The Energon Pub

Okay, in The Movie, when Prime and Starscream die, they turn grey. We've also seen more than one occasion in animation where a Transformer has been the wrong colours, or has changed colours pretty much at will. (incorrect colours happens numerous times, changing colours I can think of at least once when Rodimus and Magnus pretend to be delivering parts to Trypticon in G1 Season 3, and supposedly it's happened in Animated as well)

I've got a theory (it might be bunnies) that explains this.

Transformers aren't made one particular colour. They're able to change the colour of their bodies through some kind of electrostatic/energy absorbing mechanism in their "skin". When they die, that mechanism shuts off, resulting in bare metal grey corpses. It's possible to assume that when they exert a large amount of energy, or are somehow mentally disrupted, that they lose control of this colour-changing impulse and flicker into another colour scheme, and Starscream ends up looking like Thundercracker or something similar. This would be an easy way to reconcile some repaints being the same character despite wildly different colouration as well as a work-around for those of you who get irked by animation errors.

So, do I win a no-prize?

craggy wrote:Okay, in The Movie, when Prime and Starscream die, they turn grey. We've also seen more than one occasion in animation where a Transformer has been the wrong colours, or has changed colours pretty much at will. (incorrect colours happens numerous times, changing colours I can think of at least once when Rodimus and Magnus pretend to be delivering parts to Trypticon in G1 Season 3, and supposedly it's happened in Animated as well)

I've got a theory (it might be bunnies) that explains this.

Transformers aren't made one particular colour. They're able to change the colour of their bodies through some kind of electrostatic/energy absorbing mechanism in their "skin". When they die, that mechanism shuts off, resulting in bare metal grey corpses. It's possible to assume that when they exert a large amount of energy, or are somehow mentally disrupted, that they lose control of this colour-changing impulse and flicker into another colour scheme, and Starscream ends up looking like Thundercracker or something similar. This would be an easy way to reconcile some repaints being the same character despite wildly different colouration as well as a work-around for those of you who get irked by animation errors.

So, do I win a no-prize?

I dont have much to say about your theroy.

But Optimus and Starscream were not the only characters to go "gray" when they died.

Does Marvel even still give out no-prizes anymore?

Regardless, it's a decent theory but it really is a matter that it's over thinking the issue.

oh I won't deny that it's fan-wankery of the highest order, but in a franchise where Sunstorm has more toys than Arcee (for example...and I just remembered all the repaints of the Energon Arcee ) I don't think that's very surprising.