This is the New 52 Blue Devil. DC, I've read Blue Devil, I own all the figures and this is no Blue Devil.
Friday, July 27, 2012
This is NOT the Blue Devil
I've all but given up on DC's New 52, the cancellation of OMAC and the (IMO) less the stellar art in Frankenstein has driven me away. But yesterday I saw this.... travesty
This is the New 52 Blue Devil. DC, I've read Blue Devil, I own all the figures and this is no Blue Devil.
This is the New 52 Blue Devil. DC, I've read Blue Devil, I own all the figures and this is no Blue Devil.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Really Universal? Really?
It's Universal Studios 100th Anniversary and instead of doing something really cool to celebrate the fact that they are the home (though they don't like to admit it) to the most famous Cinematic Monsters of all time they release this direct to DVD generic werewolf movie
Ya know I could seriously write a script for a movie that would bring everyone of the Universal Monsters into the 21st century and make the studio a ton of money and be a proper tribute to the Monsters, Hell I'd do it for free....
Ya know I could seriously write a script for a movie that would bring everyone of the Universal Monsters into the 21st century and make the studio a ton of money and be a proper tribute to the Monsters, Hell I'd do it for free....
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Bryan Singer hates the Munsters
Just, just read this interview, it drips with their lack of respect and ignorance of everything related to both the Munsters and the Universal Monsters,
"Hollywood Reporter got to talk to MOCKINGBIRD LANE creator Bryan Fuller to talk about his upcoming MUNSTERS reboot. I was going to edit the interview and put down only the good stuff, but due to the massive anticipation for this show on FM, I thought I’d just give you the whole thing so you can decide yourself what’s important or not. He talks about bringing back many of the most famous Universal monsters, talks about the casting, and also is asked to compare the show to ABC’s ONCE UPON A TIME. Again, this is THR’s interview, and it is below. Enjoy.
The Hollywood Reporter: You mentioned this is the third incarnation of the Munsters reboot. How has the project evolved?
Bryan Fuller: The first two are relatively the same. It was essentially more on the scale of the heroes. The first version was where each of the monsters had individual stories that were woven together. Then it was from Marilyn’s point of view. Then Bob Greenblattcame in [as NBC Entertainment chief] and said, “I really want this from Herman’s point of view.” I said, “Well, this is what I was going to do for Episode 4,” and he said to make that the new pilot.
Why Herman?
It’s an ensemble, but the emotional point of view is from Herman because it really is about a father who is realizing his child is taking after the other side of the family. He has so few things in his life that are his, and his son Eddie was one of them — and now Eddie’s more like Grandpa than he is Herman. Everything is a metaphor for something that you can identify with in a relationship; the fact that Herman is in a constant state of decay, and he’s married to someone who doesn’t age. We get to play with all those insecurities. The fact that he was made by his father-in-law and then has to live up to those standards; he’s always trying to find his own identity.
There were a few fun homages to the original series, including hints of the famed theme. Will you be using that as the show’s theme song?
That was for Comic-Con only. We’re going to talk to the rights holder because it was actually composed by producer Frank Marshall‘s father, Jack Marshall. We have to negotiate the rights to be able to use that theme with him but he’s very enthusiastic about it. We’re going to try to work it out so we can use the theme in the show. But we don’t know yet if we can. I like what our composer Jim Dooley did; the point is to have a taste of it but we didn’t want to do the comedy. We didn’t want the score to be Pushing Daisies. As we’ve been working on the music, we’ve been talking about how to differentiateMockingbird Lane from Pushing Daisies. They’re both vibrant, but Mockingbird Lane is obviously much darker and more fiendish. We have the same composer doing the music, and we needed to create our new sound for Mockingbird Lane using the old sound fromThe Munsters.
Are you worried about remaking a show from the 1960s?
Like I said during the panel, I’m not afraid of remakes; I’m afraid of bad remakes. It was interesting to see the reactions to the cast as we were casting because you have this ingrained in your head: Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick and Yvonne DeCarlo. Audiences now don’t remember The Munsters, unfortunately, because it should be celebrated. For a lot of people, this will be their first exposure to it and those of us who are familiar with it on television will be, “OK, this is another version of a great concept.”
