#41: Runabout (1986)

Runabout, along with Jazz, was one of my very first Transformers, on my tenth birthday, in 1986. I can remember it quite clearly; one of the only times I've ever been excited about my birthday. I usually hated them, but this year was different, this year, I'd be getting Transformers. Get them I did, and Jazz and Runabout were played with a lot, I can tell you. I still have them to this day, believe it or not.

In later years, I realised something; Runabout and his comrade Runamuck are basically Beavis and Butt-head. No, really. They're always seen together, they very probably like heavy metal, they're both complete idiots, and they both like to break stuff. I mean, Runabout and Runamuck went on a grand tour of the USA, graffittiing national monuments. They would have succeeded too, if Circuit Breaker and the world's lamest gestalt hadn't shown up. Sadly, that seems to be the high point of their fiction. In the cartoon they appeared in one episode only, and the focus of that was Starscream (who didn't even have a toy out that year). In the Marvel comics, Runabout survived the battle with Unicron but got eaten straight after by a Cybertronic demon; in Dreamwave he had all his energy sapped by Sunstorm and was left for dead; and in IDW he was electorocuted by the Reapers until he exploded. Seriously, this guy needs to stop dying. Stat.

I know what you're going to say. His toy suuuuuuuucks. I AM aware of this, you know. Because he's a Battlecharger, his gimmick destroys any chance that the toy may have had of having any sort of articulation. The pop-up gimmick is pretty cool though. And the black and red go together really well. And sod it, he was one of my first ever Transformers. I'm always going to love and forgive him for anything.

Runabout then, is cool. His toy may not be cool, and he may have a serious survival problem when it comes to Transformers comics. But I love the guy. He's Butthead in Transformer form. What's not to love? Huh-huh-huh.