#8: Rodimus Prime (1986)

1986 was a weird time to be a young Transformers fan. These days it's almost old hat to have multiple timelines, parallel universes and constant change, but at that time, Transformers fans had gotten used to the way things were, and they this is how they were; Optimus Prime was the leader of the Autobots, Megatron led the Decepticons. They would fight, Megatron would come off worst, skulk away to his base, and come back the next week for more of the same. Transformers the Movie changed all of that.

See, in the movie, Prime died, and Megatron was reformatted into Galvatron. Which would have been bad enough in itself. I mean, there were kids having to be taken home crying and screaming because Prime bought the farm. It was that bad that it even brought Duke back to life in the GI Joe movie. Even worse was to come though. Optimus was replaced by Hot Rod, who, with the power of the Matrix flowing through him, became the mighty Rodimus Prime. Which is, let's face it, a silly name. Many kids, whether it was a reaction to Optimus dying, or just because of the name, hated Rodimus. I mean, really couldn't bear him. They replaced the 'proper' leader with this guy? Unacceptable. Things got so bad that Hasbro eventually ordered that Optimus be brought back in the cartoon series, with Rodimus being reverted back to Hot Rod (spoiler) and melting into the scenery, important no more.

Me being an awkward child though, always liked Rodimus. I'm not sure if it was my natural inclination towards the underdog (I AM British, after all), or just whether I thought his alt-mode was cool (a camper van with flames down the sides? SOLD), but I always thought he was a good character. I liked the way that he never thought he was good enough to replace the almost godlike Optimus. I liked that he retained some of the hotheadedness of Hot Rod (spoiler), which meant that he did things very differently from the way Optimus did them. He was a good character, layered and interesting, and it's good to see that in the comics these days, he's being played in much the same way. I certainly think that they threw away the character needlessly in 1987 for the much less interesting Optimus (in my opinion, anyway).

Rodimus' toy was...not great, if I'm being honest. I like it just fine, but I'm not going to say it's brilliant when it's not. It's a brick. Even by G1 standards. Like Chromedome and many other examples we'll come to in later blogs, his arms swivel, and that's about it. If it wasn't for the super-sweet alt-mode and tank/base mode, the toy would be severely lacking.

The Tech Specs for Rodimus are interesting, because it's now obvious in hindsight that Hasbro really didn't want anyone to know the plot of the movie, that Hot Rod was destined to become the next Autobot leader. However, it's painfully obvious that Rodimus is an upgraded and older version of Hot Rod, which put them in a quandry. So, instead of "leader", he's referred to as a "protector" (which Fansproject thanked them for later, no doubt), and given a pretty vague bio, which can be taken a number of ways, as a leader or just as a member of the Autobot top brass. That is, until you realise that his "Rank" is 10. Making him a leader. Nice try, Hasbro. Mind you, the ads didn't help, either.

#7: Hun-Grr (1987)

I'll say it now: I LOVE combiners. Especially the 'Scramble City' style ones, which didn't have to be ported in a particular way. A lot of people like the earlier ones, such as Bruticus and Menasor et al, but me, I always had (and still have) a massive soft spot for the later combiners. And of all of those, by far my favourite was, and is, Abominus, merged form of the Terrorcons, the leader of which, was Hun-Grr.

Now, of course I'm going to get to all of the Terrorcons individually at some point. But for the uninitiated, they were a team of monsters, some of which were very alien (Blot, Rippersnapper), and some which looked like mythological horrors (Cutthroat, Sinnertwin). Hun-Grr fits somewhere between the two I feel, a two headed dragon, which is still technological and advanced in nature.

Let's face it, he looks great. And applause for the colour scheme, whoever thought of hot pink accents with grey, give yourself many pats on the back. For a combiner 'commander' toy, he's also tall and interesting. I mean, most of them were ok, but the late-end toys were much, much better than the earlier models, with articulation and everything. The most you got with some of the earlier attempts were arm swivels, if that. Hun-Grr could actually be *posed*. I know.

