Combaticons

Encyclopedia : C : CO : COM : Combaticons

---

The Combaticons (known as the Combatrons in Japan) are a group of Decepticon military vehicles in the assorted fictional universes of the Transformers.

G1 Combaticons

The Combaticons are so named for their military vehicle alternate modes, and their proficiency in combat, working together as a smooth unit. Viewed as the counterparts to the Autobots' Protectobots, a team comprised of rescue vehicles, in addition to their individual abilities the team can combine their bodies and minds together to create the giant warrior, Bruticus. The individual Combaticons are:

• Onslaught - As team leader, the calm and calculating Onslaught prefers to think things out logically before entering into combat, and is the tactical brains behind the Combaticons, carefully formulating brilliant plans and strategies to guide them in battle. He can, however, become a terrible opponent if the need arises, his strength boosted by his frustration that his plans have failed. He transforms into a missile trailer, armed with photon missiles, and wields a sonic stun gun in robot mode. He forms the torso of Bruticus.
• Blast-Off - The outer space missions that Blast Off undertakes in his space shuttle alternate mode leave him feeling literally and figuratively above his fellow Combaticons. Removed from the close quarters combat they normally undertake, Blast Off exudes a snobbish, aristocratic air that, in truth, disguises a long distance loneliness, though even that does not affect his cruel, remorseless battle skills. He is armed with an ionic blaster and an x-ray laser, and forms the right arm of Bruticus. Additionally, in the animated series, his wings form Bruticus's chestplate, although the toy does not function in this manner.
• Vortex (Vorter in Japan) - In his job as an interrogator, Vortex takes a twisted, cackling delight in trapping an Autobot in the wind funnels he can create with the blades of his helicopter alternate mode and taking them on a terrifying aerial trip until he has the information he needs, and allows them to plummet back to the ground. Vortex wields a semi-automatic glue gun and forms the left arm of Bruticus.
• Swindle - Although easy-going and friendly on the surface, Swindle is a greedy, devious street-hustler who thrives on wheeling and dealing - this one-robot black market could sell oil to an Arab shiek. Armed with a scatter blaster and a gyro gun, Swindle forms the right leg of Bruticus. His toy transforms into a [XR311 Combat Support Vehicle], but the animated series and comic book opted to portray it as a standard jeep.
• Brawl - As unpleasant as Brawl's uncontrollable loudness is, his hair-trigger temper and the frequent savage bursts of anger that make him such a terrifying warrior are even worse. He transforms into a tank, the conventional armament of which is amplified with twin sonic cannons, while in robot mode, he is armed with an electron gun. Brawl forms the left leg of Bruticus.

The team's combined form of Bruticus is a model soldier, who will follow commands to the letter, in a quiet, unquestioning manner - but that is simply because he is too stupid to contest his orders, or to take any initiative on his own. This simple-mindedness is simply one of the flaws inherent in early combination Transformers, but by all other accounts, Bruticus represents a fairly successful merging of the Combaticons' minds. Stupendously strong and resistant to most conventional weaponry, Bruticus wields Onslaught's sonic stun gun.

Animated Series

Millions of years ago, during the early days of the third Great War on Cybertron, a group of "Renegade Decepticons" attempted to overthrow Megatron and assume leadership of the Decepticons for themselves. Their coup met with failure, and as punishment for their treason, Megatron ordered Shockwave to extract the quintet's personality components and destroy their bodies. For millions of years, the Renegade Decepticons' personality components were held in the Decepticon Detention Center, Room 217, until 1985, when they were liberated by Starscream.

Starscream, having gone one step too far in his constant quest to depose Megatron and become Decepticon leader, had been exiled from the faction and dumped on the island of Guadalcanal, where he chanced to unearth some abandoned World War II vehicles left over from the battle there. Reminded of Blitzwing by a tank he came across, Starscream hit upon the idea of creating troops of his own, travelling to Cybertron and acquiring the Renegade Decepticons' personality components, which he installed into the refurbished vehicles, reconfiguring them into modern-day forms. Some of the 5 he had to change much: e.g. Blast Off the space shuttle and Vortex the helicopter were made out of crashed WWII fixed-wing aircraft, and Onslaught the missile truck out of a WWII-type army lorry. Starscream deliberately neglected to equip the new bodies with energy absorbers, preventing the newly-christened "Combaticons" from refuelling, forcing them to obey his commands so that they could acquire them. After two strikes, capturing several Autobots and Decepticons, and in the process, making Megatron think that the Autobots were responsible, the Combaticons took their captives' energy absorbers and re-energised themselves, before coming under attack from Megatron's forces. As the Constructicons formed Devastator, Starscream revealed the new power he had given the Combaticons for just that eventuality, as they combined into Bruticus and bested Devastator, only to be blindsided by Menasor and defeated.

