Toy History
The first figure of Cybershark was released in 1997 as a deluxe figure. He transformed into a hammerhead shark, and in robot mode, he could fire the hammerhead from his chest like a missile, or use it as a melee weapon, while his tail became a rifle. He also came with twin missiles that could be fired from his chest as well. According to the toy’s bio, during the first year of the Beast Wars, he was assigned to patrol the oceans in search of Predacons.
This figure was remolded in 1998 for Japan’s Beast Wars II series as Hellscream, a reborn version of the series’ version of Starscream, and had a more cyborg look to it (It would later be released in the US in 2006 as part of the Transformers: Universe series as the Decepticon Overbite, in a Target-exclusive two-pack with the Autobot Repugnus; the paint scheme was unchanged, with only the addition of a Decepticon symbol). Cybershark’s mold would then be remolded again in 1999’s Japan-exclusive Beast Wars Neo series as the Maximal Sharpedge, and was now a sawfish (which is a member of the shark family).
Cybershark was one of the few toy-line characters to receive second figure would be released in 1999, the final year of Beast Wars, as a mega-sized figure under the Transmetal 2 sub-series. Here, he was now a cybernetic Tiger Shark. He was the only Transmetal 2 to possess a vehicle mode, a low level flying form. In addition he also had a missile-firing twin-barrel gun and also an action feature where his tail (which becomes his left hand in robot mode) could fold out into a four-pronged blade and spin via a gear in the elbow. The toy’s bio now revealed that Cybershark was not actually a member of the Axalon’s original crew, but a bounty hunter who had honed his skills tracking down Cybertronian Space Pirates and had come to prehistoric Earth on his own, tracking down the criminal Megatron.
The entire figure would be repainted in 2001 as the Predacon Sky-Byte in the Transformers: Robots in Disguise toy series, now a Great White shark. Interestingly, Sky-Byte never used his flight mode, but instead could “swim through the air”.
Beast Wars: The Gathering and The Ascending
Cybershark was part of the newly-emerged Maximals in IDW’s miniseries, and was present at both of the battles against Magmatron’s (and later Ravage’s) Predacons.