The 5 Most Insane Transformer Accessories

Of all the toy-centric Saturday morning cartoons spawned from that strangest of decades, the 1980s, Transformers has proven to be probably the most imaginitive and enduring of the lot. Standing head and shoulders above the glut of muscle-bound, neon-clad archetypes, this is a franchise with its own world - a world huger than I ever imagined. With all that creativity shooting back and forth in red and purple laser beams for 25+ years, you can bet Hasbro's terrifyingly huge mechanical brain has dreamed up some pretty insane shit in its time. Here are a few bits and bobs that accompanied the actual toys and filled countless kids' worlds with crazy.

#5. The Pistol Grip Polar Paw Pipistrelle

As the immediate successor to the old guard of G1/G2 and the first true shakeup of the universe, Beast Wars was obviously set to get a lot of flak from fans who liked things as they were. To this day, the Beast Era is revered by many for its innovative and often spectacular advances in toy design, and ridiculed by just as many because fuck animals.

You've gotta respect the Beast Wars designers for their eagreness to shake off the old rules and get downright crazy. The series is strewn with batshit mental ideas, from a giant-bollocked timepiece rodent to several nightmarish creatures that literally vomited their missiles.

Perhaps even stranger is the fact that the horrifying redneck bison on the right is a good guy.

Long before the advent of the clock-balls-raccoon, in the very first wave of the entire Beast Wars saga, there lived a chap named Polar Claw. Being an early beastformer, he was far from perfect - a clumsy, kibble-laden robot form and an equally inelegant lump of a polar bear mode that bore a terrible and hilarious secret.

There's something a bit off about that thing's... everything.

Anyone could tell that the giant split on that one front leg is clearly a hinge. But a hinge for what? It must be something cool and robotic, right? It must open up to reveal a rocket launcher, or some kind of death-ray, or a fist on the end of a spring. Something awesome and forgivably clichéd, right?

Nope. Batgun.

I don't know why Polar Claw's leg turns into a bat. I mean, it's kind of fair enough. Lots of TFs have little mates incorporated into their alt-modes. Turns out the bat is a character with a name and everything (Batscout, if you're wondering). But why does he hold it like it's a gun?

#4. An Entire Optimus Prime

With the Dark of the Moon line wrapping up regrettably early and lacking any truly killer toys, Revenge of the Fallen can comfortably recline in its high-backed armchair while the first and third movie toylines dance for its amusement, safe in the knowledge that it boasted the most consistent and impressive robot range of the Bayformer trilogy.

Favouring toy quality over gimmickry, ROTF nonetheless threw up a few surprises: a Deluxe-class vintage ice cream truck combiner, a disappointed jetformer, and the gigantic Stratospere: a superb non-character toy known for his seemingly unfinished canoe-like feet and mind-blowing height.

And for being fucking awesome.

Stratosphere seems to have been created for a single purpose. He transforms into a military cargo plane that's not quite one and not quite the other, but looks remarkably like the one that Optimus Prime skydives out of during the movie's opening scene. Man, wouldn't it be awesome if you could somehow recreate that scene? But man, surely all the Optimus figures are way too big for that, right?

Unless...

Packaged alongside the unusually gigantic Stratosphere was a tiny, fully functional, fully transforming Optimus Prime toy. I literally couldn't speak for half an hour when I unboxed this pair.

That behemoth motherfucker in the back is a Deluxe.

This tiddly representation of the Autobot commander fits all the way inside the plane's cargo bay, ready to shoot out when the door is triggered open. The really jaw-dropping part is that it also works when Stratosphere is in robot mode, meaning that Stratosphere has the unique ability to poop an Optimus.

Ploptimus Prime, seen here being dwarfed by a Micromaster.

Speaking of teeny-tiny companions...


#3. The Only Transformer You Could Accidentally Inhale

Being an entity that relies heavily on fans remembering it as part of their childhood, the Transformers franchise has learned well the value of regurgitating the same old shit that you used to have when you were five. The toys and characters from Generation 1 are never too far away from reinvention or re-release. In 2003, Japanese TF manufacturer Takara came up with a slightly original way to justify churning out those same guys again by just making them really really small. Thus was the World's Smallest Transformers line born: a selection of downscaled, blindpacked G1 favourites including Optimus, Starscream, Prowl, Sideswipe, and the one Transformer even your mum remembers: Soundwave.