Captured by Megatron, Starscream and the Combaticons were exiled to an asteroid floating in deep space, but Onslaught soon conceived a plan for revenge and had Blast Off tow the asteroid to Cybertron. Enraged by his predicament and infuriated by the Combaticons' failure to perform, Starscream attempted to return to Earth under his own power, while the Combaticons successfully arrived on Cybertron and quickly and efficiently defeated Shockwave's sentinel army, seizing Shockwave who had been stunned while in his laser cannon mode, and actually wielding him as a huge hand-held weapon before blasting Shockwave into space and taking control of the planet. Wiring his missile guidance systems into the space bridge, Onslaught manipulated Earth's orbit and sent it towards the sun. It took the unlikely team up of Megatron, Optimus Prime and Starscream to stop the Combaticons, distracting them with a hologram projector long enough to reverse the Earth's fate, then allowing Prime to strike at Bruticus's built-in weak spot, identified by Starscream. The trio voted to destroy Bruticus, with Megatron delivering the fatal blast, but in reality had used the hologram projector to create an illusion to fool Optimus Prime, planning to reprogram the Combaticons to serve him.

The reprogrammed Combaticons were soon deployed on a mission to the Middle East, working with the local black market to smuggle jet parts to Megatron, which he used to build a drone jet army. Later, in battle with the Protectobots, Bruticus was heavily damaged, and rather than repair his comrades, Swindle opted to sell their parts to assorted "clients." The enraged Megatron ordered him to reacquire the parts so that Bruticus could wield their new gravity-manipulating weapon, but when Swindle could not find Brawl's personality component, a bomb was installed in his body to give him extra incentive. Brawl's component, meanwhile, had inadvertently wound up incorporated into a high school science project robot nicknamed "B.O.T.", which caused it to run amok, drawing in Swindle and a team of Autobots; Swindle was eventually able to remove the component, but B.O.T.'s creators then used him to destroy Bruticus's new weapon.

The Combaticons were not part of the Battle of Autobot City, but were on Cybertron when the world-eater, Unicron, attacked it in 2005, and, heavily damaged, were forced to relocate to the planet of Chaar with the other Decepticons when the Autobots relcaimed their home world. They participated in the Decepticon/Quintesson alliance's attacks on Goo and Cybertron, and later attempted to eliminate the Decepticon traitor, Octane, and destroyed an Autobot shuttle in hopes of scuttling a peace conference, as well as aiding in the invasion of Paradron and an attack on Japan. In 2007, the Combaticons were part of the invasion force that struck Cybertron, and went to work constructing a massive rock engine on the planet's surface, which, fuelled by the power packs of the defeated Autobots, moved Cybertron into the Sol system, where Galvatron's plan to use the Plasma Energy Chamber was foiled by Spike Witwicky and Fortress Maximus.

The Combaticons' voices were supplied by S. Marc Jordan (Onslaught), Milt Jamin (Blast Off), Johnny Haymer (Swindle, Vortex), Tony St. James (Brawl) and Roger C. Carmel (Bruticus). The characters continued to make brief appearances in the Japanese-exclusive Transformers: Headmasters series, usually merged as Bruticus and battling other combiners, and Bruticus was one of the nine "Decepticon Generals" assmbled by the insectoid Violenjiger in the single episode of 1990's Japanese Transformers: Zone series. Bruticus was perhaps the only one of the generals who survived the series, arguably making him one of the oldest surviving Decepticons from G1.

