Ed Ranks G1 Transformers Combiner Teams

Fun-loving good times with Screamer and Brutey.

One of my first ever rankings was the 1985 Transformers toy catalog. It's been a while since I've discussed the robots in disguise. So now I'll rank all the Transformers Generation 1 "Combiner Teams" (also sometimes called Gestalts, although that could simply refer to the title of their combined entity).  Some ground rules:

• I am only including the Generation 1 cartoon combiner teams, as canon via the four seasons of the Sunbow Studios-produced The Transformers cartoon. 
• There is a wider "Generation 1 continuity family" that includes the original Transformers toys the continuation Japanese series, the original Marvel comics, and stuff like later comics that tried to insert themselves into, retell and/or reboot G1 continuity. I am not including any of that. Just the 80's cartoon.
• You can argue that there were other groups/teams of Transformers who "combined." Reflector was a bunch of small robots that became one camera. Omega Supreme consisted of a bunch of different things (a rocket, a base, a tank) that "combined" into one big entity. Optimus Prime himself opened up into a big battle station with Roller, and therefore you could argue that he was separate entities that "combined" when in truck mode. Skylinx was a bird and a lion that turned into one weird space shuttle/blue box thing. Headmasters (more so) and Targetmasters (less so) that appeared in the final three-part finale are sort of "combiners" in a way, aren't they? Not really. I'm going to define a Combiner as an entity that has (1) a robot mode; (2) an alternate [often vehicle, but not always] mode, and (3) a mode where they form into a larger gestalt being with a gestalt intelligence. So that would eliminate all of those types of bots that I described above.
• Sometimes you can mix up the existing teams "Scramble City" style, and have a Combiner made of parts from different teams (e.g. Abomenaticus, Comperian, etc). There are not G1 cartoon canon, obviously.

Based on the above rules, these are the eight G1 Combiner teams. Don't agree with the rules I set above to define Combiners and/or my rankings below? Too bad. Blogger is free. Make your own blog.

8. Protectobots

Nobody cares about this loser

• Team Members: Hot Spot, Streetwise, Blades, Groove, and First Aid.
• Gestalt Form: Defensor
• Their Gimmick: A team of emergency, rescue, and "law enforcement" robots (fire truck, police car, rescue helicopter, police motorcycle, ambulance).
• Origin Story: In the G1 cartoon? They didn't even bother to have one. Up to this point, the cartoon generally introduced new Combiner teams with huge stories. With these guys? They just showed up
• Analysis: How many Protectobot names do I know on my own without looking them up? None. When the Protectobots were introduced, the Autobots already had a fire truck (Inferno), a police car (Prowl), an ambulance (Ratchet), and a fire chief's car (Red Alert). The Autobots basically already had the whole "law enforcement and first response" thing covered before they created this unnecessary team with no origin. I guess getting a motorcycle and helicopter is cool. They also featured in about two episodes before they were totally forgotten and/or relegated into background characters, never to be mentioned again. In conclusion: they suck. The Autobots themselves didn't even like these guys. They had their own HQ where they lived, away from the normal Autobot HQ.

7. Technobots

Year book pose.

• Team Members: Scattershot, Strafe, Lightspeed, Afterburner, and Nosecone.
• Gestalt Form: Computron
• Their Gimmick: A bunch of... uhh... sort of quasi-futuristic space vehicle (Cybertronian?) things. Like with the below Terrorcons, their alt forms are sort of nonsense. They are also super, duper-smart and can compute things. So their gimmick is intelligence, I guess. Or at least Computron is super intelligent when they combine. On their own, the individual robots are just normally intelligent, from what I can tell.
• Origin Story: In a freak accident, the usually stupid Dinobot, Grimlock, becomes a mega-genius. Following the TV series rule that episodes should always end with status quo, by the end of the episode, Grimlock is forced to give away his super intelligence to a newly-created group of robots that he built (partially from Unicron's brain, ew). I guess this technically ignores the previously-established rule that you can't make new robots because they have to have souls from Vector Sigma or whatever, but then again maybe Grimlock got so smart he found a way around this rule.
• Analysis: I mean I don't HATE the Technobots, but their origin story with Grimlock is really the only interesting episode with them. I almost want to rank them above the Terrorcons, but I won't. Because two-headed dragons and shark-with-legs-guy are cool. In the end, "Grimlock's New Brain" is a good episode because its a Grimlock episode and Grimlock is the best. It's not good because the Technobots. The show could have done a lot more with the Technobots, but didn't.

6. Terrorcons

Seriously... WTF is Blot?!

