The Energon Pub

One thing that always bugged me about TFs whose alt modes sport what appear to be tactical nukes is that the missile always has some secondary function: Stalker's was also his scope, CD Red Alert's/First Gunner's split down the middle to become a big blaster, and Double Dealer's split in half so the warhead mounted on his shoulder and the rear end became a handgun. While this had to be due largely to the missiles being such a big part of the toy that the designers felt a need to make them actually DO something, this also had the annoying effect of making it unclear whether the thing actually was a functioning nuke. Their hidden functions seemed to imply to me that the appearance of a missile was just a bluff, but Double Dealer's was particularly frustrating because the shoulder-mounting front half implied it was still a missile, but with shorter range in robot mode; hard to picture a mercenary using suicidal tactics, and if he actually fires it in either alt mode, is he without a gun until he makes a new one?

I know Hasbro wanted to avoid the serious issues of nuclear war, but then why have toys that sported ICBMs at all? This mosaic handled the possibility and consequences of at least one of them actually being a nuclear warhead in a mature manner for a one page story, though to my knowledge, only the first Devil's Due Joe crossover posited a theory as to why TFs avoid using weapons that utilize atomic explosions (how this applies to the ol' fusion cannon is another discussion).