Through a Glass Darkly

Every story needs a villain and every force of good needs an opposing force of evil. So it was with Starcom. As the bulk of the US Space Force ships were white and pure, Coleco took a hint from George Lucas mythic background to Star Wars and made the Shadow Force enemy ships and troops black and sinister.

The fanatical leader of the enemy force was Emperor Dark. Dark was only available as a mail-away after collecting various tokens from Starcom packs. The Shadow Force soldiers were suitably dressed in black and purple and supported by a legion of robot drone figures. The dramatic black and purple theme extended to the space ships too.

The Shadow Force logo is two triangles and the shape was cleverly reflected in the shape of the shadow fleet. The Shadow Vampire is a VTOL Assault ship with variable position engines and twinned laser cannons which pump in and out like flak cannons at the touch of a button.

My model is missing one of the paired cannons at centre, but still looks awesome.

The cargo handling element is capitalised with the Shadow Bandit, a medium sized ship capable of swooping into a Starcom base with stealth technology, to magnetically grab cargo pods and opening its wings once more, fly off with the cargo.

Staple unit of the Shadow space force is the Shadow Parasite. A small compact fighter with variable geometry stub wings and pop out laser cannons.

 Flagship of the fleet is the Shadow Ba,t a sleek triangular ship which neatly carries twin Parasite fighters in wing bays.

 Pressing the circular button near the rear of the craft deploys the cargo bay, lifting the ship up by 40 degrees and allowing vehicles or stolen cargo pods to be rolled in, not unlike the Aliens Marine dropship.

 There are a number of ground vehicles and other space vehicles in the line too, check out the Starcom Resource for more info!

"NICE SHIP- I'LL TAKE IT!"