#31: Thrust (1985)

Thrust will always be my second favourite version of the Seeker mould, after Dirge of course. Why, Ihear you ask? Well, he was actually the first version of the Seeker mould that I ever saw. My friend Rob had him, see, and would bring the toy to school to play with most days. This was about 1985-ish, possibly early 1986. I was always fascinated with Thrust, the fact that his wings were so odd-looking, the way it transformed, and the shade of burgundy-maroon he was coloured. There was just something so cool about that toy, I loved it. I didn't care that you had to fit different parts on him to make him look like a robot, or that he even looked silly with the cone head up (although I don't recall that was done often; we didn't really have season 2 of the G1 cartoon over here, so the conehead thing was never really a thing). Part of the reason I bought Dirge was the fact that I wanted a Thrust-like toy.

Another reason to like Thrust is his Tech Spec bio. A loudmouthed braggart who's also a bully? Who doesn't like roleplaying that in the playground? Sure, he's almost a 'Thundercracker-lite', but who cares? T-Cracker only REALLY became interesting when IDW started writing him. Thrust was where it was at.

Sadly, the cartoon creators didn't agree with me on that one, and poor old Thrust ended up in the 'dumb goon' role, beating up Autobots, getting trashed by other Autobots, and not doing much else. The same was true of the comics; he was always around as muscle, but never got to do anything interesting. In fact, the most interesting thing that's happened to him in fiction is getting a whole building dropped on him in the IDW comics. That's it.

The toy, as I said before, is great. Yes, seeker mould again, but the extras make up for the genericness of the mould. The wings in particular are great, the massive turbines that look like they really do some sonic damage, and the rear fins, the plane mode just screams out 'I'm from the 80's!' The stickers really finished the look off too, and it's great that Reprolabels did a new set of them for the Generations version of Thrust, seeing that toy on a shelf really is like taking a trip back through time.

Hopefully Thrust isn't gone from the IDWverse. I'd like to see a different take on the character, a bit of insecurity and inner turmoil. Because let's face it, for all his bravado and loudness, Thrust is just a little bit unsure of himself. That's always interesting to see. And let's face it, any excuse for the coneheads to appear in anything, eh?