Transformers: Botcon 2009 Razorclaw

Sure, it’s a little old. Yes, I’ve got more recent exclusives that I could write on, and I will. But on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I just wanted something light to write about.

Botcon 2009 Razorclaw is a three years later companion piece to the pretty excellent 2006 Dawn of Future’s Past boxset, which featured Maximals and Predicons from Beast Wars in their Cybertronian forms, moments prior to the departure of the Axalon to try and apprehend the fugitive Megatron, having stolen the Golden Disks. Razorclaw is featured in the last panel of the convention comic from that year, and there years later got his convention figure. The figure is a repaint of the Cybertron Liobreaker/Nemesis Breaker, which would also be repainted later into Lio Convoy.

This is an awful, awful figure. It’s not poseable at all, and it has fairly basic joints. In the Cybertron line, this figures’ gimmick was that it could transform into ‘Savage Claw Mode’ for Optimus Prime, allowing Prime another power up mode with a freakishly gigantic, vaguely lion shaped arm. The toy is basically created around that gimmick, which was pretty junky in the first place, and man does it suffer as a result. 

Razorclaw was one of the Botcon figures from 2009 that wound up with a new head, and the head here is really nice; it would have been better had there been something paint wise to break it up, since it’s basically a red and yellow blob. This causes the details of the face to be a bit hard to see, but Razorclaws’ face is a pretty basic visor/mouth plate pairing. The color scheme is really terrific as well, having a great balance of red, black and yellow with some orange in the lion mane. The Cyber Key is repainted to resemble the Golden Disks, in keeping with the other 2006 figures and their keys. 

 

Alt mode is a lion in theory, or maybe some kind of Surrealist lion, more of an approximation than an actual take on the animal. Kind of makes you feel bad for picking on Beast Wars figures for all being shellformers: at least they looked like the animals they claimed to be, unlike this guy. 

As a collector, I really like the Botcon offerings, up to about 2010. The Animated Stunticons didn’t do much for me; I really like the Shattered Glass stuff, but feel like many of their choices of characters the last few times out weren’t that vital; Machine Wars and 2015’s Diaclone themes didn’t do much for me either. There have been figures from each set that have made it on to my ‘to buy’ list, sure, but not the way that 2006 or 2007 or 2008 did, where I had to get the entire set. Razorclaw here had been on my list for years, along with one or two others from 2009, and towards the end of the summer I got him in an eBay auction for under $30. That is an awesome price for him, considering at retail, the base figure was like $20; so, all things considered, an extra ten bucks for a convention exclusive is not too shabby. Prior to that, I’d always seen this figure go for around $50, and while I’d almost gone for it a few times, that’s too much to feel good about buying this guy. I am glad to own him, as I have always admired it from a distance, but man am I glad that the temptation was enough to get me to spend the large money on one because most of the good feelings about owning this guy come from owning a convention figure. And with the 2016 set revisiting the pre-Beast Wars idea again, it’s cool to have gotten this Beast Wars tie in figure before the market starts to climb again. But, if you’re not interested in convention figures, this is an easy, easy one to skip, regardless of price.