• Team Members: Hun-Gurr, Rippersnapper, Blot, Sinnertwin, and Cutthroat.
• Gestalt Form: Abominus
• Their Gimmick: A group of Decepticon... uhh... monsters (?), including a pair of two-headed dragons, a weird-ass shark with legs, a hawk demon (or flying dinosaur-type-thing?), and whatever the fuck Blot is supposed to be (I have no idea, and neither does Transformers, really. His toy box's explanation is just like "uhh... Monster?").
• Origin Story: None given. They just show up one day. Which is pretty weak, but whatever. We're used to this by now with the show.
• Analysis: The least interesting Decepticon team. Their beast / "monster" modes are sort of cool (with the exception of Blot), but for the most part their robot forms are nonsense. You'd think if you're just making fictional "monster" creatures that don't form any real animal out there, you could really have opening for creativity to make appealing robot and alt forms. They didn't. The group even had TWO two-headed dragons. They had a clean slate to just create whatever, and they did the same monster twice. Autobot Combiners are terrible, and this is the only Decepticon Combiner that's worse than any Autobot one.

5. Arielbots

Just some plane guys.

• Team Members: Silvertbolt, Air Raid, Fireflight, Skydive, and Slingshot.
• Gestalt Form: Superion
• Their Gimmick: Autobots that are various types of airplanes (Concorde, F-15, F-4, F-16A, Harrier), and thus can fly like Autobots typically couldn't after the pilot episode (don't get me started on the inconsistant Autobot flying "rules"). As with their bizzaro Stunticon counterparts introduced at the same time, they also have weird personality traits. Such as their leader, an airplane, being afraid of flying. Yeah, you read that right.
• Origin Story: The Decepticons traveled to Cybertron to go to Vector Sigma and give their new car team, the Stunticons (see more below) life. The Autobots are wholly unoriginal and said, "If the Decepticons get to have cars, then we should get planes. " They went to Vector Sigma and just totally copied the Decepticons.They should have gotten an "F" on their homework.
• Analysis: No Autobot Combiner teams are particularly good or interesting, and this is the only Autobot team which I will rank over any of the Decepticon Combiner teams. Of the weak Autobot Combiners, the Arielbots are the best. There was at least an attempt to give these guys some stories. Although as I repeat from their gimmicks, the leader of the Autobot airplanes is afraid of flying. I gotta think Vector Sigma was just totally fucking with both the Autobots and the Decepticons when he gave their Combiner teams personalities. Vector Sigma is totally a douche. "Hehehe... I'll make Silverbolt afraid to fly! That will be sweet! I'll also make Air Raid an impulsive douchebag, Fireflight dangerously irresponsible, and Slingshot will just be a douchey bragger who compensates for horrible insecurities. And basically 4 out of the 5 of them will all want to be Decepticons. Oh man, this will be noiiiiice! I've giving the Autobots a bag of awful personality flaws! That's what they get for just copying the Decepticons." 

4. Predacons

Sweetness

• Team Members: Razorclaw, Divebomb, Headstrong, Rampage, and Tantrum.
• Gestalt Form: Predaking
• Their Gimmick: A powerful and savage group of animal Decepticons, including a lion, eagle, rhinoceros, tiger, and water buffalo. Like the Dinobots and other "animal" bots,  they're very dumb and animalistic (even in robot mode) when compared to the others.
• Origin Story: Alas, no origin story for these guys. When they first show up in the cartoon, they're actually working for the Quintessans, rather than the Decepticons. With no real explanation, they jump over to Team Galvatron. Good choice, I suppose. It's hard to go down from the Quints. I mean I guess they could have worked for the Skuxxoids. That would be worse.
• Analysis: Despite lacking an origin story, the Predacons are cool as hell. Their animal forms were all super awesome, and their "fall harvest" color scheme (red, yellow, orange, black) was nice. Predaking itself is also one of the coolest gestalts around. Maybe even cooler than Devestator (I won't commit to that for sure). And they got a surprisingly large chunk of of  Season 3 airtime after their introduction in the finale of the "Five Faces of Darkness." I won't mention them all, but one other episode was "Call of the Primitives," a great Predacon episode and a pretty good episode in other ways, so long as we just forget about the Primacron origin story for Unicron (Transformers writ-large certainly has). I also want to point out that Decepticons are definately cat fetishists. Ravage. Razorclaw. Rampage. There are a ton of wild jungle cats among the Decepticon ranks. Crazy cat ladies definately have to be pro-Decepticon.

3. Stunticons

"LIFE IS A MEANINGLESS VOID OF SUFFERING!"

