It‘s time to begin the second half. I intend to continue as I started; controversially. Also, drunk.
＃13: Humans.Wait, what? Since when is “human” an Alt Mode? Let’s take a look.
Caviar! For the purpose of this entry, holomatter avatars, inflatables and the Moustache Man do not count as Alt Modes! Caviar!The Minibots were, to put it gently, big giant studs of mech meat. Bumblebee had Carly drooling all over him before she decided she’d rather cradle-snatch Spike instead, and Powerglide had a fling with a wealthy heiress named after a hotel chain. Soon afterwards, the videos were available everywhere.
…
I am of course talking about videos of the episode “The Girl Who Loved Powerglide”. What did you think I was talking about?
Anyway, Seaspray (AKA The Love Boat) was the star of the episode Sea Change. The Autobots traveled to a distant oceanic planet taking the lonely-hearted hovercraft with them. While liberating the suspiciously humanlike inhabitants, Seaspray discovered a spring that could change the shape of living things. Although the highlight of the episode is definitely Runzy (or is it Fremble) inadvertently becoming a tree, the crowning moment of heartwarming is when Seaspray briefly becomes a humanoid (and his humanoid girlfriend briefly becomes a fembot). Admittedly his human form may have looked like Prince Adam’s less heterosexual brother and had metal toes, but let’s not hold that against him.
Conan the Aquarian.
Although The Little Hovercraft Who Could returned home with his comrades, I’m sure he took shore leave whenever possible.
I keep this picture in my wallet, just in case someone says a later show is “not as good as G1”.
By season 3, Transformers had already covered most of the Saturday morning cartoon clichés, including the shrinking episode, the time-travel episode, the someone-good-is-mistaken-for-a-traitor episode and so on. One of the few they hadn’t done so much is “fish out of water” which was dealt with in Only Human.
The plot is that an arms dealer (IIRC) decided that the Autobots were in his way. After successfully capturing Rodimus, Ultra Magnus, Arcee and Springer he decides to destroy them all by…transferring their minds into synthetic human bodies, throwing the bodies in the garbage and melting down the robots. A plan worthy of Sludge himself. Thankfully a million fanboys’ prayers were answered as Cobra Commander made a cameo appearance as “Old Snake” and Arcee appeared as a blonde.
“Snake! SNNNNNAAAAAAKKKKE! Dum-dum-dada-dum, DABBA DUM DUM DUM!”
In less interesting news, Rodimus became a hunky guy who totally scored with some chick, Ultra Magnus became an older gentleman with salt-n-pepa hair, and Springer was still a wanker but now he could punch Hare Krishnas on equal terms (GOURANGA!) This episode could have been an interesting examination of how it felt for nigh-immortal, nigh-invulnerable giant powerful robots to be stuck in frail sickly human bodies but instead there was something about blowing up Metroplex.
Enough of this cartoon crap! Let’s talk toys!
“Wait a minute! I’m white! Someone tell 2007 me!”
After Hasbro had stopped “borrowing” molds from other Japanese toylines and calling them Transformers, it was time to knock out some molds of their own. One of their habits in these days was to keep throwing gimmicks at the line and see what stuck. One such gimmick was much maligned. These Transformers were the Pretenders.
The idea was that the figures, in addition to transforming, had an outer shell in the form of another being. It’s a nice idea but unfortunately the execution lacked. The inner figures of the early entries into these line were very posable and lanky, and would usually transform by bending their legs over their heads like some kind of yoga pose or anti-nausea technique. As such, their Alt Modes often looked like robots with their legs bent over their heads.
Sadly for the Pretenders they came too late to be part of the cartoon. They did appear in the comic though. The Decepticon Pretenders all had hideous monster shells (fair enough, psychological warfare and all that) but the Autobots all looked more-or-less human. Unfortunately, the severely over-worked Bob Budiansky seemingly forgot about the whole mass-changing thing that Transformers had been doing since day one and made the Autobot Pretenders...giant humans. Scorponok, who must have been wearing the wrong head that day, was confused enough by this to be beaten by the Autobots. Later, two of the Autobot Pretenders went off to a planet full of giant Amazonian women and oh-my-god-it's-too-terrible. I may say less than nice stuff about Furman but he did a saint's work taking over from the beleagured Bob. In Simon's hands, the Pretender shells were repurposed not into a disguise but into an extra layer of protection.
"Hello Optimus, this is Autobot R&D!"
"I thought I cut your grant."
"We've got a fabulous new idea: Robots in disguise
in disguise."
