Remember Depthcharge in the old Beast Wars cartoon? He was the tough-as-nails loner obsessed with hunting down Protoform X (a.k.a Rampage). He also had the kinda unfortunate alternate form of a sting ray. Not the most threatening of beast modes, but it made for a fun figure back in the '90s, thanks largely to his disc launcher feature and his 'space-cruiser' mode looking a little like a TIE Fighter. Bot mode was kinda big and bulky, too, which made for a pretty imposing looking character.

That last part has a little to do with people laughing a bit at the Official Transformers Collectors Club's membership exclusive Depthcharge figure. This new take on the character makes for a much leaner rendition of the character. The figure is a straight repaint of Transformers (2010) Deluxe Terradive with no new parts, unfortunately. People had pointed out from the beginning that Terradive had a bit of a resemblance to the ray-bot so it wasn't a huge surprise that someone would take the idea and run with it. As a stand alone figure it's probably a bit underwhelming, but if you got your hands on the Botcon 2006 Dawn of Future's Past set that re-imagined Beast Wars characters with pre-cartoon vehicle modes you're probably looking forward to adding a new figure to your collection.

Last year the exclusive figure was a Generations version of Runamuck which caused a significant interest in the club. I'm not so sure they'll be able to repeat that with a figure like this, but I'm thinking it'll do at least a little better than Dion did in 2010.

[additional images via Shmax.com]