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- The Constructicons are Decepticons in the Generation 1 continuity family.
The Constructicons are the Decepticons' foremost designers, engineers and builders. They are also particularly notable for their status as the very first combining sub-group of Transformers. They are able to merge their bodies and minds together to form the gigantic Devastator. The individual members of the team are:
- Scrapper, the leader of the Constructicons (by some accounts, although this is not universal), is a master designer who conceives the myriad structures the Construticons assemble. Although he's genuinely modest about his work, he's prone to bragging amongst his fellow Constructicons. He transforms into a wheeled front-load shovel and forms the right leg of Devastator.
- Bonecrusher is brawler by nature and specialises in demolitions work. He would enjoy the extra potential for destruction as Devastator if it didn't mean sharing the same mindspace as his fellow Constructicons. He transforms into a bulldozer, and forms Devastator's left arm.
- Scavenger is an unashamedly pathetic Decepticon. Desperate to prove his worth to his team-mates, he uses his one true gift - his shovel's ability to detect various magnetic, ionic, electrical or gas readings - to locate items of value, although invariably, all he can usually find is junk. He transforms into an excavator, and the right arm of Devastator. Originally to be named Scrounge, Scavenger was erroeously referred to by this name once in the Constructicons' debut animated series episode.
- Mixmaster might have a few chips loose in his logic centre, judging by the cackling with which he undertakes his role of materials fabrication. Although manic and erratic by nature, he is a genius of a chemist, able to mix chemicals in the drum of his concrete mixer alternate mode. He forms Devastator's left leg.
- Hook (Glen in Japan) is the team's perfectionist second-in-command, who considers himself far too elite to deal with most of the 'ruffians' that call themselves Decepticons. He is excellent at performing tasks which require extreme precision, but the time he takes to perfect his work and his arrogance are his weaknesses. Hook is one of the Decepticons' few surgeons. He transforms into a crane, and forms the head and shoulders of Devastator.
- Long Haul is not fond of his role as transport, ferrying construction materials to and fro on a Constructicon building site, and although he accepts its importance, he would much rather be a full-time warrior. He transforms into a dump truck and forms Devastator's lower torso.
The team's combined form of Devastator is brutality in its purest form - his sole purpose is to destroy anything and everything that gets in his way. It is ironic that the suitably intelligent Constructicons should sacrifice their thinking ability in their combined form, but simple-mindedness is a common limitation of the assorted other first-generation combining Transformers, due to the fact that Devastator's thoughts and actions are limited to what his six components can agree upon at any given time. Consequently, Devastator seems like a being of instinct, lashing out at everything around him before contemplating the consequences, but he is also slow and lumbering and very easy to trip up.
- Italian name: Excavators
- Japanese name: Buildron
Extra Members
A number of "extra" Constructicons appear at times in the Generation 1 cartoon. Most likely these were animation errors or attempts at generic crowd-filling, BUT you never know. Subsequent G1 material HAS added some more official Constructicons to the roster:
- Gravedigger was a rejected early name for Scrapper, but he appears in one of the Find Your Fate books as a robot based on Long Haul. This was likely some sort of error, but he stands as a named character.
- Load Hauler is like that member of the Beatles that left before they got famous. He was added retroactively by a Japanese E-Hobby release as a seventh Constructicon who didn't happen to be there when they were turned evil by Megatron. He's a stylish free spirit who went to Earth with the Autobots aboard the Ark but then went on a walkabout.
- Hightower was added to the Classics (2006) version of the team where he replaces both Mixmaster and Hook in the lineup. Likely not coincidental, his personality appears to be a merger of those two: a poison-loving chemistry set on wheels who feels extreme disdain for his teammates. Whether the upcoming Classics comics will clarify or explicate his addition or personality has yet to be seen.
In addition, it is possible that Universe Micromaster Constructicon Devastator is the same character as Generation 1 Devastator, which would make Quickmix and Buckethead G1 Constructicons as well. Of course, it is equally possible that there is no relation whatsoever, in which case Quickmix and Buckethead are almost definitely not G1 Constructicons. Universe is funny like that.
Fiction
Generation 1 Cartoon
Can we break it? YES WE CAN.
