Sky Lynx's vehicle mode is-- just like his G1 "combined" form-- a space shuttle with a significant undercarriage, which is meant to be one of those massive treaded carriers that transport space shuttles. The space shuttle portion of this mode looks pretty good; the wings tend to bend upwards slightly from the body (see the pic above for a pictorial indication of what I'm talking about) and should probably be a bit larger, but by and large the space shuttle section is proportional. There's plenty of great mold details, from little windows to "bolt" paneling to little technical detailing and all that. Given the breakup of the plastic parts-- and the two little white "ears" behind the cockpit-- it's a bit TOO obvious where Sky Lynx's head separates, even compared to the original G1 toy. Then again, I guess part of this comes with the territory of there being "seam lines" in a white plastic alt mode. The undercarriage portion of this mode, however, is just unseemly and quite frankly ugly. It would be one thing if you could "detach" it from the space shuttle portion, but you can't. There aren't really any visible treads or anything on this lower portion, just two large white bits that sorta kinda look like wheels, but are actually Sky Lynx's shoulders and hips in beast mode (and shuttle carriers don't have wheels this big anyways). It significantly takes away from the sleekness of this mode, sticking out quite obviously from the space shuttle portion of this mode, and the rear beast legs also stick out behind the rear end of the shuttle, which is definitely an eyesore and my biggest issue with this mode. It's all just very inelegant. As for the color scheme, Sky Lynx has rather patriotic colors of white, pale red, and blue, with the white being most prominent in this mode. There's also a bit of light milky brownish gray used for Sky Lynx's two gun weapons (plugged onto the underside of his wings in this mode), as well as for some minor connector parts. I really don't like this brownish gray, but the white, blue, and red contrast against each other fairly well. The top portion of this mode would be pretty bland without paint, but thankfully, there's a decent amount of pale gold used to make out some details, such as the cockpit windows, the side windows, the rear thrusters, and some venting details on the rear wings. There's also a big ol' gold-rimmed Autobot symbol on each wing. All this said, I still wish a bit more gold as added here, as the middle section in particular has too much unbroken white on it. It should also be mentioned that Sky Lynx's rear side tailfins can be folded up or down in this mode, but the joints aren't that tight-- they tend to sag downwards pretty easily.
    As per the G1 toy, Sky Lynx's beast mode is more the shuttle mode with a neck and four legs sticking out of the main body. If you look at the vehicle mode and the robot mode, you can correctly guess about 90% of the transformation without even having to look at the instructions or the underside. (The only part that isn't immediately obvious is that part of the bottom opens out to let the front legs fully rotate out and unfold.) Here Sky Lynx does a decent job imitating his G1 toy-- at least from the hips up. The lengthening of the nosecone into Sky Lynx's neck and head is quite well done, and his neck is pretty articulated to boot. A panel from the top of the shuttle mode also flips back to cover up a line of robot bits that otherwise would've been uncovered by folding out the neck-- something that wasn't necessary, but still very much appreciated. The wings are flipped forward into a position more like that of a bird, though the blue flip-out blades that make them into longer bird wings seem like they were put in the wrong way, even though they actually weren't. The wings look a bit odd, regardless. The rear half of the space shuttle portion is basically unchanged, though the tailfin folds out into a tail. It's a rather puny tail by itself, but you can combine the two gray weapons onto the end of it to give Sky Lynx a tail that's much better-looking and prportionally longer. The expected legs fold out from the bottom-- exposing more of the red in particular, but some more blue as well-- but unfortunately, they're only half good (and devoid of paint). The front legs look pretty decent-- nice and chunky, as befits a beast of Sky Lynx's size, though the combiner ports are pretty obvious in the lower legs. The rear legs, however, are really unfortunate-looking and easily my biggest complaint about this mode. They're just jointed in completely the wrong way due to them having to form part of a combiner torso, and the blue paw pieces look really weird, like they're sticking just barely out below half of his red lower leg that should be vertical, but is instead horizontal because of the odd joints. On the other hand, Sky Lynx does have some pretty good articulation for a beast-former in this mode; he can move at the neck (at four points; five if you include a white flap at the back of the neck), at the jaw, up-and-down at the base of the wings, back-and-forth at the mid-point on the wings, at two points on the tail, at the shoulders (at two points), front knees (at two points), slightly at the front ankles, and at the hips, rear knees (at two points), and slightly at the rear ankles.
    Sky Lynx's torso mode-- named "Sky Reign"-- emphasizes the "Lynx" portion of his beast mode, which on the original G1 toy was formed from the shuttle carrier portion of the vehicle mode. This time, the "lynx" aspect is mostly kept to the head, which is an excellent headsculpt-- pretty much spot-on G1 but with more detailing. The gold head and dark blue eyes really work well together. Blue is more of a color factor here, in keeping with the "G1 lynx half" theme of Sky Lynx here, with some nice gold vent details on the torso and a LOT of robotic detailing on the blue areas-- it's a shame not much of it is detailed with paint, as there's little vents, panels, "bolts", and circuitry lines everywhere. The back end of Sky Lynx's beast mode makes for an excellent chest, and the tailfin folds down on the chest pretty solidly. The front legs of Sky Lynx's beast mode fold together very nicely to form the upper legs-- no complaints there at all. The rear legs fold up to form the shoulders, and it LOOKS nice here, but unfortunately there isn't anything pegging in these parts-- as such, when you're trying to move an arm attached to this mode back, the rear hip ratchets behind the chest may move back instead, which is a bit annoying. The wings are obvious extras, but enhance the silhouette some, methinks, and the blue "blade" pieces stick upwards behind the head, looking pretty nice (though the joints on these pieces are loose enough where they can fall back down of their own accord, unfortunately). The biggest downside to this mode is the very odd Sky Lynx head and neck sticking right out of Sky Reign's butt. You are supposed to fold it up behind the torso and out of the way-- perhaps it's supposed to be some kind of tail?-- but it still looks very odd, and the joints aren't quite strong enough to keep it folded up-- often the neck will slouch down until the whole neck/head section is pointed straight out behind Sky Reign's rear. As for the gray double-barreled gun accessories, they can either be plugged in on the wings behind the back in this mode or on the sides of the upper legs, on the bottom of the blue paws. As for articulation in this mode, Sky Reign can move at the neck, hips (at two points-- one of them limited rotation), at the blue blades on the wings on his back, where the tailfins meet the chest on the front, and the same articulation on the "tail" that Sky Lynx has on his neck in beast mode.
    Sky Lynx is certainly the most unique of the Combiner Wars voyagers, having a vehicle mode and a beast mode instead of a robot mode. However, although his torso mode is largely awesome (some weak joints and odd tail aside), his shuttle mode has some significant kibble problems that really bring it down a huge notch. The beast mode is a fair bit better, being somewhere in between the quality of the two other modes, with some nice proportions and articulation but some oddities that mostly come from also having to form a torso, such as oddly jointed rear legs and weird-looking wings. Mildly recommended if you want to use him as a combiner, especially if you're looking for something a bit different than your usual torso 'bots. However, if you simply want an updated stand-alone Sky Lynx, you're going to have to wait longer-- the G1 toy still outshines this update in that respect.

Review by Beastbot

Back to Transformers: Generations Index