Originally, Mockingbird was developed for fall but pushed back to summer. What happened?
It was really tricky to cast the show; the tone of it is very specific. I tend to write in a very specific tone and there were a lot of people who were afraid.
Eddie Izzard was the first one cast for the project. What did casting him say about the Munsters story you’re going for?
Bryan Singer worked with him before on Valkyrie and we were setting up the casting meeting with the network and Eddie Izzard came up. He wasn’t available when we were starting the first time so because we were having such difficulty casting we decided to do it off-pilot season. The network made the decision to push it to protect the show and get the best cast to do it off-season.
What notes from the network have you gotten so far on the pilot?
Primarily they were budgetary, doing things in other episodes because we’re already spending so much money on this pilot.
Was there something specific that you wanted to do that you weren’t able to?
There’s a couple of things that I’m hoping we get to put back in the pilot. There was the funeral home that’s Goodbury and Graves that was in the pilot, and we moved that to the second episode. Lily hanging out underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, we have a minimized version of that now but it was this big thing before.
Your plans are to bring in some of the classic Universal monsters — Wolfman, Creature From the Black Lagoon, etc. Will they be live-action or CGI?
The Creature from the Black Lagoon will be like [1988's] Splash, Too: When he’s wet he’s the Gillman. That’s one of the best makeup effects — prosthetics — that anybody has done, that monster costume. And when he’s dry, he’s a handsome guy.
Similar to Lily’s spider dress?
Yeah. That’s the fun thing with that opening: You see all of these rats, how they stream out of the case. And then they pile on top of each other, and Grandpa forms out of that. The spider effects for the weaving of Lily’s dress is amazing. There’s some stuff where Grandpa turns into a monster later.
The original was a half-hour, with your dramatic take stretching to an hour. How does that impact the tone?
The Munsters actually do what monsters do: they eat people and they have to live with the ramifications of being monstrous. It’s like grounding it in a reality because the half-hour was a sitcom, we saw the monsters: they were monsters on the outside and weren’t monsters on the inside. For us, they’re monsters outside and inside, and we get to double our story. So any story you can tell on Parenthood and True Blood, we can tell. To have Eddie Munster be the starting point for the family — because in the past, when Eddie was born human, they stopped living like monsters because they didn’t want to damage Eddie. You get to this interesting thing with Lily, who’s been hiding who she is for the last 11 years and now has to accept who she is after she’s denied it for so long. It’s those types of emotional stories — yet they’re going out and eating people at the same time.
How soon could the ferocious family pet Spot appear?
You see him at the end of the pilot in CGI. He’ll look like a Harry Potter dragon. It’s like Eddie’s invisible friend.
NBC has ordered additional scripts for it, have they given you an indication of when you should know if it gets a series order?
We’ll probably hear in August. Right now we’re doing stories with Phantom of the Operaand Creature From the Black Lagoon. I’m excited about what happens when Marilyn’s brother comes into the picture.
ABC tapped its Disney character library with Once Upon a Time, is there a similar inspiration to use Universal’s bank of monster characters here?
Once Upon a Time has fairy tales. We have universal monsters, which for me are the fairy tales of my youth. That’s where I grew up, loving The Munsters, The Wolfman, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Metaluna monster from Silent Earth and the Mole People. I would love to rope in all of those characters from those stories, as well as get the Cat People and get those types of things. But we can’t just do Monster of the Week; they have to have a reason for being in the story — an emotional capacity — for us to interact with their characters.
MOCKINGBIRD LANE is set to air next year at this point. Does this interview change your mind about anything? Get you more excited? More skeptical? You can say what you want about the casting, but Fuller has an underrated track record, a clear passion for the subject, and anything that puts Universal monsters on prime time TV is (hopefully) a win. We’ll find out.
MOCKINGBIRD LANE stars Jerry O’Connell, Portia de Rossi, Eddie Izzard, Mason Cook, Charity Wakefield and Beth Grant."
