#30: Sandstorm (1986)

Sandstorm was always one of the Triple Changers I wanted. Mainly because 1. Helicopters are cool, 2. dune buggies are cool, and 3. I like the colour orange. Yeah, I was a bit special as a kid. Sadly, I never owned Sandstorm. Which made it worse all those years later when I finally saw his 'hero' episode of the G1 cartoon, 'Fight or Flee'. For those who haven't seen it, it all revolves around the discovery of an alternate universe Cybertron, Paradron. This planet is bizarro Cybertron, a paradise, basically, where a group of Autobots left the planet of their origin to seek out somewhere else they could live (sound familiar much?). Sadly for them, the Decepticons found their world, and conquered it, leading to the Autobots blowing it up. Yes, it really is that swift a decision to destroy a world by the 'heroic' Autobots.

Poor Sandstorm. As leader of the world he feels awful about this, and bids his world farewell. Only for Rodimus to mock him and remark that 'Cybertron's a better world anyway'. Douche. Still, never mind, because the next episode Sandstorm's in, he seems to have forgotten all about his erstwhile world. All's well that ends well, eh?

Other than that, Sandstorm has been very much a background player in Transformers fiction, always being around, but never doing much. Unless you count buying the farm in the Dreamwave continuity as doing something. At this current point, it would seem that he's aboard the Lost Light, looking for the Knights of Cybertron. So hopefully, he'll pop up at some point. Which is possibly bad news for those of us wanting to get his G1 self, as Rocherts will no doubt make him amazing. Gah.

As a Triple Changer, he transformed into a dune buggy and a helicopter, which as I stated earlier, is cool. He's exceedingly orange, too. I mean, almost TOO orangey. Sadly, I've never owned or even played with the toy, so I can't comment on the quality of it. Those who I've known who DO own him seem to think that he makes a very good toy indeed. So he looks to be one of the better Triple Changers.

Sandstorm's Tech Spec bio was followed almost to the letter by the G1 cartoon, he shows off his manueverability AND his ability to make dust clouds for camouflage in Starscream's Ghost. His devil maycare attitude also gets a look in, but not too much, sadly. Because he wasn't used much, we never saw it. Although in the comics, he doesn always seem to be on Wrecker's duty, so maybe that would be a factor there. Who knows, maybe one day we'll get a whole series just about Sandstorm. Until then, here's Paradron's last moments, and Rodimus being a complete douchecanoe: