#sparkabots

[askvectorprime]

Where do the names "Autobot" and "Decepticon" even come from? Are there any sort of root words that go with them?

Dear Etymology Enthusiast,

This answer is complicated by language barriers that span galaxies. As Galvatron alluded to—albeit in tones I would never use—Cybertronian words can be very linguistically dense; a translation that conveyed every nuance of our equivalent for "Autobot" would take over seventeen minutes for a human to say! As such, "Autobot" and "Decepticon" are only approximations of the neocybex names of these factions.

In many universes, my faction is named for the ideals of freedom and autonomy—hence, "Autobot" is derived from the term "autonomous". Sometimes this reflects a casting off of Quintesson rule or triumph over a caste system, but in other contexts—sometimes simultaneously—it reflects a darker facet of Cybertronian history. A famous bot once said that autonomy was a gift, a spark of sentience kindled by Primus himself. That bot's name was Nova Prime, and he used that belief to justify the subjugation of hundreds of alien worlds.

The suffix translated as "-bot" encompasses ideas such as "person", "individual", "independent agent". It could be considered an adaptation of the common English-language "man", of course—you might be familiar with the Aerialmen, the Dinomen, and the Sparkamen—but "bot" conveys that it most commonly refers to mechanical lifeforms. While typically used in the names of teams and factions, occasionally an individual might be called "Dinobot" or "Dreadbot"; such sobriquets can be seen as similar to a human being carrying a family name as their first name, such as "Jackson".

As for "Decepticon"… much has been said of the phrase "you are being deceived." In many universal clusters, this is indeed the earliest origin of the term. "Decepticon" suffers to a greater degree from the imperfections of localization. In many universes, Cybertronian language uses nuances related to subject and object that fail to translate, especially when neologism is concerned; "Decepticon" principally suggests "deceptive" in English, but in its original Cybertronix, the waveform can simultaneously be read as "the deceived".

The "-con" suffix is not dissimilar to "-bot", though it carries subtly but significantly different implications. "Person" is an adequate translation, but its meaning is much broader, not being restricted to living creatures; you may know of data-cons, information storage devices commonly used in my home reality. The closest equivalent to the suffix in your language would be "entity"—or, more bluntly, "thing". As such, the translation "-con" is derived from your language's "construct", a created object or idea.

The reasoning for the use of this suffix varies across the multiverse. On versions of Cybertron where Functionism took hold, Cybertronians of lower labor castes, or with alternate modes considered fit only for use by others, were more likely to have "con" names or be assigned categories like "Constructicon", "Agricon" or "Recordicon". Conversely, in universes where the Decepticons originate as a military junta, the use of "-con" carries the suggestion of component; all Decepticons are considered to be a part of Megatron's war machine. These implications, of course, carry over to the Mini-Cons. While I am proud to count Safeguard as a friend and partner, for much of my world's history, Decepticon and Autobot alike treated his kind as "smart tools", as mere objects to be collected. Regardless, the Great War created extreme political polarization of the "-con" suffix, and nearly no self-described Autobot adopts it; even as Decepticons freely use "bot" to describe themselves, "con" is almost exclusively used by Autobots as a term of animosity.

One more suffix you may have heard of is "-tron"; here, the root is "positron"—which, before the introduction of microscope alt-modes, we simply understood to be the stuff of sparks. The Cybertron factions of realities like the G1 World and BT World draw their names from a well of indigeneity; unlike the invading, colonizing Quintessons, the Cybertrons are the true sparks of the planet and derive their name thus. The Destrons, then, are destructive sparks who oppose the planet. Naturally, "-bot" and "-con" recur in these worlds too, following similar etymological patterns.

[arsnof]

Scars on your forehead show that once when you were, like, five or something you decided it would be fun to close your eyes and walk around like The Mummy/Frankenstein and bashed your head open on the corner of the wall by the furnace and your mom had to take you to the hospital but, hey, you got a new Transformer out of it y'know, so, win?

Scars on your body show that you have lived; scars on your heart show that you have loved.

Nina Dul

[driver270]

Lost Lesson 🤖☕️

Sentinel really should've paid attention to Guzzle's words, considering what happened to the Sparkabot on Garrus 9.

[arceespinkgun]

I think as a fandom we brushed past the fact that Galvatron randomly removed one of the Sparklers/Sparkabots from the ocean way too quickly. Like, can you imagine being the Z-tier Autobot who was once rescued by Galvatron for no apparent reason??? And knowing that Galvatron knows your name and the names of your teammates??? When they start a fight with him later, he knew who they were!!!

[aviatrix-ash]

Here's some Transformers figures you can set yourself and/or your house on fire with!

Rolling the rubber wheel with a nylon gear on the bottom of these figures drives a carbon steel wheel against a bit of flint, causing some sparks to shoot out of Cindersaur's altmode's mouth or Sizzles' altmode's aft bumper.

[palaciosworks]

The small but mighty Guzzle!

