Nightracer (G1)

Nightracer is a Decepticon from the Generation 2 portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

I enjoy being a girl!

Nightracer is one of the best sharpshooters in the Decepticon ranks. Aloof and a loner, Nightracer is often considered arrogant and distant, and her snide, cutting remarks to teammates only strengthen the other Decepticons' dislike of her.

Fiction

Animated cartoon

Readers of Venus, a trans-dimensional magazine for Decepti-femmes, are invited to decide who is deadlier, Nightracer or Flamewar. The Allspark Almanac

Toys

Generation 2

She feels positively naked without her stripes. (FX version shown).

• Nightracer (BotCon 1995)
  • Accessories: Rifle

Nightracer was a BotCon 1995 exclusive toy, with a confirmed at-convention run of only 298 pieces. A redeco of the Generation 2 Go-Bot High Beam, Nightracer uses the same base plastic colors and mold as the Go-Bots version of Bumblebee, but lacks the gold overcoat paint layer, and has silver paint on her face and engine as opposed to Bumblebee's black. She also uses a different wheel mold than Bumblebee. Each toy given at the convention was further modified with hand-painted blue stripes on the sides of the hood, and a custom-made Decepticon sigil sticker on the center of the hood.

Several years later, a large batch of Nightracer figures were sold through WhizBang Toys, both on eBay and through WhizBang's toy shows, presumably Hasbro overstock. This version of the toy lacks the hand-painted details and Decepticon sigil sticker, obviously.

Aside from being the first toy specifically redecoed for use as a convention exclusive, Nightracer is also the first female Transformers toy to see North American release, however limited.

This mold was also used to make Robots in Disguise Crosswise.

• More information on Nightracer at TFU.info

Notes

• Nightracer's name, character, and biography never went through the Hasbro approval process—they were created by Raksha, host of the 1995 BotCon convention, who maintains that Hasbro has no legal claim on the character. The claim is shaky at best, due to the nature of derivative works, but Hasbro has yet to pursue the issue, and is unlikely to do so in the future. As such, Nightracer holds a rather unique position; the toy is official, but the character is not. Kinda.

• Nightracer's colors weren't quite what Raksha had asked for: The lime-ish yellow plastic parts were supposed to be blue, but Hasbro had presumably told Raksha that the colors couldn't be changed. A possible reason for this is that, due to the Generation 2 Go-Bots' gang-molded nature, Nightracer was actually made from spare parts that were left over from the production run of the Japanese releases of Go-Bots Optimus Prime, Megatron and Soundwave: Nightracer's "godawful yellow" is also the color of Soundwave's car shell. This would also explain the different wheels, which originally belong to the Double Clutch/Mirage mold.

• Nightracer's overall colors and look very closely resemble that of another Decepticon convention exclusive character, Shadow Striker, which would come in 2003. Despite the simularities, 3H has flatly stated that the look was purely coincidental.