fireblast: 7.0
Skill: 8.0

Review by Beastbot

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