Marvel Comics

The Combaticons had no explicitly stated origin in Marvel Comics' Transformers series, but it can be safely assumed that they were given life by the energies of the Creation Matrix, tapped by the Decepticons via one of Bombshell's cerebro-shells implanted within Optimus Prime when the Protectobots were being created by the Autobots. The team's first mission saw Vortex being dispatched to scout the scientific facility responsible for creating the energy-generating device known as the Hydrothermacline, which Megatron and the team then attacked under cover of night, only to be met with opposition in the form of Optimus Prime and the Protectobots. Although both teams assumed their combined modes, facility staff member Ethan Zachary talked them into a different method of combat to prevent collateral damage - a virtual duel in the video-game realm of "Multi-World." The Combaticons were summarily defeated by the Protectobots and the game's digital inhabitants, but the contest ended in failure when Megatron cheated, forcing Optimus Prime to take an action that he would not in the real world, sacrificing the life of some of the game sprites. Believing himself to have cheated his own principles, Prime declared himself the loser of the game, and was destroyed. Unsatisfied with the victory, Megatron became increasingly paranoid, and severely damaged Brawl by crushing his head before surrendering to insanity and apparently destroying himself.

Some time later, the Combaticons tracked down the Throttlebots, a group of Autobots who were newly arrived from Cyberton, and had taken up with Goldbug and Blaster, two Autobots who had rebelled against the tyranny of their current commander, Grimlock. This resulted in another clash with the Protectobots, who had been dispatched to track Goldbug and Blaster down, with both forces meeting in a used car lot. The lot's owner tried to talk the two groups into an auction over the Throttlebots, rather than a fight, but Onslaught refused to keep his part of the deal and battle broke out, with the Protectobots claiming victory thanks to some help from Blaster.

The Combaticons soon returned, however, attacking the Protectobots in a train yard as they were escorting the captured Blaster back to the Autobots' base. Finally, Bruticus and Defensor engaged in battle, and Bruticus won, until Blaster duped him into believing that he was on his side, and collapsed a set of power lines on him, forcing the Combaticons to disengage. To pay back a group of human childen for their help in the battle, Blaster allowed them to affix a mode-lock of Blast Off, trapping him in space shuttle mode, who they then used to take a trip into space. They soon came under fire from the Autobots' spacecraft, the Ark, and were pulled aboard, but when the misunderstanding was resolved, Blast Off himself was imprisoned. Blaster and Grimlock then engaged in a duel on the moon, during which Onslaught lead a massive Decepticon attack against the Autobots, while the Constructicons liberated the captive Decepticons, including Blast Off, from aboard the Ark.

Generation 2

With the release of the toyline in the 1990s, the Combaticon toys were re-released with new, brightly-colored paint jobs, and Onslaught himself came with an additional missile launching accessory. However, despite the new appearances of their toy counterparts, the Combaticons continued to appear in their original color schemes throughout the new Generation 2 comic book by Marvel, which featured Onslaught sharing the pain of a destroyed Cybertronian due to a genetic link. The comic then offered the Combaticons their last hurrah, as they were attacked and destroyed by the forces of Jhiaxus while defending the Decepticons' Warworld.

Dreamwave Comics

Dreamwave Productions' 21st Century re-imagining of the Generation 1 universe took its inspiration for the Combaticons from the original animated series, casting them as Decepticon prisoners who were reduced to protoform stasis because they were too dangerous to be released. When Optimus Prime led a rebellion against Shockwave's domination of Cybertron in 2003, Starscream took the opportunity to form a power base, taking the protoform Combaticons to Earth and outfitting them with new alternate modes, then leading them in an attack on the Ark in order to acquire parts to make the Decepticon space cruiser, the Nemesis, spaceworthy. Confronted in battle by Brawn, Bruticus was caught in an explosion as Ratchet self-destructed the Ark, but he survived the conflagration, only to be knocked out by artillery fire from an incoming Autobot shuttle. After a battle with the evil clone, Sunstorm, Brawn opted to work out some of his stress on Bruticus's unconscious body, punching the gestalt about the head until his comrades yelled at him to stop.

The ultimate fate of the Combaticons in the Dreamwave universe was not revealed, due to the company's closure.

Alternators Swindle

The entire Combaticon team were not lucky enough to be revived for the 2004 ' toyline (known as Binaltech' in Japan)'', but Swindle made it through by means of his usual trickery. Although the American toyline offers no supporting fiction for the figures, the Japanese releases tell the story of a new G1 continuity which branches out from the animated series around the turn of the millennium.