I'm gonna go bang my head against the wall for a while now...,
"Hollywood Reporter got to talk to MOCKINGBIRD LANE creator Bryan Fuller to talk about his upcoming MUNSTERS reboot. I was going to edit the interview and put down only the good stuff, but due to the massive anticipation for this show on FM, I thought I’d just give you the whole thing so you can decide yourself what’s important or not. He talks about bringing back many of the most famous Universal monsters, talks about the casting, and also is asked to compare the show to ABC’s ONCE UPON A TIME. Again, this is THR’s interview, and it is below. Enjoy.
The Hollywood Reporter: You mentioned this is the third incarnation of the Munsters reboot. How has the project evolved?
Bryan Fuller: The first two are relatively the same. It was essentially more on the scale of the heroes. The first version was where each of the monsters had individual stories that were woven together. Then it was from Marilyn’s point of view. Then Bob Greenblattcame in [as NBC Entertainment chief] and said, “I really want this from Herman’s point of view.” I said, “Well, this is what I was going to do for Episode 4,” and he said to make that the new pilot.
Why Herman?
It’s an ensemble, but the emotional point of view is from Herman because it really is about a father who is realizing his child is taking after the other side of the family. He has so few things in his life that are his, and his son Eddie was one of them — and now Eddie’s more like Grandpa than he is Herman. Everything is a metaphor for something that you can identify with in a relationship; the fact that Herman is in a constant state of decay, and he’s married to someone who doesn’t age. We get to play with all those insecurities. The fact that he was made by his father-in-law and then has to live up to those standards; he’s always trying to find his own identity.
There were a few fun homages to the original series, including hints of the famed theme. Will you be using that as the show’s theme song?
That was for Comic-Con only. We’re going to talk to the rights holder because it was actually composed by producer Frank Marshall‘s father, Jack Marshall. We have to negotiate the rights to be able to use that theme with him but he’s very enthusiastic about it. We’re going to try to work it out so we can use the theme in the show. But we don’t know yet if we can. I like what our composer Jim Dooley did; the point is to have a taste of it but we didn’t want to do the comedy. We didn’t want the score to be Pushing Daisies. As we’ve been working on the music, we’ve been talking about how to differentiateMockingbird Lane from Pushing Daisies. They’re both vibrant, but Mockingbird Lane is obviously much darker and more fiendish. We have the same composer doing the music, and we needed to create our new sound for Mockingbird Lane using the old sound fromThe Munsters.
Are you worried about remaking a show from the 1960s?
Like I said during the panel, I’m not afraid of remakes; I’m afraid of bad remakes. It was interesting to see the reactions to the cast as we were casting because you have this ingrained in your head: Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick and Yvonne DeCarlo. Audiences now don’t remember The Munsters, unfortunately, because it should be celebrated. For a lot of people, this will be their first exposure to it and those of us who are familiar with it on television will be, “OK, this is another version of a great concept.”
Originally, Mockingbird was developed for fall but pushed back to summer. What happened?
It was really tricky to cast the show; the tone of it is very specific. I tend to write in a very specific tone and there were a lot of people who were afraid.
Eddie Izzard was the first one cast for the project. What did casting him say about the Munsters story you’re going for?
Bryan Singer worked with him before on Valkyrie and we were setting up the casting meeting with the network and Eddie Izzard came up. He wasn’t available when we were starting the first time so because we were having such difficulty casting we decided to do it off-pilot season. The network made the decision to push it to protect the show and get the best cast to do it off-season.
What notes from the network have you gotten so far on the pilot?
Primarily they were budgetary, doing things in other episodes because we’re already spending so much money on this pilot.
Was there something specific that you wanted to do that you weren’t able to?
There’s a couple of things that I’m hoping we get to put back in the pilot. There was the funeral home that’s Goodbury and Graves that was in the pilot, and we moved that to the second episode. Lily hanging out underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, we have a minimized version of that now but it was this big thing before.