The other good thing about Hun-Grr is that his fiction accurately represented his Tech Specs, as a monster who eats pretty much everything, and uses it as ammunition against his foes. He wasn't in too many episodes of season 3 of the G1 cartoon, but a memorable episode is "Money is "Everything", where he and the Terrorcons are being controlled by the mysterious Quintessons.

More good examples could be found in the Transformers comics, specifically the Headmasters arc of the Marvel US comics. He and the rest of his team showed up, and didn't fare too badly in the final analysis. Which is more than can be said for most combiner teams in the comics.

I'm very happy to report that I actually own Hun-Grr, and indeed all of the Terrorcons, and if it weren't for the fact that I'm missing a few pieces, Abominus himself would be sitting atop a shelf in the man cave. The important thing is that Hun-Grr is awesome, and has thus far been represented awesomely. I'd still love to see a Generations version of him, though.

#6: Swerve (1986)

These days of course, Swerve is a relatively major player in Nick Roche and James Roberts' brilliant "More Than Meets the Eye" comic, published by IDW. But in 1986, he was nought but a red repaint of Gears with a different faceplate. In 1986, Hasbro repainted and retooled a few of their 1984 Minibots, and Gears was one of those selected for a bit of a spruce up. The only new Minibot to be released in '86 was Wheelie. And quite frankly, he judges you. No, really.

Swerve made only two appearances in the Transformers cartoon; in one, he was trod on by Trypticon. In the other, he was portrayed as being in an infinite loop due to some timey-wimey shenanigans. So really, not a brilliant fictional CV. This could be down to his Tech Specs, which, apart from saying that he's easily distracted, don't really give much information out. The fact that he was one of the few Transformers not to receive a Transformers Universe entry would also suggest that he was pretty much forgotten about by Hasbro, left in the cold without much love.

Whic, let's face it, makes him the perfect candidate for Roberts and Roche to work their magic, really. Even if he still doesn't have a toy mould to himself.

#5: Rumble (1984)

See? SEE? Rumble IS red! I've been saying it all of these years, and next to no one believed me! Yet it turns out that now, I am teh vindicated!

It's an old interwebz argument now, played out a million times or more on various Transformers message boards, that because of a (more than likely and I-wish-it-had-been avoidable) colouring error on the G1 cartoon show, that Rumble, far from being a robot that's coloured red and black, is in fact blue and purple, and his twin Frenzy is in fact the red and blue robot. It's an argument that can be neatly summarised as follows:

FIRRIB (Frenzy Is Red Rumble Is Blue) - or conversely - RIRFIB (Rumble Is Red Frenzy Is Blue)

Personally, I'm in the latter camp. Mainly because of Rumble's Tech Specs and box art, which clearly show him as being RED. Not that it matters at all, of course. (TOTALLY does.)

As for the content of Rumble's Tech Specs, well, the cartoon pretty much nailed that. Rumble was a petty street punk, bullying lower life forms and being a pain the linkage coupling. He always followed orders and was deferential to Megatron, and if he was in an episode, chances are that his piledrivers would be put to good use, pummelling the living daylights out of something.

In the comics, Rumble has never made much of an impact. If anything, Frenzy seemed to be in the comics more, for some reason.

He should have his "correct" livery in any future appearances, though. After all, with Rumble at least, red IS the colour.

#4: Chromedome (1987)

Obviously I can't speak for everyone. But for myself, the concept of the Headmaster toys was cool. Very cool. So cool in fact, that I was the coolest guy at school inasmuch as I didn't have any Headmasters Transformers (until I got Fangry later on, but that's another story for another time).

In the west, the mythos was that small groups of Transformers (Autobots and Decepticons naturallement) landed on a planet called Nebulos (or Nebulan in some of the fictions), and started warring all over again. Some of the natives got involved, and, through some convoluted storytelling, became either the weapons (Targetmasters) or the heads of some of the bigger robots. In Japan, this got simplified even further (little robot becomes big robot), but let's stick to the west for the moment.

Sadly, as cool as the concept is, the toys weren't ever that good. I liked them a lot, but even I'll admit, some of them were a bit naff. Chromedome, it has to be said, is pretty high up the naff list.