Using the deadly Cosmic Rust plague, Swindle orchestrated the decimation of the Earth-based Autobot army, only for the damaged Autobots to enter into partnership with human corporations and arrange for construction of new bodies for them by major car companies. Using their new, powerful bodies to strike back against the Decepticons, they injured many of them; Swindle was not damaged seriously, but with a bit of wheeling and dealing, he quickly moved himself up the list, past worse-off Decepticons, to be one of the first transplanted into similar new bodies. Stealing an Autobot chassis intended for use by the Autobot Trailbreaker, Swindle was reborn as an Alternator able to transform into a Jeep Wrangler. Armed with his traditional scatter blaster and now powered by an exponential generator, Swindle continues his black market dealings, including attempts to re-engineer the cosmic rust.

Transformers: Robots in Disguise

The original Combaticon toys were revived as new characters in the parallel universe of the 2000 Japanese line, Transformers: Car Robots, recolored, renamed and slightly so that all their weapons could combine together. When Car Robots was exported to the West in 2001 as , where they were again renamed, and more strangely, also recolored again, yielding toys which now no longer matched their animated counterparts.

The team consists of

• Mega-Octane - The cool calculating leader who commands his four subordinates like a drill sergeant. Known as Dolrailer in Japan, he is a repaint of Onslaught.
• Armorhide - The team's desert warfare specialist, who uses pit traps to capture his enemies. Named Dangar in Japan, he is a repaint of Brawl.
• Movor - Able to achieve planetary orbit under his own power, Movor usually as recon for his comrades. Called Shuttler in Japan, he is a repaint of Blast Off.
• Rollbar - A hand-to-hand combat specialist who loves to fight and prefers arctic environments. Known as Greejeeper in Japan, he is a repaint of Swindle.
• Ro-Tor - The team's reconnaissance specialist. Named Heptor in Japan, he is a repaint of Vortex.

The team combines into Ruination (Valdigus in Japan), with each of the four smaller members able to form any limb, rather than assuming the fixed configuration of the animated and comic book incarnations G1 predecessor. Movor and Ro-Tor can form arms to give Ruination flight powers, while Armorhide and Rollbar give extra physical power in the role. Ruination's weapons are a combination of all the team's individual guns, and can level a city with their power.

These five robots actually began life as Autobots, sent to Earth along with a six to lead them in a mission to reactivate the legendary Autobot battle station known as Fortress Maximus. However, their craft malfunctioned and crashed, and the six Autobots were entombed in protoform state, joining Fortress Maximus in slumber until their ship was unearthed by Megatron and his Predacons. Absconding with the Autobot protoforms right under Optimus Prime's nose, Megatron took them to a nearby military base, intending to scan alternate modes for them. Mega-Octane was the first to be reactivated, infused with a portion of Megatron's own spark energy to create the first of a new breed of Transformer that Megatron dubbed the "Decepticons." The other four members of the team followed, and eventually the sixth, Scourge, who took leadership of the team from Mega-Octane with a show of force.

The Commandos, as they were named (maintaing the team's original name of the Combatrons in Car Robots ), soon demonstrated their skills by blowing up dams across the country, debuting their combining abilities against Rail Racer and later attempting to harness the energies of a volcano on Montrose Island. As part of a string of failed attempts to locate the Autobots' hidden base, Movor was launched into orbit to track Side Burn from space, and the Decepticons then pretended to have reverted to their original Autobot selves in an effort to make the Autobots take them in. Later, Decepticon corruption of the Autobots' global spacebridge led Ruination into conflict with Landfill.

It soon became apparent that Scourge sought to overthrow Megatron's leadership, and the discovery of Fortress Maximus, buried beneath the Earth's surface accelerated the process as exposure to his energies, and those of the O-Parts - the keys to Maximus's resurrection - awoke memories of Scourge's original mission. His new Decepticon programming turned it on its head, however, as he now wished to command Maximus's power for his own, and soon had the Commandos thinking the same way, conspiring with Mega-Octane to get Cerebros, the power key of Fortress Maximus, under his control. As a series of chases to acquire control of Maximus began, Scourge eventually revealed his treachery by trying to have the giant attack Galvatron (Megatron, in a new form), only for the plan to fail. In retribution, Galvatron again brainwashed the Decepticons, turning them back into his loyal servants, who followed him so completely that they were even willing to take his orders after he attempted to killed them as a belated punishment. With Galvatron's defeat, the Decepticons and Predacons were all taken back to Cybertron for imprisonment.