Your plans are to bring in some of the classic Universal monsters — Wolfman, Creature From the Black Lagoon, etc. Will they be live-action or CGI?
The Creature from the Black Lagoon will be like [1988's] Splash, Too: When he’s wet he’s the Gillman. That’s one of the best makeup effects — prosthetics — that anybody has done, that monster costume. And when he’s dry, he’s a handsome guy.
Similar to Lily’s spider dress?
Yeah. That’s the fun thing with that opening: You see all of these rats, how they stream out of the case. And then they pile on top of each other, and Grandpa forms out of that. The spider effects for the weaving of Lily’s dress is amazing. There’s some stuff where Grandpa turns into a monster later.
The original was a half-hour, with your dramatic take stretching to an hour. How does that impact the tone?
The Munsters actually do what monsters do: they eat people and they have to live with the ramifications of being monstrous. It’s like grounding it in a reality because the half-hour was a sitcom, we saw the monsters: they were monsters on the outside and weren’t monsters on the inside. For us, they’re monsters outside and inside, and we get to double our story. So any story you can tell on Parenthood and True Blood, we can tell. To have Eddie Munster be the starting point for the family — because in the past, when Eddie was born human, they stopped living like monsters because they didn’t want to damage Eddie. You get to this interesting thing with Lily, who’s been hiding who she is for the last 11 years and now has to accept who she is after she’s denied it for so long. It’s those types of emotional stories — yet they’re going out and eating people at the same time.
How soon could the ferocious family pet Spot appear?
You see him at the end of the pilot in CGI. He’ll look like a Harry Potter dragon. It’s like Eddie’s invisible friend.
NBC has ordered additional scripts for it, have they given you an indication of when you should know if it gets a series order?
We’ll probably hear in August. Right now we’re doing stories with Phantom of the Operaand Creature From the Black Lagoon. I’m excited about what happens when Marilyn’s brother comes into the picture.
ABC tapped its Disney character library with Once Upon a Time, is there a similar inspiration to use Universal’s bank of monster characters here?
Once Upon a Time has fairy tales. We have universal monsters, which for me are the fairy tales of my youth. That’s where I grew up, loving The Munsters, The Wolfman, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Metaluna monster from Silent Earth and the Mole People. I would love to rope in all of those characters from those stories, as well as get the Cat People and get those types of things. But we can’t just do Monster of the Week; they have to have a reason for being in the story — an emotional capacity — for us to interact with their characters.
MOCKINGBIRD LANE is set to air next year at this point. Does this interview change your mind about anything? Get you more excited? More skeptical? You can say what you want about the casting, but Fuller has an underrated track record, a clear passion for the subject, and anything that puts Universal monsters on prime time TV is (hopefully) a win. We’ll find out.
MOCKINGBIRD LANE stars Jerry O’Connell, Portia de Rossi, Eddie Izzard, Mason Cook, Charity Wakefield and Beth Grant."
I'm gonna go bang my head against the wall for a while now...,
Man Clam, The Shell from Hell!!
Like it? Now go check out Huw's other work here, hey it was good enough for Cracked Magazine so it's gotta be good enough for you to peruse, and then you can go pick of Huw's new comic Genreville here
Spot is Coming!!!
The figures in the second series of the Munsters line will include the pieces to build the famous Munsters staircase and Spot! Check out pics from the sculptor himself, Jean St. Jean
Friday, July 13, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
Concept art for the Toxic Crusaders Toy Line and Series 2
I was and still am I huge fan of the Toxic Crusaders cartoon and toyline by Playmates, the line was VERY similar to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toyline with outrageously monstrous heroes and villains and I stumbled upon some concept art of the the line and of characters that were planned for the unmade Series 2 by one of the concept artists on staff at Playmates, enjoy...
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| Headbanger |
 |
| Junkyard |
 |
| Major Disaster |
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| PI Guy |
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| Sam Squidge |
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| Sludge |
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| Capt Blight |
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| Deep Sea |
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| Flem Lunger |
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| Gasblaster Billy |
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Daughter of Monsterfink Reviews - Skylanders
Both of these are two of Alex's favorite characters to play and Alex will be offering her opinions on more charcters in the next few days.
