So, it's been a couple of years, but I'm back with a semi-regular posting schedule. I'm hoping to have at least a post a week for the time being, although posts won't always go up on Fridays so that I can properly recognize anniversaries and such on the proper date. Also, I'm trying to be a bit more diverse than just writing about Transformers for the time being (although it did seem appropriate that my first post in so long should make clear that Transformers will remain something this blog should be known for). You'll see what I mean as more posts appear in the coming weeks.
When Hasbro made the decision in 1995 to transfer administration of the Transformers franchise to Kenner (a subsidiary of Hasbro as of 1991), the folks at Kenner decided that the Generation 2 franchise had run its course, and they rather quickly pulled the plug in favor what became Beast Wars. This unusually sudden change in direction meant that a number of toys were already being considered for Generation 2, but never made it to toy shelves. Perhaps most famous among these "lost toys" were the G2 Stunticons, but there were quite a few other ideas for which prototypes or package art had already been created, which were discovered only years later. When the Transformers franchise celebrated its 40th anniversary with the Legacy toyline, Walmart arranged with Hasbro to take a few of these forgotten concepts and make actual toys out of them to become store exclusives. Cloudcover is one of these.
All that was known of the "original" Cloudcover was a hand-painted recolor of the Generation 2 version of Ramjet, which had already been released as one of the earliest Generation 2 toys, and for which another unreleased recolor had been discovered with a desert camo color scheme. The desert camo color scheme eventually was learned to have been intended to be a new character named "Sandstorm" (presumably not the same character as the Autobot Triple Changer of that name). It has never been determined whether or not the "Cloudcover" deco was intended to be a new character, like Sandstorm, or merely another deco for Ramjet, in common with other G2 toys that presented old characters in entirely new color schemes. 
When Walmart rescued several forgotten G2 concepts to be released as part of what they called the "Toxitron Collection," a new version of Ramjet had been released just a few years prior as part of the Earthrise toyline, and which had already been used to release the desert camo-Sandstorm as an online exclusive, so it was a fairly simple task to take the same mold and give it the unreleased blue pattern, finally given a name as "Cloudcover."* It's always fun to see these once-discarded concepts finally get made as official toys.*Technical detail, Cloudcover reuses a head that originally went with Earthrise Dirge, rather than the otherwise-similar Ramjet mold. This can be determined by the face's open-mouthed expression.
