10 of the Most Ridiculous Transformers, Ever
The Street Level blog recently posted a list of the “Top 10 Most Ridiculous Transformers, Ever.” Their choices were boring- all from the original cartoon and not very ridiculous at all.
As a Transformers nerd, I know exactly how ridiculous Transformers can get.
01Name: Piano Transformer guy (no formal name)
From:Generation 1 Marvel UK comics “Target 2006”
Year: 1986
The meek “Piano Transformer guy” transforms into a Player Piano in Maccadam’s_Old Oil House, a time-and-dimension-spanning bar on Cybertron. Maccadam’s is recognized as neutral ground by Autobots and Decepticons, and both sides rub shoulders and knock a few back. Here the Piano Transformer guy runs afoul of a foul-tempered Decepticon with no taste in music.
02Name: Esmeryl
From:Japanese Transformers Victory manga “Heroic! The Victory War”
Year: 1990
Esmeryl is the wife of the thoroughly badass and yawn-inducingly boring latter-day Decepticon leader Deathsaurus. At the end of the Victory series, just as the Autobots had defeated the Decepticons and were about to destroy them, Esmeryl appeared and begged for the Autobots to spare them- revealing that Decepticons only stole energy to feed their families, cue the appearance of hundreds of adorable Decepticon children crowding around the ones about to be executed. (Needless to say, the Autobots caved.)
Esmeryl, like her husband, appears to transform into a dragon-like Kaiju. Esmeryl is apparently sterile, having no children of her own. Instead, she and her husband adopted a human boy and turned him into a cyborg. Awww…
03Name: Misfire
From:Generation 1
Year: 1988
Misfire is a Decepticon with no aim. He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside of a barn. Repeatedly flunked out of Decepticon Military College, only granted an honorary graduation after the college itself was destroyed by Autobots.
Misfire is a Targetmaster, partnered with a smaller robot that transforms into his weapon and aims for him, freeing him up to concentrate on other battlefield tasks. Unfortunately, his partner goes by the codename “Aimless“…
Whichever Decepticon human resources assigned them as partners should really be fired.
04Name: Pepsi Convoy
From:Generation 1, Japanese toy-exclusive
Year: 2005
There was a “Pepsi Optimus Prime” in the United States as well, but here it’s just Optimus Prime disguised as a Pepsi delivery truck. In Japan he’s a completely separate character.
Product of the same NASA experiments that created the Japanese superhero Pepsiman, Pepsi Convoy is a tiny robot who live in Optimus Prime’s freezer and battles the forces of an evil Decepticon-owned pizza chain with the power of his CO2 gun.
05Name: Sky-Byte
From: Robots in Disguise
Year: 2001
Sky-Bite is Megatron’s right-hand-’bot, a fearsome figure as he cuts through the air in his atlmode of… a singing shark?
Apparently Sky-Bite used to be quite fearsome, but he took one to the head in his first appearance, and ever since then he’s been a bit… off. A vain, preening insecure prima-donna who write Haiku’s to his own accomplishments… but is devastated when Optimus Prime criticizes the derivative imagery and non-cohesive structure.
Sky-Bite is pretty much pure liquid awesome, even in a series like Robots in Disguise (which was a comedy.)
How can you not like a guy who sings his own theme song?
06Name: Legion
From: Kiss Players
Year: 2006
At the opposite end of the comical-to-creepy scale from Sky-Byte is the Legion, an army of penis-tongue’d Megatron-lookalike Decepticons created when Galvatron crash-landed in Japan and his immune system went nuts. The Legion exist to rape (or possibly eat) little girls and use them fashion horrible new bodies for themselves.
Opposing the Legion are the government-sponsored Kiss Players, a group of abused girls who give Transformers special powers by kissing them. Nudity, fetish-vomiting, panty shots and a human-on-transformer rimjob follow in short order.
Bravo Japan, way to avoid Western stereotypes about your country!
07Name: Drift
From: IDW’s modern Generation 1 comics
Year: 2008
When IDW relaunched their Transformers comics All Hail Megatron, they decided to really shake things up by introducing a new character; Drift.
There’s nothing wrong with that, Transformers adds new characters on a regular basis. But Drift is that special “designed-by-committie awesome” quality; he’s an albino-japanese-streetracer-taciturn-former-Decepticon-honorbound-samurai-ninja.
How awesome is Drift? Look at that picture? He has three swords. Three at once!
Drift’s actually been pretty inoffensive in the actual stories he’s appeared in, but any character IDW Comics refers to as “our Wolverine” during interviews has a real uphill climb towards acceptance.
08Name: Break
From: Beast Wars Neo
Year: 1999
Break is a insubordinate foul-mouthed snot-nosed pubescent ‘git who turns into a penguin.
When his injured commander Big Convoy made a rare confession that he was proud of his crew, Break replied by insulting the size of his penis.
He also sounds exactly like Naruto, since he has the same voice actor, doing the same “type” of voice for both characters.
Basically: “Penguin Antagonist Naruto” sums up Break pretty nicely.
09Name: Shortround
From: Transformers Cybertron
Year: 2006
Shortround is a Decepticon nerd. Now, Decepticons have a certain tolerance for nerds when they’re using their nerd brains to figure out how to steal cable or design esoteric doomsday weapons… but Shortround collects toys. Specifically rare, convention-exclusive, limited-edition toys, which he’ll often wander off his mission parameters in search of.
Between his giant clumsy pincer hands, his unrequited crush on his sexy nipple-flashing teammate Thunderblast, and his tendency to vomit napalm when nervous, Shortround makes a surprisingly touching metaphor for adolescence.
Ah… my teenage years. I remember the first time I vomited napalm…
10Name: Signal Lancer
From: Transformers Cybertron
Year: 2005
Signal Lancer isn’t much of a figher- he’s a civilian. So when the entire population of Cybertron evacuated to Earth and took disguises, he chose a nice safe altmode; a stoplight. Signal Lancer was a stop-and-go running gag throughout the Transformers Cybertron series, but he proved himself surprisingly useful in a pinch and when the series ended he became a cartographer, mapping Earth and the galaxy.
So there you have it. 10 ridiculous and odd Transformers. This barely scratches the surface. There’s more than one Transformer that turns into a toaster after all, and no one can forget The King, no matter how hard they try…
I’d like to thank TFWiki.net for suggesting some of the more obscure ‘bots on this list.
TFWiki.net: serious intellectual debate about transforming space robots