Wheelie opens up a lot of questions about the life-cycle of the Transformers species. He’s a child. A young boy. In some stories, he has parents. (Dead, like Batman’s.) So we gotta ask ourselves…. is this typical? Do Transformers have childhoods? Generally we see them be built as adults, but Wheelie is an actual diminutive preteen orphan with a slingshot because he’s a rhyming Dennis the Menace. He hangs out with ten-year-old Daniel Witwicky because, hey, they’re both kids.
Were Hot Rod and Springer tiny Transformers children at one point? Did they have parents like Wheelie did? Is Wheelie gonna stay that size, or is he gonna grow up to be tall like they are? (And since Bumblebee’s the same size, does that mean Bumblebee was a kid, too?)
(Seriously, if I may go off on a tangent here, what we see of Transformers life cycles is insanely depicted. In Beast Wars, Rattrap whispered to Silverbolt about Transformer strip clubs in front of Cheetor, even though Silverbolt was one year old and Cheetor was about seventy. But Cheetor is characterized as a teenager and Silverbolt was born characterized as an adult, so…. yyyyeah.)
However, if Wheelie does get to grow up, he might look like my new toy! At least, I sure hope this toy doesn’t represent Kid Wheelie. RTS Jazz is a pretty tall Deluxe Class figure, and Kid Wheelie should probably not be taller than Generations Springer and Classics Hot Rod. Hell, he’s taller than Classics Grimlock, and Wheelie’s generally remembered for being able to ride on top of Grimlock’s head like a tiny hat.
Like Springer, I was pretty content to skip this Wheelie back when he was a shortpacked Chinese exclusive. He’s pretty damn skippable for sixty bucks. But at domestic prices, he was much more tempting. I didn’t need a larger Wheelie. It wasn’t a desire I had. The recent-ish Legends Class toy was sufficient for me, since Wheelie is a small child. But, well, you know me and my orange redeco fetish. Plus, hey, COMPLETE JAZZ POWER, Dinobot Syndrome, etc. And he has a new head and a new slingshot. And it’s a really good toy, regardless of color. He’s exclusive to Toys”R”Us, so if you find him there, you could buy worse toys.
(Man, do I not currently own an original Wheelie?)
I had the Wheelie picture book. It was grand.
Back when it was airing, I theorized a dimorphism for Beast Wars that made sense. The “females” had protoform-generating “wombs” that, over time, grew from the excess nanobotic cells from which their bodies were formed. When a blank protoform was complete, it could be discharged into a stasis pod. And if two Cybertronians loved each other very, very much, their Sparks could call forth a third Spark from the Allspark. Thus, portable reproductive equipment.
They must have thought humans to be very messy.
No sir. I don’t like it. I know you love orange and all but this is.pretty horrid.
Bumblebee was a midget- sorry, little person-sorry, little robot…
He was a dwarf.
Thinking of the protoforms on the Axalon as newborns raises a lot of questions. Certainly the bizarre perception of age between characters, I think at one point Blackarachnia made some quip to Tigatron about him “not getting any younger” or something to that effect, which makes no sense that she would treat him as older given they were both “born” fairly close chronologically. But besides that, why would they stuff an exploration ship with newborns anyway? I mean, sure they seem to be born fully functional with developed minds, but what if they didn’t want to be explorers? What if they had personalities ill suited to be confined in close quarters with the rest of the crew? What made those protoforms get selected to be explorers versus other professions? What about Quickstrike? That dude wasn’t even reprogrammed, and something tells me he would have failed the space explorer personality test. Given the questions it raises treating the protoforms as newborns it almost seems preferable to think most of them had a previous life on Cybertron and they were simply converted back to a protoform state for the mission and through stasis-pod damage a lot of the ones that did wake up suffered memory loss. But even if Silverbolt was an adult without his memories I don’t see any physiological reason he would be more of an adult than Cheetor. Maybe Rattrap just thought he was too immature to handle strip clubs.
Then again… we know that Tigatron had something to do with the security forces that were tracking Megatron on Cybertron after the theft of the Golden Disk and before he escaped from the planet. I think the protoforms were really more of a simpler way of storing extra crew that used alot less energon. Only Cheetor, Optimus Primal, Rhinox and Rattrap actually operated the ship, and that was probably all they needed for where their exploration would go. The others would probably take form once they got there. I felt more like Rhinox had done that funny speech about birth and death when Airazor’s protoform almost died to talk more about her dying, or something. I dunno.
Also: We know that Rampage, Protoform X, was a prisoner to be dumped.
But then again, when the hell has Transformers been consistent about anything. Half the time I’m just happy to see Bumblebee is still yellow in this episode.
Tigatron and Airazor pre-existing on Cybertron was a big-ass retcon that really annoyed me, and messed with some previously-established canon. For example, the whole point of the episode “The Spark” was that Airazor was being born, becoming new Cybertronian life. “When a spark comes online, there is great joy.” They ain’t talking about waking up from a nap.
That protoforms are guys who pre-existed on Cybertron was a fandumb misconception that later got partially canonized when those same fans got in charge of stuff. Grarrrhghgh.
I HAVE SERIOUS FEELS ABOUT BEAST WARS YOU GUYS
I actually was rather annoyed by the retcon too, particularly Airrazor nonsensically formerly being named Wing Saber, what the hell was up with that? Why did she need a different name? Ignoring the retcon, it would lead one to think that if these protoforms were designated with the explorer function it would seem that Beast Era Cybertron was something of a caste society–that your function was dictated before activation. Given Megatron’s speech before shooting Prime in Agenda Part 3 this might not be an unreasonable assumption, he made it seem that Predacons were already treated as a lower caste (“slaves” may have been something of an overstatement). There’s a lot of evidence to paint the political climate of Beast Era Cybertron as a pretty dark time regardless of the supposed “peace”. Access to their history was restricted information, sections of space deemed off limits by the council (likely Earth), Predacons were the bottom caste with only a provisional government that for some reason had it’s HQ off planet, and now add designated functions assigned at birth to the list. This is why I hate all the retcons and Beast Wars stories since, they have to bring in all kinds of G1 references and other things that only cheapen the series and failed to recognize the potential depth that series left to be explored.
