Vector Oracle (2012)

As more and more toys are added to the Transformers franchise all the time over the period of the past 30+ years, it is inevitable that some have been given more fictional attention than others. For many toys created purely as promotional items, it is perhaps no surprise that little-to-no fiction is ever created for them at all. Vector Oracle is one such toy. Indeed, I'm not even entirely clear whether I should call this toy "Vector Oracle" as a proper name, or "The Vector Oracle," given the fact "Vector Oracle" sounds more like a title than an actual name.

Sadly, the lack of fiction featuring the character means that one is given little guidance on such questions. The only help of any kind that I've been able to find is a name-drop in one of the Facebook-based logs purported to be written by Tornado, an obscure homage character from the BotCon 2014 box set, which itself used the same mold as Vector Oracle (originally created for the Targetmaster sold alongside the 2008 Generations Cyclonus toy). For what it's worth, Tornado did refer to "the... Vector Oracle" (emphasis mine) in his reference.

Pretty much everything I know about this toy comes from the TFWiki. He was apparently produced to encourage folks to buy at least 3,000 yen worth of Transformers toys on a specific date from the Japanese version of ToysRUs. There are apparently 4,000 Vector Oracle toys that are said to have been made, making this toy somewhat more common than a BotCon exclusive, despite the limited window of opportunity to get one. I myself got this toy from BigBadToyStore, as a fairly inexpensive add-on I added to a Pile of Loot to help justify the costs of shipping some other items I was getting. It's a rather attractive, if unusual, addition to the collection.