Frankenstein Week - XL
For our second day of Frankenstein Week we'll head to outer space with Buzz Lightyear of Star Command which was the weekday cartoon series spin off of the popular Toy Story movies and the real version of the fictional cartoon series that the toy character Buzz Lightyear came from in the series of films. In the cartoon several cool villains were introduced but right now we'll focus on the character of the evil paychwork robot XL and to a lesser degree the villains he is associated with NOS482 and the Wire Wolf.
Voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait, XL was the original attempt by the LGMs (Little Green Men) to build a robotic Space Ranger, however due to faulty programming the robot was unstable and mostly bipolar. Decommissioned and deactivated the head of the robot was found by the recurring villain Emporer Zurg and reactivated. In an effort to seek revenge on Star Command XL assembled a composite body from various robots and test labs. He was thwarted but returned a total of five times before being readmitted to Star Command as a photocopier.
In his return appearances, XL was teamed with two other villains from the series, the robotic vampire lord NOS482 and the Wire Wolf, a spce ranger who had the misfortune of having been bitten by NOS482 on the moon Canis Lupus which caused him to turn to a robot werewolf whenever exposed to a chunk of the now destroyed moon. The three worked together in the episode "Revenge of the Monsters"... here watch it...
Unfortunately, while a toy was made of NOS482, no toy was ever made of the Wire Wolf or XL, otherwise they'd be sitting on my shelf right now...
When XL was a villain, he had a series of weapons and equipment at hand due to his mismatched parts. Most were secured in his two arms, both of which were different and were used for different tasks, as well as his chassis.
Chassis - Stolen from one of the latest warbots, XL's chassis had the ability to deflect the Rangers' laser attacks due to its armarillium plating. It contained a rocket in the back compartment that allowed XL to fly and stored nets that he used for capturing.
Left Arm - Stolen from a research facility originally used for conducting experiments on objects and performing delicate work. However, XL used it to spew corrosive acid that could easily eat through metal, and because of its ability to extend, XL would use it to grab objects from a long distance.
Right Arm - Probably the most complex and diverse of all his attachments, modified to suit his needs as an arsenal of weapons. It could morph into three guns, each with a different set of abilities. The first gun could shoot bolts of plasma; the second, appearing almost like a machine gun, fired off laser blasts; the third, the largest of the three, looked like a cannon that shot the largest and deadliest plasma bolts. Besides morphing into guns, his arm could also morph into a sawblade, a drill, a studded mace, an egg-beater, a sledgehammer, and a strange sort of drill with metal clampings around it that XR once called a "drill with teeth". His arm could also spark with electricity and send electrical currents at people to stun them. Last, but not least, XL's right arm had a compartment similar to his chassis where he stored nets, and a special modded compartment with three distinctly-labeled buttons: blaster, acid and escape from prison.
Here's the episode, Revenge of the Monsters in three parts...
Voiced by Bobcat Goldthwait, XL was the original attempt by the LGMs (Little Green Men) to build a robotic Space Ranger, however due to faulty programming the robot was unstable and mostly bipolar. Decommissioned and deactivated the head of the robot was found by the recurring villain Emporer Zurg and reactivated. In an effort to seek revenge on Star Command XL assembled a composite body from various robots and test labs. He was thwarted but returned a total of five times before being readmitted to Star Command as a photocopier.
In his return appearances, XL was teamed with two other villains from the series, the robotic vampire lord NOS482 and the Wire Wolf, a spce ranger who had the misfortune of having been bitten by NOS482 on the moon Canis Lupus which caused him to turn to a robot werewolf whenever exposed to a chunk of the now destroyed moon. The three worked together in the episode "Revenge of the Monsters"... here watch it...
Unfortunately, while a toy was made of NOS482, no toy was ever made of the Wire Wolf or XL, otherwise they'd be sitting on my shelf right now...
