Restoring a previous repurposing of mine from the old forum:
Back in January 2020, I had acquired this toy, Platinum Edition "Year of the Goat" Optimus Prime:
I acquired this toy because I was inspired by another user on this board (I forget who, shout out if you're who I'm referring to) who decided to use this toy to represent a ghost version of Optimus Prime that he wanted to put with his Masterpiece Ghostbusters Optimus toy, so that it could be a ghost for that MP Optimus to hunt. He had done something similar with other translucent TF toys, using them as more ghosts for his Ghostbusters MP Prime.
This idea of his inspired me to pick this toy up and do something similar with it. Though, while he used it as a ghost of Optimus, I have instead repurposed it as the ghost of another character, RiD 2001 Scourge (a.k.a Car Robots Black Convoy).
Especially with the silver chrome trailer, this figure just reads more as Scourge than as Optimus to me, and I am grateful that there was no name printed anywhere on this figure like there have been with past releases of it.
The idea of this figure being Scourge as a ghost also just sounds more interesting to me than it being just another Optimus toy, as I had zero interest in using this toy as Optimus.
As for the nature of this Ghost Scourge character, I envision him as something like DC's Spectre or Marvel's Ghost Rider, a spirit of divine vengeance who, after his premature demise, was given a second chance by Primus to serve as a sort of Cybertronian Grim Reaper embodying Primus's divine wrath and judgement.
His Autobot symbols being a hybrid of the traditional one and the Year of the Goat Kanji work with this idea in that they look more like defaced/scarred/distorted versions of the normal Autobot symbol, as though Primus had attempted to return Scourge to his originally-intended faction (as he was born from a Autobot protoform that had been turned evil by Predacon spark energy) but, as a consequence of some of Scourge's personality refusing to fully return to the side of good, his insignia came out twisted and misshapen, as a sign of Scourge's unwillingness to shed all of his evil nature, meeting Primus halfway in a compromise that makes him a neutrally-aligned figure, willing to declare judgment on Autobot and Predacon alike.
Anyone wanting to use this idea can feel free to come up with their own backstory as to how and why Scourge died, but my personal backstory for this guy is that he is specifically the Scourge from the OTFCC 2004 "
Shell Game" universe, who, according to Ask Vector Prime, was turned into the mindless monster Toxitron by Megazarak. The reasons I chose to make him specifically the ghost of "Shell Game" Scourge/Toxitron instead of just the ghost of the normal RiD cartoon Scourge are:
- Around the time I got this figure, I had also acquired an OTFCC 2004 Megazarak of my own and got to thinking more about the larger story of "Shell Game" that AVP added on to it, and liked the idea of the Scourge who was turned into Toxitron getting his long overdue revenge on Megazarak in the end (see more about this further down).
- I also wanted a way that I could have this figure and my Car Robots Black Convoy figure (who would represent the normal cartoon version of Scourge) fight each other as separate individuals coexisting at the same time as each other, without the ghost being some future version who travels back in time to fight his living self, which would doom his own existence if he kills his living self before his time. This way, it's two distinct versions of the same guy fighting each other with no paradoxes.
Following on from the fate of this version of Scourge getting turned into Toxitron, come my own new ideas:
After dying a dog's death as Toxitron, this Scourge's spark was spared by Primus, who took pity on the tortured soul after his having suffered so much in his painful existence as Toxitron. With his spark's exposure first to Megatron's Predacon spark power and then to Tox-En, Scourge's spark had mutated beyond recognition, with only Primus's divine touch able to cleanse it and finally give Scourge some sense of peace.
However, Scourge was not ready to die and insisted that his business in life remained unfinished. Having already taken pity on Scourge and sensing a strong will within him, Primus gave Scourge the choice of becoming his angel of vengeance, which would allow him to settle his score with Megazarak (whom Primus had also taken notice of), but at the cost of shedding his evil ways and serving Primus himself. Though Scourge loathed the thought of becoming a "good guy", he begrudgingly accepted since he really wanted to pay back Megazarak. Primus allowed some of Scourge's personality to remain intact, as illustrated by the distorted versions of the Autobrand he wore. But as he was also no longer fully corporeal, Scourge also had to give up his ambitions of conquest and domination.
Though, he would get to live a new "life" in which he could go on killing and torturing certain condemned sparks for all eternity, which he enjoyed. Particularly, getting to torment Megazarak for all time, following his defeat at the hands of the Autobot Defensor, sounded wonderful to Scourge. And now, he spends his existence striking down those whose time is up and who have lived lives so wicked and malicious that they deserve only the worst sentences of all, by the Scourge of Primus.
For those who prefer the Car Robots version of the character, an idea for a Japanese name of this form would be "Shadow Convoy".
