A Break From Green Beer (or: Insecticon Dance Party)

martedezena Haziran 03, 2022

A Break From Green Beer

(or: Insecticon Dance Party)

There's one subgroup of Decepticons from the original Transformers (annotated as G1 after this for laziness) that really stands out as... weird. And no, I'm not referring to Snapdragon and Apeface, but they're weird too.

This post, if you haven't already gleaned it from the title (and from my other delay tactics), is about the G1 Insecticons. In All Their Forms. No, really.

That's pretty much all of them.

Ok, technically, the original, not at all different, Takara releases aren't there. Oh dear. Somebody slap me until I care. I'm going to show all of them in at least a little bit of detail, starting with the purple and black dude pals that you all know.

In the front are my stickered up, worn out, old school 80s release Insecticons. In the back are the 2009 Toys R Us Reissues, without any stickers applied. Now for some pictures of them individually, starting with Kickback.

Aaaand I might (did) forget to take pictures of the Bombshell and Shrapnel individually. Oops. No biggie, because they'll be pictured shortly enough. The reason for this is summed up with three names: Shot Hole, Zaptrap, and Salvo.

These are 200x e-hobby releases, and again, their names are supposedly Shot Hole (lolz), Zaptrap (where's Ackbar?), and Salvo (yeah, no jokes I can think of here). As you can tell, I have applied the stickers. We'll take a look at their respective comparisons in both modes, and yes, I did remember to actually take all the pictures of these while I had them out.


Shot Hole and Kickback, just kickin' back shootin' hole.

Shot Hole and Kickback probably have the best contrast of all the designs in regards to color scheme. The green torso is really what makes the redeco stand out as distinctively different.

Insect mode, where they kick hole and shoot back. I guess.

The difference is pretty marked in insect mode as well. Although I would have loved some red antennae for Shot Hole.

Moving on...

Zaptrap and Shrapnel, zappin' traps and um... idk what happens after you zap a trap, but I don't want to find out.

These two may look really, really different to you in insect mode. That's because I used my 80s Shrapnel for the insect mode comparison, and his lower set of wheel things did not survive the Gobot wars. Or Power Ranger wars. Or whatever happened at Castle Greyskull in my parent's downstairs gigantor room when I was a child.

The insect mode isn't very interesting to compare, since these two basically just swap the purple on Shrapnel for red on Zaptrap. That's not very exciting to look at, or to talk about for that matter. Meaning it's time to move on to the next Insecticons.

Salvo and Bombshell, Salving O's and... ok, I've gone too far. Sorry.

These guys are once again a pretty lazy purple to red swap, but probably due to the amount of purple/red, it doesn't bother me as much. I just really wish the cool green contrast detail color explored with Shot Hole had been applied even a little bit to Zaptrap and Salvo. That would have, to me, made these recolors much more interesting. Not that I don't like them, but had I not gotten these when they came out, I'd absolutely not be paying the secondary market price for these little guys.

All in all, the e-hobby recolors are pretty fun, and it really isn't ever a problem having too many Insecticons, since in the show there were always about 40,000 of them with little to no variation. It never made sense to me, since they had additional designs they could have capitalized on. These additional designs were, in a word, Deluxe.

Here we have (respectively) Barrage, Ransack, Venom, and Chop Shop. Sit back, enjoy some pictures, and then I'll continue rambling.


Barrage, Robot Mode, missing LES (Little Expensive Sword, what did you think I meant?)

Barrage, Insect Mode

Ransack, Robot Mode, with pelvis of doom.


Ransack, Insect Mode

Venom, Robot Mode, and damn enamel on metal

Venom, Freaking Adorable Mode

Chop Shop, robot mode

Chop Shop, slightly less adorable mode

I'll say this about the Deluxe Insecticons: they're great. I thought they would be one of the last 1985 releases that I'd ever get, and they were, but I should've grabbed them sooner. The transformations are fun. The accessories are pretty cool, even though they have nowhere to go in insect mode. Though, as with any G1 figure with small accessories, this has a downside - it can make things expensive. The only reason I have Barrage is because he didn't have the sword. I think that thing quite literally adds $50 to $60 to his price. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

This doesn't detract from their coolness. They take the Insecticon concept in another direction, and it's a shame they didn't get more attention.

Insectilegacy

The Insecticons, strange as they are, have inspired some homages over the years. Here are some of them:


Beast Wars Insecticon, Energon Insecticon (and his rare Takara repaint behind), and RotF Insecticon. Gee, what happened to names?

Watch that. Laugh. Enjoy.

I can make my own homages too.

In summary, I don't think the Insecticons are quite appreciated enough, though the Fans Project versions are sure to help. It's not their fault that any appearances they made were kinda dumb, or that their toys were some of the first shelfwarmers ever. They're misunderstood. They just want Energon, and that bastard Kup stoled it.