"Was that the one with the voice?"

And of course, Soundwave wouldn't be Soundwave without his army of piledriver-handed buddies or at least some kind of tape-shaped animal to flop out of his chest cavity. World's Smallest Soundwave was no exception and came complete with his feline familiar, Ravage. With Soundwave himself being barely as big as your thumb, and Ravage being small enough to fit inside him, how tiny must this miniature moggy have been?

Answer: holy shit tiny.

#2. My Robot Face Is A Person

In its later days, G1 developed a sadistic streak that loved nothing more than to rope Nebulan (basically human) characters into robot slavery by dressing them up in chintzy cuboid outfits and forcing them to contort their fragile, squishy bodies into unnatural positions for the convenience of their mechanical overlords. There were dozens of them - Targetmasters, Headmasters, Powermasters and their wretched ilk - all irreversibly altered into engines, guns and other crap that a race of autonomous machines should have no problem cooking up without the need for mass human sacrifice.

"Hey, gun-dude? I'll give you a dollar if you shoot me in half."

By a long shot, the most far-out of these were the Brainmasters, a sub-set of boxy giants released in Japan in 1989 as part of the Victory line. This chunky foursome consisted of the formidable Star Sabre and some of his least athletic carformer buddies.

This one's name is Blacker. Oh, Japan...

Most of the team saw a European release in the early 90s, stripped of their combiner parts and rebranded as the Motorvators, which must have been pretty fucking embarrassing for them. Anyway, they each came with a little Brainmaster mate, which worked in a pretty unique way - you'd open up the robot's entire torso and pop the little guy on a platform which would raise when the robot was closed up, thrusting the poor fucker inexorably toward the ceiling...

I don't see what's so weird abOH MY GOOODDDDD

...until a giant fucking robot mug scrapes out of his neck, filling the headvoid above and leaving his shit in ruins. I don't care what soft science nonsense you wanna throw at this, no amount of mechanical alteration could possibly stop this from hurting like a whole squad of bitches. I hope for all our sakes that they just used robots for this one.

#1. The Ballistic Light Piping Slideshow

Around the same time that the Motorvators were kicking around, a set of Euro-only Decepticons emerged under the banner of the Predators. This bunch of mostly-generic mostly-jetformers recently found fame when they were brutally fucking murdered in the superb Last Stand of the Wreckers comic series. It was probably for the best, because without nostalgia to protect them, it turns out that these are some severely half-arsed figures.

Mehgnificent.

But despite their lazy-as-all-Hell designs and legendarily shitty weapons, the Predators had one majorly awesome accessory in their purse. It was called the Megavisor, and it was gorgeous.

I try to ignore how much the missile's tip looks like that of a condom.

The Predators consisted of four small jet dudes, a larger APC named Stalker, and their humungoid leader, Skyquake. Now, while it's true that both of the bigger dudes had Megavisors, Stalker's one was clearly better because it was a goddamn scud missile. And what was inside was not a debilitating nerve gas, but pure wonderment.

What the?!--

The Megavisor was pretty much a kickass rip-off of the View-Master - you'd jam it against your eye and gawp at a slightly-magnified image on a tiny clear slide hidden inside. Each Predator had a different slide to view - some were schematics, some were action shots of their enemies getting blasted, and they were all amazing.

These guys were capping Rotorstorm before Overlord even knew his name.

This gimmick was unlike anything the Transformers universe had ever seen before and I am stunned that it hasn't cropped up since. It was exciting, innovative (kind of), unique and it made the nine-year-old Thew feel cool as fuck. Everyone else was bored of Transformers by the time this rolled around, and I was the only one who knew what they were missing. These days, the Megavisor's appeal is still right there - I'm given to believe that the slides are jammed with Easter eggs, and if I could only see the damn things I'd tell you what they are.

The worst part is that they're clearer in these grainy-ass photos than they are in real life.