According to Omega Supreme, millions of years ago, the Constructicons were the creators of the beautiful Crystal City on Cybertron, which he was assigned the task of guarding. As a friend of the Constructicons, he was hurt the most when they were attacked by Megatron, who, seeking to bolster the forces of his Decepticons, subjected the Constructicons to the Robo-Smasher, a device which reprogrammed their minds and turned them into Decepticons. In their first act as Megatron's troops, the Constructicons lured Omega away from Crystal City and demolished it, enraging Omega, who pursued the Constructions across the planet. Eventually, he succeeded in capturing them and apparently restored their programming to its original state, but as the group returned to rebuild Crystal City, Omega learned that Megatron's reprogramming could never be undone - the Constructicons were still Decepticons, and more than that, Megatron had given them a new power: the ability to combine their bodies and minds into the giant known as Devastator. In the ensuing struggle with Devastator, the Robo-Smasher attacked Omega's mind. He was able to stop it before the reprogramming was complete, only to wind up losing his emotions. Filled with only hate for the Constructicons, Omega relentlessly pursued them, until they finally fled Cybertron in a spacecraft, which Omega chased across the galaxy.
In 1984, the Constructicons joined with Megatron's forces on Earth, and their first mission was an impressive one - Scrapper designed a machine to transfer the other Decepticons' powers to Megatron, and while he battled Optimus Prime, holding the attention of the Autobots, the Constructicons invaded the The Ark to destroy Teletraan I. Unfortunately for them, the Ark was protected by the Dinobots, but by merging into Devastator, they became more than a match for their prehistoric foes. The return of the other Autobots and the discovery of Megatron's deception spelled the end of the battle, however, as Hound distracted Devastator with a gigantic hologram, and Optimus Prime blasted the giant at just the right spot to force the Constructicons to disengage. They and the other Decepticons were then forced into a river of lava.
The Constructicons all managed to survive their magma bath mostly unscathed, except for Mixmaster, whose mind was apparently damaged by the experience, as he developed his manic personality and a fondness for repeating his words, which he had not displayed before. Regardless, the team was soon back at work again, performing such varied tasks as assisting in Megatron's reconstruction of New York City - which also involved turning Optimus Prime's scrapped remains into a robotic alligator - and building a device to paralyse Transformers in their vehicular modes, as well as another that could crush them. When the Autobots would interfere in their plans, Devastator would invariably be formed - something that the Autobots chose to use to their advantage when they discovered that the Constructicons were drilling to the Earth's core. Sneaking "dominator disks" onto the separate Constructicons, when they merged into Devastator, the Autobots took control of his mind and used him for their own ends until he escaped, and, surprisingly, helped stop the drill to prevent the destruction of the Earth.
Upon learning of the Autobot Grapple's solar power tower design, Scrapper and the Constructicons pretended to have defected from the Decepticons in order to help him and Hoist construct it, exposing their treachery upon its completion. Later, when the other Decepticons began to suffer from Cybertonium degeneration, the Constructions - apparently working fine, presumably as a result of their newly-built, Cybertonium-free Earth bodies - took delivery of a shipment of the mineral via the Space Bridge, and as Devastator, failed to stop Spike Witwicky and Carly from getting by them and traveling to Cybertron.
In 1985, when Omega Supreme learned that the Constructicons were active on Earth, he arrived on the planet and joined Optimus Prime's forces, biding his time until he could face his former friends again. That chance arose when the Constructions were discovered mining an asteroid, and Omega was dispatched to investigate. Ignoring Optimus Prime's orders, Omega Supreme engaged the Constructicons, and in the battle, split the asteroid in two, revealing that it was an egg of sorts, incubating a monstrous alien creature, which promptly attacked San Francisco while Omega, ignoring the plight of the city, continued to battle the Constructicons. Optimus Prime then entered the fray, convincing Omega that saving the city was more important than revenge, and forcing the Constructicons to retreat.
The building skills of the Constructicons remained in demand - other creations around this time included an army of drone Transformers created from common Earth cars; various constructs for Blitzwing, including a throne constructed from deactivated Autobots and a massive maze; and a giant ruby-powered laser cannon - but their combing powers soon became a lot less unique with the creation of several new similarly-powered Autobot and Decepticon sub-groups. Devastator was even defeated in battle by the Combaticons, who Starscream specially designed with the ability to combine into Bruticus for that eventuality.
