Wednesday 17 December 2014

#65: Slapdash (1988)


Slapdash, being a Powermaster, already holds a special place in my heart. One, he comes from one of my favourite ever eras of Transformers, that special time and place where anything was given a go, and experimentation was the name of the game for the brand as a whole; and two, his Japanese counterpart kicked ass in Masterforce. Of course, he's a very different character to ol' Slapdash, so we won't be talking about him.

In an era of superbots, Slapdash was, let's face it, a bit of a rube. His Tech Specs say it all; he was unprepared for war. Often turning up without Lube (ho ho ho), his Nebulan partner, nine times out of ten he'd be unable to transform on the battlefield. And being an interceptor (presumably because of the speed of his alt mode), that's kind of important. 

Lucky then, that he wasn't all that important in the fiction. In the Marvel G1 comics (and Regeneration One) he accompanied the rest of the Powermasters-to-be and Goldbug as they went to rebuild Optimus Prime on Nebulos, whilst Blaster and Grimlock fought for the Autobot leadership, and Slapdash was part of the Autobot army nwho searched for the Matrix on the Matrix Quest. He also helped the Transformers defeat Unicron, only to be shot in the face by Highbrow, when the latter had been genetically altered by Scorponok to lose any inhibitions he might have about killing EVERYONE. Poor Slapdash. Help destroy a Dark God, only to be killed by one of your own mates. 

He seems to be having a better time of it in More Than Meets The Eye, where for the moment at least, he's a crew member of the Lost Light, searching for the Knights of Cybertron and listening to Rewind's stories at the bar. Sweet.

As for Slapdash's toy, well...look, I like old toys, and I like this type of Transformer. "Good" is a completely subjective term, ok? The important thing is, I think it's cool, and that's all that matters. Right/ Glad we got that sorted out. His toy's not very good, there, I said it.

As an example of a toy era when a company was willing to experiment though, Slapdash is amazing. Is he successful? Not on all fronts, no. But he is fun, and that's all that really counts, at the end of the day. 

I like Powermasters.




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