• Team Members: Motormaster, Drag Strip, Dead End, Wildrider, and Breakdown.
• Gestalt Form: Menasor
• Their Gimmick: Rebellious "stunt cars" (and a stunt truck, I suppose) that could all do tricks. They also each had one-note gimmicks, sort of like a boy band. For instance, Wildrider was the "crazy, loose cannon," Breakdown was super paranoid (I guess a pot-smoker), and Dead End was a gloomy fucking nihilist (also the best. I think boy bands should include gloomy nihilists).
• Origin Story: Megatron hated that Autobots had all the cool cars (what with "Auto" in their name) and wanted cards of his own. So he stole a bunch of cars and turned them into Decepticons. But contrasting the earlier and poorly established Constructicon (and Dinobot) creation continuity which was already widely ignored, now it was a rule that you just can't "make" new Transformers. Therefore, Megatron had to go to the magical life-giving Vector Sigma back on Cybertron to give his new team souls (and weird-ass personalities).
• Analysis: It is awesome that the Decepticons finally got some cars on their team. It would allow for cool stories, such as when stupid humans thought that the Autobots had turned evil because cars were doing bad things (humans are dumb), as well the episode where the Autobots all got paint jobs to look like the Stunticons and pretended to be them to trick Megatron (Megatron is dumb). It's also awesome that the introduction of the Stunticons also made an attempt to explain how new Transformers are created/given life via Vector Sigma. Although, as always, continuity was a hot mess. Vector Sigma giving them batshit crazy personalities was also wierd. Vector Sigma was just weird (see Arielbots above) Thumbs up to these awesome guys. Although all things considered, Menasor himself was sort of weak.

2. Combaticons

This picture isn't from the cartoon, but FUCK YEAH anyway.

• Team Members: Onslaught, Brawl, Blast Off, Swindle, and Vortex.
• Gestalt Form: Bruticus
• Their Gimmick: An elite mercenary force of military vehicles: anti-aircraft truck, tank, space shuttle (which is sort of military, I guess?), jeep, and helicopter. They were also so wacky (Swindle was, as name implies, a conman; Vortex was criminally insane; and so on) that the Decepticons themselves imprisoned them in space jail. But I'll continue that in the "Origin" section below.
• Origin Story: Technically we don't  know the "true" origin of the Combaticons via the G1 cartoon (comics would later try to explain it), but we can at least pick up on how they were introduced to the G1 show. Starscream is exiled for another failed coup against Megatron (so what's new?). Exiled to Guadalcanal, he finds a bunch of old World War II ruined war machines, and decides to sneak his way back to Cybertron and go to Decepticon Space Jail where the "personality components" of rebel Decepticons are kept. Yeah, these Decepticons are so off-the-fucking-wall that even Megatron was like "these thugs need to be in jail!" Starscream steals their persoanlity components, brings them back to Earth, and instals them in his military equipment. Ta-da! Now Starscream has his own army (well, brigade) to try to defeat Megatron. Eventually after losing and being exiled again (this time in space), eventually they are "reprogrammed" to be loyal to Megatron. 
• Analysis: The Combaticons are cool. Their origin story (despite being clouded in a little mystery before Starscream got to them) is cool. Their vehicle forms are cool. Bruticus is right up there with Devestator and Predaking in terms of the coolest gestalt. Their characters have pretty awesome and interesting personalities (especially dickish Swindle), and they got significant amounts of screen time. I'm all about the Combaticons. They were also cool enough to reappear in 2001's Transformers: Robots in Disguise when the TV series ran out of new toys and just decided to use old ones from the 80's. Which is a sign that their vehicles and military gimmick was kick-ass.  The only flaw might be how easily their "renegade Decepticon" story was quickly erased from the plot after just a few episodes. Megatron can just "reprogram" them to make them loyal? What the hell? You can reprogram Transformer personalities? Why didn't Megatron do this to Starscream millions of years ago?

1. Constructicons

About to drop their new single.

• Team Members: Scrapper, Hook, Bonecrusher, Long Haul, Mixmaster, and Scavenger.
• Gestalt Form: Devastator
• Their Gimmick: A bunch of construction vehicles, including a front-end loader, crane, bulldozer, dump truck, cement mixer, and power shovel/excavator.
• Origin Story: Oh shit, well this one is super complicated in the G1 cartoon. They are introduced in the first season episode "Heavy Metal War" as "newly built" Decepticons, presumably by Megatron (I guess). Then, then in Season 2 and Season 3 it's revealed that they actually lived back on Cybertron way back in the day, were the ones who (twist!) actually built Megatron (which would presume that they were evil), but also that they used to be good (or at least neutral) robots who were friends with Omega Supreme until Megatron turned them evil (thus making it super confusing as to why the Constructicons built Megatron in the first place if they weren't already evil). If there was any sort of continuity bible that the cartoon writers were using, they ignored it for the Constructicons. Oh well.
• Analysis: This was the first Combiner team and they were the best. It's super cool that there were six of them instead of five. With most of the Combiner teams, there were clearly just four smaller robots who became arms and legs, and then one huge robot who was the body. The Constructicons were all cleverly more equal-sized and simply looked cooler because of it. Their characters were also genius builders, and probably had more character development than any of the other Combiner characters. No other teams could ever quite match their awesomeness. Also, construction vehicles? AWESOME. What little kid doesn't like playing with awesome heavy machinery?