Transformation 186: Metroplex Flex.

4/12/2015

It's time for the big shocking cliffhanger that nobody could ever have guessed as long as they didn't look at the cover. Who could be the massive Autobot who'll save the day?

Elsewhere, Arcee continues to be a girl; Blaster proves more useful in death than life and Ultra Magnus is the man David Cameron wants to be whilst Soundwave is the man he actually is.

Yes, there's cutting edge political humour like I'm some sort of a Ben Elton. And Like Ben Elton I'm secretly a right wing tosser.

All in my look at Space Pirates! Part 5.

9 Comments

NATHAN WEBB

4/12/2015 07:58:18 pm

This was the episode that really changed the way i played with my transformers. after school a friend of mine came round and we took it inturn to hide under cardboard boxes while the other placed transformers on top of the boxes so that we could play metroplex and recreate his transformation sequence.
sadly many transformers didnt survive this violent roleplay but it was great fun.

Ralph Burns

4/12/2015 09:33:46 pm

Wow. In the NEXT ISSUE box, Metroplex forsees the resurgence of 3D cinema 20 years earlier by making his giant fist come out of the screen!!! I hope he plays with a yo-yo next.

UNH! HOPPER!!!
SPECIAL TEAMS!

John D. link

4/12/2015 10:16:48 pm

I recall loving the artwork in the next issue. I thought it was really daft that metroplex had to rip his way out, but it also made his appearance seem like a last resort. Does he tear through the shell of the city in any other mediums or was that a unique furman choice? I also had metroplex who was my biggest ever transformer, though I think scorpions came close (and scorponok was a more fun toy).

Alex link

5/12/2015 10:58:02 pm

Scorponok always seemed more fun to me, as a kid, because unlike the other big Transformers who turned into a pile of boxes pretending to be a 'city', he actually turned into something.

Admittedly, that something was a pile of boxes pretending to be a scorpion, but still. Acquiring one for thirty nicker at Transforce '99 was a dream come true.

Stuart

4/12/2015 10:41:11 pm

Nathan: That may now be my favourite ever comment on this site.

Ralph: Metroplex is also predicting the Pat Lee pose.

John: Presumably Metroplex having to rip his way out is the result of the decision to draw Autobot City as it looked in the film rather than as Metroplex's alt mode. Though whether that visual was Furman's choice (to make his appearance less predictable) or Dan Reed's when he drew the first part (due to only being given reference material for the film design perhaps?) I'm not so sure.

Benway

5/12/2015 06:17:00 am

I imagined the conversation about the Action Force sticker album went:

Hasbro: So I pick up my G.I. Joe & Transformoos today and WTF??? Where are the Joes?

MarvelUK: We replaced them with Visionaries, K-nig-ts of the...

Hasbro: Where the rooty toot **** is the Visionaries own comic book, ****head?

MarvelUK: It went bust because it had hardly any more readers than Action sodding Force Jo! Look, we all talked and I we have something to say. We used to be great. Kids loved great characters like Spider-man, the Fantastic Four and the Hulk and Transformers was fun fot awhile too but we've been carrying that for ages and what the hell is all this ********?! Stop doing this to us you soulless is that so's!!! We are not pimping your crappy unpopular guff anymore because our business is dying on it's tits here! We don't need you! We have Death's Head! You hear me??? *&%! OFF and &!#* yourself with a...

Hasbro: One word my friend: Transformers.

MUK: Beefballs!!!

Hasbro: Remember what I said when you agreed to make the Joe's the main strip instead of Transformers?

MUK: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

Hasbro: I am altering it further. Let's talk sticker book. And more hype.

Cradok

7/12/2015 11:53:34 am

I got a Metroplex the Christmas before, and hadn't seen him in the cartoon because we didn't get it, so this was awesome for me. One of the reasons, combined with it being the first story I got, that despite all its problems, Space Pirates is still one of my favourites. And I've always loved that, despite everyone else getting shrunk at some point in fiction, The 'Plex was always depicted as being the biggest guy around. Part of the reason he was the second character art I commissioned Nick Roche to do. And I figured that someone that colossal - especially in the comics where the next biggest guy still fits in a panel with Bumblebee - is probably just not needed, and shut down to act as the foundation for the actual city. Didn't even know what was happening until someone woke him up and he found himself crawling with little purple dudes.

I liked the Cybertron portions too, Magnus showing that base nobility and pragmatism aren't necessarily exclusive.

Cradok

7/12/2015 12:06:03 pm

Oh, and those Autobots aren't attached to his leg, they're still on the tower behind his leg.

Felicity link

12/11/2019 08:10:32 am

One of the several ways that “Transformers: The Movie” paralleled “Star Wars” is that in “Transformers: The Movie” the new young hero (Hot Rod/Luke Skywalker) seems to be the love interest for the heroine (Arcee/Princess Leia), but in subsequent stories she ends up with his older friend (Springer/Han Solo).

It only just occurred to me while thinking about this comment that maybe the reason for the change is that it’s less appropriate for the leader, Rodimus Prime, to be dating one of his subordinates than it was for Hot Rod, who did not outrank Arcee. But then again that kind of sensitivity to power differences in workplace romances feels like more of a recent thing than a 1980s thing, so who knows.

A reader certainly wouldn’t have had any impression that Hot Rod and Arcee have any attraction to each other if that reader hadn’t seen the movie.

It’s odd to think that Blaster’s cassettes were just trapped in his chest the whole time and if nobody had thought to get them out they would have been there forever.

The “Transformers” comic giving out “GI Joe” stickers makes me think of how on TV in the 1980s the animated ads for GI Joe toys would air during “Transformers” and vice-versa, thereby presumably getting around a regulation that you can’t advertise the toy your cartoon is based on during that cartoon. I can sympathise even just from Hasbro’s point of view. We had enough misguided watchdogs in the 1980s claiming that our favourite cartoons were nothing more than half-hour toy commercials. No need to give them more ammunition.

Transformation 186: Metroplex Flex.

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