For the third of the three female Destrons released in the Transformers Legends line, Takara-Tomy released the first ever official plastic representation of Nightbird! Nightbird was a one-shot villain character in the Generation 1 Transformers episode “Enter the Nightbird”, a female ninja robot built by humans then stolen and reprogrammed by Megatron. Much like fellow one-shot characters such as Chromia, Nightbird became something of a fan-favorite, and has been brought back as a part of this recent assortment of Transformers Legends characters by Takara-Tomy.
Much like one of the unlicensed representations of Nightbird, Takara-Tomy’s Nightbird is a remold of Arcee. She sports a new head and a new chest like her fellow Legends releases Blackarachnia and Slipstream, plus she also gets a pair of sai accessories which are new to this mold. The finish on Nightbird Shadow is an extremely shiny silver which contrasts nicely with the glossy black, and gives this version of Nightbird a look distinct from Arcee, as well as looking as show accurate as such a remold possibly can. A couple of things to note, Nightbird Shadow has the remolded “open” hands from Arcee, with little ridges that limit how far the guns and swords go in, the sai are molded to have notched handles so they fit the hands fine. Also, it might just be mine, but I found the panel that the head was on had a hard time staying in position and would pop up very easily, though this was eased by not pushing the torso in the whole way.
Overall, Nightbird Shadow is a good, fun release from Takara-Tomy. If you have Arcee, you’ll already know what to expect from Nightbird. The real appeal here is in how good the black and silver deco looks, and particularly the new head sculpt, which is a perfect recreation of Nightbird’s face in the Generation 1 cartoon, especially with the eyebrows. Check out the gallery for 150+ pics of this cool ninja robot.