Generations Selects Cyclonus & Nightstick (2022)

As was the case with both Scourge and Galvatron, Cyclonus was created when Unicron changed an existing Decepticon's body into a new warrior, but the identity of the Decepticon who became Cyclonus has been the source of debate for many years. Was he previously Skywarp, which would be consistent with Scourge's transformation from Thundercracker, or was he in fact Bombshell, who was the first and most prominent of the two Decepticons seen being reformatted into Cyclonus-like forms in The Transformers: The Movie?¹ Perhaps it doesn't really matter, since (like Scourge) Cyclonus' antecedent is generally assumed to have been dead prior to reformatting, and the subject was never brought up again until self-conscious fan-oriented fiction came along.²

This Generations Selects toy is a recolor of the toy released for the War for Cybertron: Kingdom line. That toy was more-or-less animation accurate (although the upcoming retool for the Studio Series line manages to be even more so), while this toy utilizes the original G1 toy's colors and adds Cyclonus' Targetmaster partner, Nightstick (in homage to G1 Cyclonus' Targetmaster release the year after his original toy). Unlike the Nightstick created for Universe Cyclonus in 2008, which was created specifically to represent him, Generations Selects Nightstick is a redeco of Blowpipe, a "Battle Master" created for the War for Cybertron: Siege line. As such, this Nightstick's weapon mode doesn't match the single-barrel gun he has been in his previous incarnations (although, ironically, this one's robot mode colors are a better match to the G1 version than the 2008 version was).

While Scourge seemed to have little personality of his own, Cyclonus featured quite a lot in the fiction of the late-G1 era, and was clearly Galvatron's most trusted lieutenant. Whereas Megatron always had to look over his shoulder in preparation for Starscream's next act of treachery, there has never been any question of Cyclonus' loyalty to the Decepticon cause, even as Galvatron (typically depicted as utterly insane after the events of the movie) abuses Cyclonus (and anyone else unfortunate enough to be nearby) again and again. An honorable Decepticon? Perhaps that's debatable, but if any Decepticon merits the description, surely Cyclonus does.

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¹The fact that we see multiple Cyclonuses being created (referred to as "his armada" by Unicron) seems to have been the result of an early draft of the movie that was dropped with the exception of this creation scene (and a couple of isolated bits of the third season of the cartoon which can generally be dismissed as animation errors).

²Such fiction, as one might imagine, doesn't always agree. So despite the TFWiki's insistence that it's all canonical, we're still left with the same question. It's ultimately left to personal preference.