[dancitron-days]

From an Argos newspaper ad that appeared in the Daily Mirror on 29th March 1994, it's Blaze, the Sparkabot formerly known as Fizzle.

[z-ero-b]

2016 March. Magnus and Sparkabots.

[lawass-oke]

Transformer Sparkabots Takara 1987 Lawas nih Cocok utk koleksi - Minat 085728394499 WA LINE Lokasi SOLO - #ready_lawassoke #transformers #mainantransformers #sparkabots #jualantransformer #transformerstoys #transformersindonesia #robottransformers https://www.instagram.com/p/CN9XfUQHcYF/?igshid=mswgkq3uw5tl

[transmetal-tk]

Prime Wars Trilogy Sparkstalker with Titan Master Matchmaker

Converts to Wife-Loving Firecon Beast in 19 steps

Lightbright sold separately (╯︵╰,)

[oh4geez]

G1 Sparkabots

LINEART

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #442

Top Ten Transformers Gimmicks

There was a time when I felt that this blog was pretty much wall-to-wall Robots in Disguise. Seems I couldn’t go more than two or three weeks without some list or another ranking my favourite Autobots, Decepticons, issues of the Marvel UK comic, issues of the IDW comic, my favourite artists, my favourite alternate modes, my favourite ways Optimus Prime came back from the dead… basically, what I’m saying is I used to write about Transformers quite a lot.

Recently, though? The last year or two? Not so much in the way of sentient mechanoids round these parts. I think partly this is a result of the ending of the original IDW continuity; whilst the rebooted Transformers comic is good, I must confess it hasn’t grabbed me the way the (for want of a better term) More Than Meets the Eye era did. I don’t think it possibly could; the interweaving continuity, the shared universe, the multi-layered world-building and puzzle-box writing, all combined to form a perfect storm around my most beloved of franchises. Did it go too deep, too dense? Occasionally. Did it end too soon, rushing into a climactic conclusion without the room to allow every plot twist and character death to sufficiently breathe? Yeah, a little. But on the whole it stuck the landing, not too shabby a feat for a galaxy-spanning epic that, under various creators, had managed to tell a more-or-less consistent story (papering over the cracks of several soft reboots) for over a decade at that point. As I’ve written before, I loved that Transformers so hard, it was almost inevitable that whatever came next would suffer by comparison, because by definition it could no longer be my Transformers.

So, yeah, that’s one reason. But another is, it’s been harder to think of things to write about. I’ve talked about favourite characters and stories; where else do I go but the increasingly obscure? However, I wanted to give it a try. Last weekend should have been TF Nation, the delightful Transformers convention held each year in Birmingham. I usually go; I gave last year a miss, but I’d been fully intending to make the trip again this year. And then 2020 happened, being all 2020 in our faces. This is a weekend where I might have shared my favourite moments from TFN! Pictures of cosplay! Of friends and creatives I admire! Of toys I can’t afford! But no; instead I’m watching my wife play Stardew Valley and writing this blog (which, I’ll be honest, is actually quite a pleasant way to spend the time, but let’s not get too deep into the weeds over here). Anyway, to celebrate TF Nation, and the stay-at-home “Big Broadcast of 2020” online show that they put on, I’m returning to the Nucleon Well once again with another Transformers-themed Top Ten.

This week: my favourite Transformers toy gimmicks!

Transformers, of course, are cars and whatnot that turn into robots or what-have-you, but across the years Hasbro has experimented with different modes and features to keep the toys fresh and unique, and also to sell a bunch of new ones to impressionable kids. Some of these are sublime; some, frankly, ridiculous. So this week I will explore my ten favourite ones; my ten favourite sub-brands of the franchise, so to speak. Some of these I think are genuinely fantastic as a concept; some, I just liked because it seemed cool, or was made cool by the fiction; and some are just daft crap that I enjoy. Make of it what you will! I’ve decided, incidentally, to focus on “gimmicks” here as being different modes of transformation, or other associated features, rather than define them by what they turn into. So there are no Insecticons or Dinobots, because whilst bugs and beasts are cool, really those are both normal types of Transformer that turn from one thing into another thing. Make sense?

Good. Now roll the eff out.

Combiners (1985): what’s better than one robot? How about, like, five or six, and they all clip together to form another massive robot? Clipping machines together to make bigger machines seems like a cornerstone of any sufficiently advanced civilisation, and whether we’re talking the complexity of OG combiner Devastator, the hot-swappable fun of the likes of the Aerialbots or Stunticons, or even Dreadwind and Darkwing combining in vehicle mode to form Dreadwing, it’s always great. Plus it makes you want to buy all the toys so you can make the big robot! Everyone’s a winner!

Headmasters (1987): robots whose heads – get this – come off and turn into little robots. What’s not to love? And the little robots (what are the heads) then can sit inside the big robots’ vehicle modes, and, like “drive” them and stuff. Although they had some plot gymnastics to perform to make sense of the fiction (quite why the heads had to be Nebulons and not just other Transformers I don’t know), but as a toy gimmick, they were fab. And that’s before you get to most-wanted Fortress Maximus, whose head turned into a robot whose head turned into a robot.

