Nightracer (G2)

Nightracer is a Decepticon clone from the Wings Universe portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

You'd be anti-social if you were the clone of a legend too!

Female Decepticons were thought to have become extinct sometime during Cybertron's long history of war, among them, the original Nightracer. Her skill with a gun and especially as a sniper became legendary, and as the war grew and bled on into history, a myth. However, Jhiaxus had remembered the myth of Nightracer, and chose to clone her and re-create one of Cybertron's deadliest warriors. In particular, he chose to include her acerbic personality to see how his other clones, his 'Second Generation' of Cybertronians, would react, in order to overcome arising divisions. The cloned Nightracer firmly believes in Jhiaxus' goals of recreating the Cybertronian Emprire. At least, that's what she tells herself, since the original Nightracer's aversion to social interaction and bonds still shows through.

Her knowledge that she is a clone of the original Nightracer gives her serious doubts, often causing her to wonder whether the original Nightracer was faster, a better shot, or stronger. Poor self-doubting clone.

Fiction

Wings Universe

Nightracer is shown as one of Jhiaxus' "Second Generation" warriors. A Flash Forward, Part 3

Toys

Generation 2

She's still waiting for her insignia to finish downloading.

• 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.

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

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 was also thought to be the first female Transformers toy to see North American release, however limited, until Freezon (released in 1985) was retconned to be female.

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

• More information on Nightracer at TFU.info

Notes

• The original 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.

• Fun Publications, however, was not so concerned with any pesky legal issues, and made a Nightracer an official part of Transformers canon by including her in the A Flash Forward storyline in Issue #45 of the Collectors' Club magazine. Nightracer's profile in the Hasbro Transformers Collectors' Club issue 46 explains that the Nightracer making her pictorial debut in the accompanying storyline (and thus Transformers canon) is a clone of the original Nightracer, rather than the character created by Raksha. This was, presumably, to get around the possible legal issues with using a fan-created character.

• While answering the question of who this Nightracer is, the profile also brings up more questions. For one, the artwork accompanying her profile depicts Nightracer with an Animated style body, which has noticable differences from her portrayal in the previous issue, even going so far as to have details from Arcee's bodystyle (particularly around the hips and legs). Her eyes change color from yellow (in her previous appearance) to red, though her head remains essentially the same.

• To add to the confusion, her alternate mode is shown in her profile as G1 Nightracer's toy.

• The same profile also mentions the "Third Cybertronian War" which is a conflict from the Animated continuity, while the storyline Nightracer is featured in is set in the Wings Universe. It is possible that the conflict mentioned was supposed to have been the Third Cybertron War, which is a war from the G1 continuity, to which the original Nightracer belongs. Which universe the cloned Nightracer belongs to is kinda murky at this point.