When XL was a villain, he had a series of weapons and equipment at hand due to his mismatched parts. Most were secured in his two arms, both of which were different and were used for different tasks, as well as his chassis.
Chassis - Stolen from one of the latest warbots, XL's chassis had the ability to deflect the Rangers' laser attacks due to its armarillium plating. It contained a rocket in the back compartment that allowed XL to fly and stored nets that he used for capturing.
Left Arm - Stolen from a research facility originally used for conducting experiments on objects and performing delicate work. However, XL used it to spew corrosive acid that could easily eat through metal, and because of its ability to extend, XL would use it to grab objects from a long distance.
Right Arm - Probably the most complex and diverse of all his attachments, modified to suit his needs as an arsenal of weapons. It could morph into three guns, each with a different set of abilities. The first gun could shoot bolts of plasma; the second, appearing almost like a machine gun, fired off laser blasts; the third, the largest of the three, looked like a cannon that shot the largest and deadliest plasma bolts. Besides morphing into guns, his arm could also morph into a sawblade, a drill, a studded mace, an egg-beater, a sledgehammer, and a strange sort of drill with metal clampings around it that XR once called a "drill with teeth". His arm could also spark with electricity and send electrical currents at people to stun them. Last, but not least, XL's right arm had a compartment similar to his chassis where he stored nets, and a special modded compartment with three distinctly-labeled buttons: blaster, acid and escape from prison.
Here's the episode, Revenge of the Monsters in three parts...
Monday, July 2, 2012
Transformers Vintage Horror Movie Series
The Vintage Horror Movie Series was a proposed subline to the Generation 1 series of Transformers which never made it past the conceptualization phase concept art phase.
The series would have seen several monsters from classic horror movies realized as transforming robots. Whether these robots were going to be Autobots or Decepticons is unknown, probably Decepticons, and why movie monsters were to be the basis for the transformers chosen configurations will forever remain a question. Known monsters within the Vintage Horror Movie Series include:
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| Dracula |
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| Creature from the Black Lagoon |
 |
| The Fly |
Sorry, no Frankenstein's monster.
Oddly, the legal feasibility of this proposed series is highly questionable. While the character of Count Dracula dwells within the public domain, the Creature from the Black Lagoon is owned by Universal Studios, while the Fly is owned by 20th Century Fox. Generations identifies the toys as being these characters specifically, not parodies or approximations. Whether any actual attempts were made byTakara or Hasbro to obtain rights from the proper studios is unknown, though that fact may have contributed to the series' cancellation at the early concept art phase.
Frankenstein Week - Autobot X
Since it's the week of the Fourth I figured hey, might as well go with the aliteration and make it Frankenstein week. I'll be looking at the Monster of Frankenstein as seen through other franchises then the typical horror movie. For our first entry we'll go with an old favorite of mine from the original Transformers cartoon, Autobot X.
In the episode "Autobot Spike" we are introduced to the autobot patchwork creation of Sparkplug, father of Transformer human sidekick Spike. Built from spare parts of various autobots... wit lets stop there a sec... spare parts? These are living robots right? So these aren't really so much spare parts as body parts from dead Autobots... creepy, I like it. Okay back to the story. Sparkplug has built the patchwork body and with the Autobots gathered to watch fires up the power and like the patchwork creation of Dr. Frankenstein, the large (even for Autobot standards) creature rises from his high tech slab and with a few growls and groans sets about destroying the place. The Autobots subdue the rampaging brute and he is deactivated but not dissassembled, instead the body is put into storage to act as a host body for the spark of any badly damaged Autobot that needs severe repairs. As fate and cartoon contrivence will happen, the Autobots get into a battle with their enemies the Decepticons and during the fight Spike is badly wounded (serves ya right for tagging along with the big laser toting robots). Spike's doctor, who must be a mad scientist himself, suggests that the Autobots and Sparkplug transfer Spike's brainwaves to the body of Autobot X until Spike's body "can be repaired" (guess they had to send out for spare parts not in stock). So using a mind transfer device Spike is put into the body of Autobot X now called Autobot Spike and on cue he breaks loose and rampages due to the process making his mind "unstable". After destroying some of the lab Spike is subdued and restrapped to the slab to rest. Wheeljack, an Autobot scientist of the semi mad sort, turns the main computer to a local television station so Spike can relax and zone out, unfortunatley and in a plot moving device kind of way the station is showing Frankenstein. Spike becomes enraged and breaks free of the lab and out into the wilderness where he begins an internal struggle between his own mind and the spark inhabiting the patchwork body. The main villain Megatron is alerted to the new possible menace and he manipulates Spike to fight the Autobots. When his father is put in danger Spike reasserts himself and saves his father and then send the Decepticons packing. His body repaired Spike is transfered back and the mind transfer device destroyed, Autobot X was placed in storage and not seen again. Man, is Autobot X cool looking. Made from parts of various Autobots the recipe goes like this:
Autobot X has a pair of bolts in his neck, similar to Frankenstein's monster.
