Even months before Mirage was officially revealed, there was a fair amount of discussion about the possibility that one of the exclusives would be some kind of "invisible Mirage," and when word more-or-less slipped a few weeks before the convention itself, much of that discussion turned surprisingly negative. Many Transformers fans felt (and, no doubt, still feel) that an "invisible Mirage" would be a boring choice. At least one reason (although I expect that there are others) that many of the fans on the message boards gave was that they didn't care for transparent plastic.Well, this is an area in which I proudly must differ from many of my colleagues. In fact, besides the box set, there were really only two other BotCon exclusives (out of five others available) that I had any interest in getting: Alpha Trion and this one. An "invisible" Mirage has always seemed (at least to me) like an obvious choice for an exclusive. Mirage's signature ability (admittedly, more in the cartoon than in the comic universe the BotCon fiction is supposed to take place in) has been to turn himself invisible, and it's a fairly simple thing to do to illustrate this by means of a toy made of transparent plastic.
That's not to say that the toy doesn't have its faults. For one thing, they chose not to do the toy in colorless transparent plastic, but instead chose blue. And the pictures don't really do the intensity of the blue justice. This toy is actually a fairly dark blue! Not at all "invisible!" In fact, it's debatable how much it's even transparent! I definitely consider this a wasted opportunity.
However, the blue plastic is quite an attractive color, and it does allow for some fun. Courtesy of my Sonic Screwdriver toy, which emits UV light, I can take some pretty cool pictures of this toy in the dark. Perhaps instead of considering it "invisible" Mirage, we should think of this toy as representing "night attack" Mirage?
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