Zobovor
2024-12-18 22:59:16 UTC
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Permalinknever handled the toy and I was curious about his design. I'll get a
good one eventually, of course. But, you never know when you might need
a headless Nightbeat. I would hate to find myself in need of one and
then not have one.
So it occurs to me that if you modified the toy very slightly, he could
still transform with his robot head in place. It would have to be a
smaller robot head, but there's plenty of room for *a* head, even if
it's not the one with the big helmet and the guns attached to the sides.
My point is that it's easy to see how he would have transformed before
he became a Headmaster in the fiction.
This cannot be said about all the other characters. Brainstorm's head
connector ends up on the back of his jet mode. I guess maybe his head
would have originally retracted into his body, maybe. I doubt it would
just poke out of the back of his vehicle mode. It would have to go
SOMEWHERE.
Highbrow and Chromedome and Hardhead are a little trickier since all of
them have vehicle mode that fold in half to reveal the Headmaster slot.
For Highbrow, at least, it seems like his robot head would have just
ended up inside the helicopter cockpit. Which is fine, because not all
Transformers have functional cockpits. Some of them are stuffed full of
folded-up robot parts.
For Weirdwolf and Skullcruncher, it's the same kind of thing. It seems
like the robot heads would have just ended up inside the mouths of the
beast forms. Mindwipe's bat-mode head tucks away inside a compartment,
so it would have maybe just swapped places with his robot head.
In the cartoon, at least, Fortress Maximus and Scorponok didn't have an
existence in a pre-Headmaster state so I don't have to worry about them
as much. Though Scorponok seems like an easy solve, since his
scorpion-mode head already is his robot-mode head, more or less. It
doesn't have to go anywhere. He's like Kickback.
Apeface and Snapdragon are weird because they have two separate heads to
worry about. Apeface's robot head would almost have to retract into his
chest because there's really nowhere else for it to go. His gorilla
head would have to end up inside the jet cockpit or something.
Snapdragon's dinosaur head connects to that weird little fold-out neck
section, so maybe it could just tuck away inside that somehow.
Nightbeat we talked about, but Hosehead is like Brainstorm in that his
robot head socket is on the back of the vehicle. I guess it really
could just stay there stupidly. It fits the character, certainly.
Siren's head would almost certainly end up in his vehicle canopy.
Squeezeplay actually uses his head socket in beast mode because that's
where his tail plugs in. So that's a problem. I'll have to ponder that
one for a while. For some reason I feel very strongly that Fangry's
head would fold up in a way where it's not well-hidden at all, like
Razorclaw or Doublecross. I don't know why, I just do. Horri-Bull's
robot head would almost certainly not go anywhere, and the bull head
would simply wrap over the top of it.
For some reason, after thinking about this, I'm reminded of how some
fans went to great length to deHeadmasterify some of the Titans Returns
toys, because they were so offended by the idea that a character like
Hot Rod was now a Headmaster. I wonder how those fans are doing these
days. Do you think they're okay?
Zob (junker Nightbeat's screws are already rusted, so now I have a
Transformer I can take into the bathtub with me if I want)