See what I mean? Even by G1 standards, he's a bit of an unarticulated brick, with only arm swivels at the shoulders. Plus, he's beige. Nothing exciting is ever beige.

Oddly enough though, there was a glimmer of hope for Chromedome. Because his Tech Specs are very interesting. They tell of a geeky computer programmer, only actually fighting in the war because his place of work was wrecked by the Decepticons, who is, by fate itself, paired up with someone who only really cares how they look in the mirror. Intriguing stuff, almost a buddy cop movie plot, in actual fact. Can these two get along? How will the cool popular guy be able to cope with the computer nerd, and vice versa?

We never found out. Sadly, because the cartoon demanded speed of character introduction over plot and character development, we never saw how any of that could have played out. As for Japanese Chromedome, well. let's just say that boring beige was the right colour after all. It's a good job that the 1988 Transformers Annual in the UK had a text story from Stylor's perspective, or we might not have any fiction at all that fits into Chromedome's Tech Specs. So Marvel UK, you came up trumps again.

#3: Trypticon (1986)

I don't remember Trypticon being released as a toy. I'm 99.9% sure he never was in the UK, hence why I don't remember anyone I knew having him, or even other people knowing someone who had him via a cousin, or friend of a brother's, or somesuch tenuous relationship. In fact, the first I even really knew of Trypticon was via season 3 of the Transformers cartoon, and even then it wasn't the whole season, because unless you were lucky to have Sky TV in the early 90's you couldn't see it. The only other way to catch a glimpse was through the VHS tapes they would sometimes release (the one I saw had Nightmare Planet and Call of the Primitives on it, I believe.)

Trypticon remains one of my all time Holy Grails of Transformerdom. Not only because of the toy itself, which is awesome:

Fort Max, eat your heart out! I mean, umm...erm...ahem. No, the toy's great, of course. The main reaon I need Trypticon is because he was voiced in the cartoon by Brad Garrett. A man who, not only also voiced Hulk Hogan and Lobo, but also played Robert in Everybody Loves Raymond. That's just the coolest fact in the universe. No, really. I NEED to see the episode where Robert steps on Raymond because he's a MASSIVE TRANSFORMING DINOSAUR.

All of that said though, Tryp's Tech Specs aren't the most impressive, choosing to list the many things he can do, rather than affix any personality to him. Which is a real shame, because his Transformers Universe entry is really good, painting the picture of a killing machine who is immensely good at what he does, and for that fact alone, is filled with self-loathing.Yet again, really interesting, really tragic and well-written, and not the sort of thing any Transformers bio writer would think of today.

#2: Trailbreaker (1984)

These days, he's called Trailblazer, Trailcutter, or any other name that Hasbro chooses that week because they can't use his real name any more. But those of us who know the truth call him by his real name: Trailbreaker.

Trailbreaker's one of the characters in Transformers who gets no love whatsoever it seems. Not because he's hated, or that he's annoying. Just because, well, the G1 cartoon didn't have him around much (a few appearances here and there, mainly in the first three-parter "More than Meets the Eye" where he informs Spike and Sparkplug that he "may not be fast...but I'm tough!") and he never made much of an impact in the comics. But I always found his Tech Spec entry to be really interesting, a really good description of a character who, although they appear to be laughing and joking, hide an inner fear; that they may not be good enough. A character like many of us, who use humour as a defence mechanism. This is a biography for a kid's toy, lest we forget. Bold stuff for 1984.

The toy wasn't bad either, and would later be retooled and repainted as Hoist, who we'll talk about another time. Trailbreaker has always been a toy I wanted, mainly because I thought I'd won him once in a school competition in 1985; I didn't win him, but the desire remains the same. One of these days I'll snag the elusive bugger.

A quick word about box art for G1 Transformers. It's amazing. I know, I know, it's not to everyone's taste. But for me, it evokes such nostalgia, a calling card to a time when times were a bit simpler, a time when getting a new Transformer was a rarity indeed, and going to Toymaster or Woolworths in York meant that you'd get to see Transformers on the shelves, in all their varied and colourful forms. Ah, memories.