Raker

Raker is a Micromaster from the Generation 1 continuity family.

Raker (レイカー Reikā) specializes in high-altitude assault, striking ground-based opponents with frightening accuracy while keeping well out of range of any counter-fire. He's also the only member of the Wing Team who can achieve orbit unassisted and is a capable warrior in zero-gravity environments. He's also a shameless flirt with female robots, which can often override his logic circuits and interfere with his operations.

Fiction

Micromaster

Raker was one of several Autobot Cyberdroids who were mutated into Decepticon Micromasters by a mysterious dimensional shockwave. After the ship crash-landed on Earth he and his fellow Decepticons began causing trouble. A New Transformer Legend Begins!! Shortly after the arrival of Sixturbo on the Autobots' side, Raker and the Sixwing combiners observed the Autobots' attempts to fight off the mind changer virus. Enter the Urban Disaster Relief Specialists!! Later, Raker waited outside the Autobots' base while Missile Run infiltrated it in an attempt to steal several Cyberdroid capsules. When the Decepticon was interrupted in his task Raker was called in, blasting the side of the base and creating a hole for Missile Run to escape through. The team then combined into Sixwing to simply destroy whatever they could. During the course of the battle Sixwing took a blast from the Autobots' experimental Vaccine Program Gun intended to return their original Autobot programming but instead giving the Wing Team the power of the Beserker. Enter the Decepticon Sixwing!!

Later, Sixwing was routed by the newly arrived Sixtrain, who used his "Red Mode" power to blast him into his components. The team fled, leaving the Autobots free to examine the Decepticons' excavation site near a dormant volcano. Once the Autobots dug up a pair of metal plates of Cybertronian origin, Chain Gun called for another attack to snatch the prizes, the team once again forming Sixwing. Sixtrain! Activate Red Mode!!

Operation Combination

Years later, Raker (now an Autobot once again) and the rest of the six-team Micromasters joined Guard City and the Road Corps in defending Earth from the forces of Decepticon High Regent Scrash. Operation Combination

None of the combiner team individuals ever actually show up as individuals, only as components of the combined robot modes.

Toys

Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers

• Sixwing (Micromaster Sixteam, 1992)

• ID number: TF-02

Released in the Operation Combination portion of Takara's Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers toyline, Raker transforms into a Space Shuttle Orbiter. He can also form the right arm to any of the Six-Team combiners, though his nominal placement is as the arm of Sixwing. (He can be placed in the left-arm position, but since only the right Sixwing fist will work with him, he'd end up with a backwards fist.)

He was only available as part of a complete Sixwing gift set, packed with his teammates Chain Gun, Falcon, Flanker, Missile Run, and Supersonic.

The original Six-Teams are considered among the more difficult Japanese Generation 1 pieces to find, due to their final-year release well after Transformers had faded from relevance in Japan, and thus command some hefty prices even with the molds' later re-releases.

This mold was also used to make Universe Aerialbot Storm Jet.

• More information on Raker at TFU.info
• Raker toy gallery at Transformertoys.co.uk

Micromaster

And nobody notices all these incredibly tiny shuttles flying around?

• Raker (Micromaster, 2003)

• ID number: 3
• Accessories: Sixwing right fist, rifle

In 2003, the entire Sixwing team was redecoed as part of the third assortment of The Transformers: Micromaster toys, in individual boxes with a number visible to show which mold was inside each box. Unlike the two prior waves, the entire Team's colors have been extensively changed (well, in most cases, we'll get there), with all-new base plastic colors and new paint applications rather than stickers... plus they were sold as Decepticons. Raker was not as heavily changed as his teammates, sticking with the traditional white-and-black Space Shuttle deco with a slightly different nose-paint arrangement, but his robot parts have gone from dark blue to black, plus his wing details are now painted rather than stickers. Oh, and the Decepticon sigils on his wings, there's also that.

On top of this, two out of every twelve toys in the shipping/display case were all-white-plastic, nigh-unpainted "Berserker"-mode chase figures with purple Autobot sigils. Even the combiner kibble was cast in white plastic, albeit a little more milky in tone. These toys came in the same boxes with the same instructions as the normal versions.

• More information on Micromaster Raker at TFU.info
• More information on Berserker Raker at TFU.info
• Micromaster Raker toy gallery at Transformertoys.co.uk
• Berserker Raker toy gallery at Transformertoys.co.uk
• Translation of Raker's Micromaster bio by Doug Dlin

Notes

• Raker, like all of the six-team Micromasters had no individual bio information whatsoever until his Micromaster release a decade after his original Operation Combination release.
• His name and ladybot-wooing ways are most likely a reference to the James Bond movie Moonraker which featured a Space Shuttle.