The Commandos were voiced by Bob Papenbrook/Hari Kaneko (Mega Octane/Dolrailer, Ruination/Valdigus), Neil Kaplan (Ro-Tor), Robert Axelrod/Hidenori Konda (Movor/Shuttler), Michael Lindsay/Riki Kitazawa (Rollbar/GreeJeeper) and Richard Epcar/Takayuki Kondo (Armorhide/Dangar).

An "arctic" redeco version of the Commandos, bearing the same names, was released as a giftset exclusive to Wal*Mart in 2003, and a "tiger stripe" redeco of the mould - presumably intended as an alternate-universe version of the characters - was released as part of in 2004.

Bruticus

The Robots in Disguise line also paid homage to the original Combaticons in more than one way - namely, with the release of a figure bearing Bruticus's name. Originally intended to be part of the Beast Machines toyline, the figure was abandoned and then revived for RiD, but beyond its name, has nothing to do with the original Bruticus character. The name change was, apparently, to avoid confusion with Fortress Maximus's component, Cerebros.

This Bruticus transforms into a cerberus, and, according to his techspec: "With his three heads and bad-dog attitude, he guards the headquarters and dungeons of Megatron himself. He's the last sight that Autobot prisoners see before their cell doors slam shut - and what a sight he is, with three enormous jaws glittering with razor-sharp teeth. He's not the brightest pooch in the pound but he is ferocious in battle, inflicting a three-headed attack of growling, biting destruction."

Transformers: Energon

In the parallel universe of 2004's ' a combining team of five robots similar to the Combaticons exists, who form the giant robot known as Bruticus Maximus (simply Bruticus in Japan). The animated series does not refer to any of the components by name - in it, only the central body is intelligent, and the limbs are drones. The five robots transform only from vehicle mode into combined mode, never into their individual robot forms (apart from one out-of-continuity episode). The team consists of Barricade (Onslaught in Japan), the leader of the team who forms the central body of Bruticus Maximus, and the four limbs, Blight (Brawl) and Kickback (Swindle), who become tanks, and Blackout (Vorter) and Stormcould' (Blast Off)'', who transform into helicopters. Each one can form either an arm or a leg for Bruticus Maximus. None of the figures received any biographical information.

Bruticus Maximus was one of four combining Transformers sealed away in stasis beneath the surface of Cybertron to guard a hidden reservoir of Super Energon. Megatron, guided by Unicron, set out to search for it, and destroyed one of the immobile robots in his rage (strangely enough, a second Superion Maximus), only for the reservoir to then reveal itself. As the guardians awakened, Megatron immersed himself in the Super Energon to upgrade himself into Galvatron, and Bruticus Maximus and Constructicon Maximus immediately swore fealty to Galvatron as the one who had awoken them. However, their "brother," Superion Maximus, refused, recognising Galvatron's evil and siding with the Autobots.

Bruticus Maximus added plenty of firepower to the Decepticons' side, and he and Constructicon Maximus had several clashes with the "traitorous" Superion Maximus, until the time for their final battle came, ssset against the backdrop of the struggle to stop the Unicron-possessed Galvatron out in space. Constructicon Maximus was deactivated by Superion Maximus, who then had his limbs destroyed by Bruticus Maximus, but transferred Constructicon Maximus's limbs to himself and used them to defeat Bruticus, along with a little help from the ghost of the "brother" Megatron had destroyed. Bruticus Maximus was voiced by Trevor Devall in the US and by Makoto Yasumura in Japan.

Transformers: Universe

In addition to the above-mentioned redeco of Robots in Disguise Ruination and a straight re-packaging of Energon Barricade which omitted any reference to his combining abilities, the Combaticons received a brief homage in the parallel-universe-spanning ' toyline when the Swindle name was re-used in 2005. The name was this time applied to a Micromaster train, a component of the combiner Rail Racer formerly known as Converter''' when originally released in Japan in 1992. Besides the name, however, there is no connection to the original Swindle.

Transformers Movie (2007)

It is rumored Vortex and Brawl will be featured in the Michael Bay directed live-action Transformers movie due in 2007. Vortex as a MH-53 Pave Low Special Ops Helicopter and Brawl as a 2006 Ford Mustang Police car.

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?