In the Earth year 2005, Devastator was the Decepticons' primary weapon in the Battle of Autobot City, tearing through the defenses and walls of the city and battling the Dinobots once more. On the return trip to Cybertron, it was Bonecrusher who advocated the "survival of the fittest" policy that saw many wounded Decepticons ejected from the shuttle, among them Megatron, prompting Scrapper to vote for the Constructions as the new leaders of the Decepticons. Hook took great offense to the notion that Soundwave would make a better leader than them. In the end, Starscream became the new leader of the Decepticons, and the Constructicons, as a sign of no hard feelings, provided the music by playing horns at his coronation. Starscream eventually shot their horns, showing that he still had hard feelings. The Transformers: The Movie
In the remainder of this year and throughout 2006, the Constructions maintained a smaller, but still present, role in the Decepticon army, lending their talents to the Decepticon/Quintesson alliance by constructing Trypticon out of a populated human city in only one night. Later, they built a planetary engine on an asteroid and battled on the planet Eurhythma, aided in the overthrow of Paradron and took part in an attack on Japan. Although brief, the Constructicons even played a part in the battle for the Plasma Energy Chamber in 2007.
Origin controversy
The original Transformers animated series is infamous for its slip-ups regarding the Constructicons, presenting at least three apparently-contradictory stories that give different origins for the group. In their debut episode, the Season One finale, Heavy Metal War, Megatron professes that the Constructicons were built on Earth. Yet, in the Season Two episode, The Secret of Omega Supreme, the secret history of the eponymous character and the Constructicons comes out, which reveals their past on Cybertron together, where the Constructicons were formerly not Decepticons and were turned to evil by Megatron. Scrapper also makes a comment in The Master Builders that he admired the buildings of the Autobot Grapple on Cybertron, indicating a past there.
Interestingly, the official bible to the series originally describes the Constructicons as having "no explained origin." Presumably, this encouraged David Wise, the writer of The Secret of Omega Supreme, to give the characters an explained origin, unaware that it conflicted with the one-line reference to their being built on Earth from Heavy Metal War. Nevertheless, it is not impossible to reconcile these two stories, if one simply assumes that when Megatron said the Constructicons were "built," he was referring to their new Earth bodies after their arrival from Cybertron (ironically, The Secret of Omega Supreme neglected to give the Constructicons redesigned Cybertronian modes, making it appear as if they always turned into Earthly construction vehicles). That said, one would have to assume that the Constructicons did not have their existing bodies modified, but had entirely new structures created, due to their ability to function and even form Devastator when the other Transformers on Earth were suffering from Cybertronium degeneration in Desertion of the Dinobots.
The third contradiction emerges in the third season, with the episode Five Faces of Darkness, Part Four, in which Rodimus Prime witnesses Megatron's creation in a flashback, and the animation shows the Constructicons surrounding him, implying that they were responsible for building him, which contradicts The Secret of Omega Supreme's claim that they were not originally Decepticons. There are two ways of rationalizing this:
- The Constructicons were not evil when they constructed Megatron. Megatron was either accidentally created evil or later became evil. He then later corrupted the Constructicons, as depicted in The Secret of Omega Supreme. And then later, he rebuilt them on earth.
- The scene is a mistake. Five Faces of Darkness is notorious for its flawed animation, and it is entirely probable that these characters were not intended to be the actual Constructicons, but rather either characters who resembled them, or generic robots that the animators simply used the Constructicons' model sheets to fill the roles of. In strong indication of this is the fact that there are eight Constructicons displayed, rather than six.
The presence of a larger than usual number of Constructicons in the Five Faces of Darkness scene was referenced somewhat by the release of Load Hauler, a Constructicon-colored repaint of Grapple, released exclusively by online retailer E-Hobby in 2003. His biography presents him to have once been a member of the Constructicons, before they were Decepticons, who joined up with the Autobots after Megatron co-opted his team-mates with the Robo-Smasher, and accompanied Optimus Prime's crew aboard the Ark. This in itself is a reference to the anomalous character of Hauler, an Autobot clearly based on the Grapple toy who features in the first animated series episode, but never appears again. Orange in his animated appearance, Load Hauler's bio explains this color discrepancy by presenting Load Hauler as a "highly capricious self-expressionist," who frequently changes his coloration.
Headmasters Cartoon
The Constructicons are not shown doing much individually in the Headmasters animated series other than acting as infantry for Galvatron. Their combined form of Devastator, however, is shown with much more frequency. In the first episode, Devastator is defeated by Optimus Prime with a single jump-kick to the back.
Zone Cartoon
Devastator was among the nine Decepticon Generals assembled by the villainous Violen Jygar. Devastator met his end via underground magma, having apparently lost his resistance to it sometime after Heavy Metal War.