Pretenders (1988): man, I loved Pretenders, even if the concept outstripped the toys a lot of the time. Basically humanoid shells that hide Transformers, later iterations also allowed for animal shells, vehicle shells, even transforming shells; we got new versions of classic Transformers, and one of the all-time great villains in Thunderwing. All this despite the first lot of toys being bulky and awkward, and the whole idea of “disguising yourself as a thirty-foot human” being somewhat suspect in the first place.

Triple (and more!) Changers (1985): if a robot turning into a thing is cool, then turning into two things must be twice as cool, right? Right! Boggling the mind as to how this chunky figure could also be a car and a helicopter, Triple Changers were great, even if you ended up with a helicopter that really, really looked a lot like a car. Of course, they got bigger and better, with Six Changers, who turned into six different things that all looked a lot like each other.

Powermasters (1988): back to the “Masters” concept of little robots that interact with bigger robots (it’s such a shame Pretenders couldn’t have been “Disguise Masters” or something), the idea that the toys transformation – the big gimmick behind the whole range, remember – is unlocked by an “engine” robot is very cool, the smaller toy acting as a key. A tad clunkier than that, in real life, but still great fun, and of course it brought us one of the best toys of the eighties in Powermaster Optimus Prime.

Targetmasters (1987): robots turning into guns is quite cool, but for me the Targetmasters aren’t quite as successful as their other “Masters” siblings, probably because the guns aren’t quite that exciting to transform or play with. But the concept still rocks, and some of the toys were really good, and it was nice to see the Movie characters get folded into the line too.

Jumpstarters (1985): I loved the original Jumpstarters (Top Spin and Twintwist) because they were weird, with their sci-fi alien designs amidst a sea of Earth vehicles. But their gimmick was they transformed themselves. Pull ‘em back and they jump – literally – from vehicle to robot. Self-transforming Transformers are always cool, even if usually it means that their robot modes end up blocky and simple (Jumpstarters are the opposite, pretty cool robots with chunky and unreal vehicles). Also want to shout out other pull-back-and-go Transformers such as the Battlechargers (never had them, sadly) and the utterly, utterly fantastic Throttlebots. God, I love the Throttlebots. I had all six! How much did I rock.

Cities (1986): I guess now these guys are all called “Titans” aren’t they, and they have their own carved-out portion of the TF mythos. But back in the eighties, they were just big burly dudes, the biggest you could get; Transformers that turned into actual cities, playsets that the smaller Transformers could actually interact with. Metroplex was the OG city-bot, and we’d squint and pretend that he really was Autobot City from The Transformers: The Movie. Huge toys are always fun, of course, as are playsets for your other toys, so these ticket loads of boxes. Fortress Maximus, the later Autobot Headmaster base, was ginormous and never came out in the UK, giving him a mythic status few toys ever had; as I said above his head turned into a robot which had a head that turned into a robot, a sort of Babushka doll of robotic head-swapping. Shout-out too for any bot who had some kind of “base mode”, such as Powermaster Optimus Prime and his funky trailer.

Sparkabots/Firecons (1988): these were not necessarily the most fun toys to transform (the Sparkabots, anyway, I never had a Firecon), but their gimmick was cool – or rather hot. They breathed fire! Well, not really, of course; they sort of shot sparks, in what I thought was a slightly underwhelming fashion even as a seven-year-old. But having a Transformer that could, in some way, fire for real was a huge thrill. Also, Guzzle was always just legitimately cool.

Action Masters (1990): yep, I’m going there. What, did you think I’d have Micromasters on here?! Yeah, okay, the very concept of Transformers that don’t transform is inherently silly and counter-intuitive, but the toys themselves were cool, finally offering cartoon-accurate renditions of classic favourites, with nice articulation and fun vehicle playsets. There was definitely a sad sense of a brand in decline about them, but taken on their own, they were good, fun toys, full of character, and I’ve always thought they’d still be cool as a side-line to the main (actually transforming) toys.

I feel bad for slagging off Micromasters up there. They were good, I suppose, but their small fiddly nature and basic transformation just wasn’t as fun as some other toys. Plus there were so many, and they usually came in sets, so I never really had that same bond with individual characters that I got from other Transformers; they were probably the first toys I owned whose names I forgot. And they felt, even at the time, like such a response to Micro Machines that it was almost embarrassing. Action Masters were probably a response to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but at least, y’know, Soundwave didn’t come with nunchucks and a skateboard.

Anyway, I think we can all agree, Transformers are cool, and I should write about them even more.

[palaciosworks]

The hot-headed Sizzle!

[palaciosworks]

The ever-gregarious Fizzle!

[palaciosworks]

The most righteous G2 Sizzle!

[oh4geez]

WIP from November: SPARKABOTS

I tried a new coloring style so it’s rather unusual compared to my previous pics.

This one’s such a big file and I don’t even know why??