Didn’t R.I.D. have a ship full of pre-existing Autobots being returned to protoform state so they could scan a native lifeform when the ship arrived?
Also — it is a crime that Masterpiece Grimlock did not come with a Wheelie PVC which can ride on its head.
I think it got screwed up a lot faster than that. It was a minor plot point that Tigatron thought he was an actual tiger and didn’t recognize his shipmates as a result of losing his memories during the crash. If he was “brand new” then it’s not very clear exactly what sort of memories he was supposed to have.
Each protoform was programmed with a history of Cybertron, what their mission was, and who they were to be. That is what was damaged during the crash. If you’re gonna be dumping newborns onto planets for exploring, they’re gonna need an informational crash course, and that’s what Tigatron was specifically said to be missing.
That wasn’t a screw up. That was specifically laid out as part of the newborn protoform acclimation process.
That’s all well I think they meant to imply all that, but I don’t recall them explaining it explicitly. It’s not hard to see how large portions of the audience could see Tigatron lose his “memories,” Cheetor’s evident youth compared to recent protoforms, and the revelation that Protoform X was already a guy on Cybertron, and draw certain conclusions from all of that. Personally, I just choose not to worry about it. There are huge inconsistencies either way you choose to interpret it, and that’s not exactly unusual for Transformers.
*Looks at own first sentence*
Hey look, I changed my mind halfway through an idea–just like Transformers!
Colonists. If you’re going to explore, presumably you want to do something with whatever you find. So gather up a bunch of protoforms, and when you find an interesting planet, activate some of them to do whatever you’re planning to do there.
I have an original Wheelie. His visor thingie came off so I filled it with plasticine.
I always thought that the size was more representative of function as, for example, a scout. Of course there are a heap of exceptions to that rule, since Brawn isn’t particularly discreet and neither is Warpath…but anyway. I like how IDW spun Wheelie in their expanding catalog of robot psychological problems.
As for the figure itself, I’ve kept part of the lower leg assembly folded up to make him an inch and a half shorter, down to just below Wheeljack’s height. Not perfect, but passable.
I’ve always been more disturbed with the old transformers. Kup had wrinkles….how does that happen on a metal face? And Alpha Trion with his Fu Manchu moustache – so they can grow metal facial hair? Better if you don’t think about it too much…..
Those are easy. Kup’s not just old, he’s an old soldier–his “wrinkles” are probably more accurately described as scars. Alpha Trion probably just welded some extra metal bits to his face because he thought it’d look cool. (He was right.)
Every TF we’ve seen with “facial hair” is a Leader of some kind. It’s possible that it’s a badge of office, like a sash that denotes Lordship.
And WTH wouldn’t old TFs have wrinkles? Anything that bends/folds/flexes will eventually develop stress fractures, especially if it’s not properly cared for (and I can’t imagine Kup spending time at a Cybertronian day spa; he probably never expected to live this long anyway).
Animated Beachcomber is not a leader. He is a dirty hippie. (That’s not a swipe at hippies; within the set of all hippies, he is a member of the dirty subset.)
No, no. I think that being dirty is a defining characteristic of being a “Hippy”. The same can also be said for “Occupy Wall St.” people. I think it’s the drug use that’s optional.
See, what happens is Cybertron has a lot of iron filings that are magnetically attracted to the lower faces of Transformers, and the older Autobots start getting an accumulation.
A buddy of mine has always wanted to blurt out “WHERE DO BABY TRANSFORMERS COME FROM?” at some official Botcon panel.
When two Protoform Batch Initiators love each other very much…
I’m reminded of RID, where Sideburn sometimes referred to having been a bicycle as a child. This was total BS, of course.
Ah Sideburn… him and his disturbing fetish for non-sentient beings.
This is Wheelie grown up!
…wielding a neon cyan slingshot.
When I started reading this, I got the idea to give you my Wheelie to try activating your Dinobot syndrome.
I guess by the end of the article you’d already done that yourself.
If you’re talking about the original Wheelie, eh, there’s only two real uses of it. There’d have to be at least six to activate Dinobot Syndrome.
I’m suprised you didn’t mention your failing for TFs in orange creamsicle colors. I seem to recall you mentioning something to this effect when you acquired Sunstorm, or the Orange Laserbeak whose name I can’t recall (I think it was released as part of Kiss Play.)
Paragraph five, sentence seven.
My bad, sorry missed it.
Of course, after seeing the Star Wars Angry Birds trailer, I imagine that Wheelie’s slingshot would work pretty well in a TF version.
What if Wheelie isn’t really a child, he was just put together with the cognitive faculties of one. Like it was said, you never see Transformers as children, they’re built as adults, and then rebuilt thanks to the handy dandy Matrix or Ratchet.
So, if something in the machinery screwed up while building Wheelie, giving him not the higher mental functions of your run-of-the-mill Transformer just lower ones. His “parents” could have been just been built from the same previous batch, who saw this guy and decided to take care of him.
One explanation I really liked was from Transformers Cybertron, when the Cybertron Defence Team get their “power-up”.
While fictionally it was obviously an attempt to sell toys, it’s also one of the closest things I’ve ever seen in fiction to Transformers “growing up”, short of Sari’s upgrade and both amounts to basically the same thing: Being exposed to a relatively pure “spark” energy results in increases in size and apparent age.