"...You're fired."
Hasbro continued to slap gimmick onto gimmick, and the next wave of Pretenders were the Classic Pretenders: Bumblebee, Jazz, Grimlock and Starscream. This was back in the days when characters would be released five years apart, not five times a year, so it was quite a novelty to see these old-school characters again. Also, the inner robots had become small and blocky rather than big and lanky which worked tonnes better. After the Classic Pretenders came the Mega Pretenders (a transforming robot inside a transforming shell) and the Ultra Pretenders (a transforming robot inside a transforming shell inside a vehicular outer-shell inside a wooden Russian doll thing inside a chocolate egg). All of the Autobots were mostly human and all of the Decepticons were diabolic, monsterous and bestial with only two exceptions:
Although that moustache is diabolic, monsterous and bestial enough to make up for it.
Stranglehold of the Decepticons, currently of the Mayhem Attack Squad, formerly of the Miss Cybertron entry group, was a mean-spirited, cheating wrestler-bot with a Rhino Alt Mode and a human outer shell. He looks a little out of place amongst skeletal samurai and cthonic horrors, so I suspect he may actually have, at some point in development, been swapped with the Autobot Longtooth who is a monster Walrus (coocoocachoo.)
Anyway, let's visit a bizarre parallel universe (Japan) where Pretenders were handled well:
"Comes with: Pretender(tm) shell, power sword and ridiculously sharp suit."
Masterforce was easily the most unique and dividing part of the Transformers-verse until Beast Machines came along. Set after the Transformers left Earth for space at the end of Headmasters, the show more-or-less shunted Transformers aside to allow humans to protect their own planet (with the aid of powerful robot bodies). Before the torch was handed over to the humans, the Autobots consisted of Metalhawk, AKA Mister Hawk, the fellow in the fetching suit seen above,
"I'm the best at what I do...transforming into a lanky, awkward jet."
Phoenix, a German airfield owner,
"BIO BOOSTER ARMOUR DIVER"
Diver, a marine biologist and
" I was planning to wine you, dine you and sixty-ni...actually, I don't even know if that's physically possible."
Lander, a wine-loving playboy. The four of them had been on Earth since the stone age, and after beating their Decepticon counterparts stayed on Earth for millenia disguised as humans (they spent the whole of 1984-2011 with their fingers in their ears going "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR AN INTERPLANETARY WAR BETWEEN MY COMRADES AND MY ENEMIES.").
The next big moment in human-cyborg relations came in Transformers Animated. The show had already done the prerequisite repeat of 1984 (Optimus, Bumblebee, Prime and Megatron arrive on Earth with their pals, Starscream backstabs Megatron while the 'Bots befriend the locals) but this time the human sidekick, Sari Sumdac wasn't so annoying. Maybe it was because she was well written, maybe because she was voiced by the lovely Tara Strong. Or maybe it was because it was becoming increasingly clear that she was actually a robot. The third season confirmed that Sari was a protoform direct from Cybertron which had merged with human DNA to become the first straight-up Humanformer.
Before
After
She took on full on tranforming after that and was able to fly, shoot energy bolts and produce a giant hammer from nowhere (a standard skill for anime girls.) Believe it or not, the human sidekick was actually helpful without the writers having to handicap the Transformers themselves. Sadly, no official Sari figure has been produced. By the way, if you want to kitbash a fantastic Sari figure, a good base would be the Figma Drossel from Disney's Fireball. Buy two though, one to keep as Drossel 'cos she's awesome.
"Hey, Ratorta! Ratorta, where are you?"
"Right here, my lady."
"Don't interrupt me while I'm speaking, Rattrap."
Like so:
Time to wrap this off with the last entry;
"(yawn) Wouldn't mind going down her rabbit hole, etc. etc."
"Alice" in ROTF is a robot in human form. It's unclear whether the human bits are some kind of artificial skin or a proper Alt Mode but hey, she provides eye candy in a film that was totally lacking it before. Except for all the hotness featured earlier in the movie (Sam's mom.) Her role in the movie is to try to retrieve Sam's brain and she prefers to do it via his tonsils. There are worse ways to go, I'm sure.
Anyway, that's it for this truly unique Alt Mode. Just remember that despite this Entry none of the people around you are Transformers. They're just regular aliens.
Join me next time when we'll be exploring Yuki Oshima's deepest fantasies. Enjoy.
Version one, that is. Transmetal... meh. Not my favorite.
No-one's trying to guess what the next entry will be any more...
We need a Sari figure for Generations, darn it.
