Prime - Sky Lynx

"Skylynx is a powerful and chaotic force who lives to serve the Predacon cause."

Name: Skylynx

Faction: Predacon

Continuity: Aligned

Toy Line: Prime: Beast Hunters: Predacons Rising

Strength: 7

Speed: 7

Rank: 6

Firepower: 7

Intelligence: 4

Endurance: 8

Courage: 8

Skill: 3

Robot Mode

Sky Lynx has a mostly white robot mode with a lot of blue , and red in some areas, as well as some gold details and missile disks. His main torso is made of the bulk of his beast mode's body as well, featuring his underbelly on his chest. There's not much else to talk about this part of his body, as being a deluxe figure he has limited features. Sky Lynx's torso also has his tail attached to his back, and his wings attached onto his shoulders, which can be posed as desired. The wings feature a disk missile launcher, which is activated by pushing the white trigger on the inside of the wings.

His head is made from his beast mode head, which is simply folded into his chest and opened wide, revealing the robot head, if you want to you can let him keep his beats mode head, but it would look weird. His head is white with red sculpted eyes and a metallic blue forehead chevron and a face mask, with what looks like a breathing filter on it.

His arms are connected to his shoulders at the point where the wings are also connected by a ball joint connector. His elbows are made with a pivot and ball joint connector as well, giving the arm all it's articulation. The hand also features a pivot joint on the wrist, but using this will reveal more of the beats mode foot , so it's probably not worth doing.

His hands feature three sculpted fingers posed around a peg hole so he can hold a weapon if you give him one (not that he needs guns)

His legs are connected to the groin area of the torso by ball joints again. His lower legs feature a couple of pin joints at the knee and mid-way down the lower leg, which makes him bend his legs midway for better support.

His feet feature a pin joint again, and a support strut at the back, giving him some good support in this mode as well.

Alternate Mode

Sky Lynx's alternate mode is a red, white and blue winged dragon, which is actually just basically his robot mode on all fours and his head and tail in a different position. Due to this he has much of the same articulation as his robot mode, so there's no need to mention it here again. His wings are differently connected in this mode, as you have to move them for the front legs/arms to have a better positioning, and this have a slightly different configuration, but not by much.

His beast mode head features an opening mouth (though be careful not to reveal his robot head in the mouth as well. The tip of his tail can be removed, but that doesn't seem to be for any real reason, escept maybe as a drone of some sort maybe. His hands are retracted and switched with his front feet by a simple pivoting joint.

He retains his wing's launching feature in this mode as well, or alternatively you can just remove the disks to give him better flight ability.

My Final Thoughts

This toy is difficult, the main reason I got him was because I knew he was going to be a main character in the upcoming Predacons Rising movie, but really he's a difficult to discuss toy, there's nothing too terrible about the toy itself, but it's also not so great either.

His disk missile gimmick is interesting, but I think could have been pulled off a bit better, the overall design of the dragon mode is very nice, and due to it's design can be posed to make it look like a bi-pedal or quadruped dragon if the owner desires. One major problem I had with this toy, which I believe was a problem with other people as well was that his right leg wasn't able to stay in the ball joint. This was easy enough to fix using some nail varnish, but is still somewhat off-putting though. Another small issue is that his wings need to be dislodged in a specific point, which is hard to locate the first few times.

I actually like this figure because of the bag of homages that he presents. He's obviously based on the G1 Sky Lynx character (his colours match up, as does his beats mode) but he's played as a villainous Predacon instead of an Autobot. This however is another of the homages I mentioned, in the cartoon he was often portrayed as a rival to the Predacons (the jungle animals from G1, not dragons from Prime), which is now his faction. This allegiance shift could also be seen as an homage to how Sky Lynx appeared to be originally planned to be a Decepticon (given how his character model often had a Decepticon insignia, and his rivals were originally planned to be the Anibots, an Autobot team).

I'd say, unless you particularly love Sky Lynx as a character, and want a mountain of homages in one toy, you may want to skip this toy. He makes a good figure for the shelf, but his play value is a bit underwhelming, especially with his fiddlyness in places.