Marvel Comics
- (Note: Events from the UK-only comic stories are in italics.)
"I'm green!" "I'm green!" "I'm green." "I'm green!" "I'm green!" "I'm green?"
Seeking to bolster the size of his forces on Earth in 1985, Decepticon Commander Shockwave arranged for the construction of six new Decepticon bodies, which were then infused with life by the power of the Creation Matrix, tapped from the head of the imprisoned Optimus Prime. Thus, the Constructicons were born, and were immediately put to work building a massive radio transmission dish that Soundwave used to beam a message to Cybertron. When the Autobots attempted to interfere, the Constructicons revealed their hidden power and merged into Devastator to fight them off, allowing the message to successfully go through.
The Autobots, intrigued by Devastator's unique combining power, attempted to replicate it with the construction of Omega Supreme. However, Omega was composed of only three components, unlike the six Constructicons that made up Devastator. The Autobots, needing additional data on combiner technology, conducted a raid on the Decepticon base, luring out Devastator so that they could study him further. This led to the construction of the new combiner team, the Aerialbots, capable of forming Superion, who Devastator battled during the Transformers' adventure alongside G.I. Joe.
The Constructicons were later charged with hunting down Buster Witwicky, and again when the time-travelling Galvatron co-opted their services to build a gigantic laser cannon.
The team's special talents were not required in the U.S. title again until they and the Predacons stole large amounts of rocket fuel and raw materials, with which the Constructicons rebuilt the Decepticons' mobile island headquarters as a spaceship. With the entire Earth-based Decepticon army aboard the ship, under the command of Ratbat, they attacked an Autobot congregation on the moon. While the battle raged, the Constructicons penetrated the Ark and recovered the deactivated bodies of several Decepticons defeated in an earlier clash with Omega Supreme.
In an alternate 2008, Mixmaster was briefly indicated to have ascended to leadership of the Constructicons.
Later, the team had lost the ability to combine, and attempted to rebuild Devastator as a singular, separate entity. The Autobots Ironhide and Bumblebee arrived on the island to investigate, and Ironhide was able to bypass the security grid and plant explosives to destroy the site, and Devastator with it.
Dreamwave Generation 1 Comics
The oceans are Devastator's bathtub
8 million years before the modern era, the Constructicons were tasked by Megatron to activate Cybertron's planetary engines. When Megatron disappeared into the depths of the planet fighting Optimus Prime, Starscream temporarily took command and had Scrapper prepare a process for the resurfacing of Cybertron, which would transform it into a mobile war-world. Scrapper cautioned against such an action, but Starscream ignored him, and prevented him from stopping it when the process was underway. 1.5 million years later, when Megatron and Optimus Prime were thought to have died in an early test of the space bridge transport system, and the Autobots and Decepticons splintered into several smaller factions, the Contructicons broke the treaty that had downgraded the combining teams to non-combat status by siding with Ratbat's Ultracons and battling Defensor.
It is apparent that the Constructicons were not aboard the Ark when it crashed on Earth four millions years before the modern era, but they did eventually find their way to Earth and joined Megatron's forces there after they awoke in 1984. All the Transformers were rendered inactive in the explosion of the Ark II in 1999, but when they reactivated in 2001, Devastator was the main weapon in Megatron's attack on San Francisco. Rampaging through the city, he battled and defeated Superion, but was defeated by Optimus Prime who basted the titan point-blank in the face, sending him plunging into the ocean. His remains were recovered by the Earth Defense Command, and dissected and studied in their underground base.
Toys
Generation 1
The Constructicons were first released in 1985 both individually and as a giftset. Oddly, the group was released in yellow instead of green in parts of Europe.
Their second release, in 1990, was Devastator's Action Master form.
In 1992, the team was released in Europe with some changes. This version had yellow instead of green, had the soft plastic parts changed to grey, and lacked the combiner kibble as well as the metal pegs on Scavenger and Hook used for combination. Also, these toys had no offical name, as the blister card that all six members used identified them only as "Constructicons".
Generation 2
The Generation 2 release came in either yellow or orange; the latter was only avalible at Kay-Bee Toys. One item of note is that G2 release of Mixmaster doesn't include the single-tabbed missile.
Classics
And then there were five.
A redeco of Constructicon Maximus known as Constructicon Devastator is comprised of Scrapper, Bonecrusher, Long Haul, Scavenger, and Hightower. Wal-Mart exclusive, 2007.