Prowl's forehead crest and right chest/front bumper
Bluestreak's left door
Sunstreaker's shoulder
Hound's shoulder-mounted missile launcher and right fender/shoulder
Trailbreaker's arm cannon and left chest
Optimus Prime's left wrist and parts of the right leg
Jazz's photon rifle, mounted on his right arm, the back of Jazz's left leg, and crotch
In the episode "Autobot Spike" we are introduced to the autobot patchwork creation of Sparkplug, father of Transformer human sidekick Spike. Built from spare parts of various autobots... wit lets stop there a sec... spare parts? These are living robots right? So these aren't really so much spare parts as body parts from dead Autobots... creepy, I like it. Okay back to the story. Sparkplug has built the patchwork body and with the Autobots gathered to watch fires up the power and like the patchwork creation of Dr. Frankenstein, the large (even for Autobot standards) creature rises from his high tech slab and with a few growls and groans sets about destroying the place. The Autobots subdue the rampaging brute and he is deactivated but not dissassembled, instead the body is put into storage to act as a host body for the spark of any badly damaged Autobot that needs severe repairs. As fate and cartoon contrivence will happen, the Autobots get into a battle with their enemies the Decepticons and during the fight Spike is badly wounded (serves ya right for tagging along with the big laser toting robots). Spike's doctor, who must be a mad scientist himself, suggests that the Autobots and Sparkplug transfer Spike's brainwaves to the body of Autobot X until Spike's body "can be repaired" (guess they had to send out for spare parts not in stock). So using a mind transfer device Spike is put into the body of Autobot X now called Autobot Spike and on cue he breaks loose and rampages due to the process making his mind "unstable". After destroying some of the lab Spike is subdued and restrapped to the slab to rest. Wheeljack, an Autobot scientist of the semi mad sort, turns the main computer to a local television station so Spike can relax and zone out, unfortunatley and in a plot moving device kind of way the station is showing Frankenstein. Spike becomes enraged and breaks free of the lab and out into the wilderness where he begins an internal struggle between his own mind and the spark inhabiting the patchwork body. The main villain Megatron is alerted to the new possible menace and he manipulates Spike to fight the Autobots. When his father is put in danger Spike reasserts himself and saves his father and then send the Decepticons packing. His body repaired Spike is transfered back and the mind transfer device destroyed, Autobot X was placed in storage and not seen again. Man, is Autobot X cool looking. Made from parts of various Autobots the recipe goes like this:
Autobot X has a pair of bolts in his neck, similar to Frankenstein's monster.
Prowl's forehead crest and right chest/front bumper
Bluestreak's left door
Sunstreaker's shoulder
Hound's shoulder-mounted missile launcher and right fender/shoulder
Trailbreaker's arm cannon and left chest
Optimus Prime's left wrist and parts of the right leg
Jazz's photon rifle, mounted on his right arm, the back of Jazz's left leg, and crotch
There has not been a figure made for Autobot X/Autobot Spike but there have been some sweet custom like this one made by a customizer named Franzyrumble
Now here, watch the episode yourselves
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