Transformers: Generation One Shockwave

On the fateful day, when Megatron, Optimus Prime, and their crew left the battle-scarred planet of Cybertron and suddenly disappeared from all contacts, for 4 million years Cybertron was under the care of the Decepticon's military operations commander, Shockwave.

"Clarity of thought before rashness of action." ~ Shockwave

Shockwave is one of Megatron's most prized soldier and is a military genius. While most other Transformers have very colorful personalities, Shockwave is cold, calculating, and emotionless (most of the time). His decisions are always based on logic and will do whatever he believes necessary to achieve the results he wants, whether it's following Megatron's orders or massacring Autobots (or even humans). In the cartoon, Shockwave is displayed as someone who is extremely loyal to Megatron. However, in the comics and his character profile, his only loyalty is to "logic" itself and follows Megatron only because "it's the most logical thing to do". If it ever came a time when he concludes that he would make a better leader than Megatron, he would do so without any hesitation (and did at one time).Shockwave's power and strength is said to be second to only Megatron (and even that is disputed). He is armed with a laser cannon on his left hand (oh wait, it IS his left hand) and transforms into a giant, 35-foot-long Cybertronian ray-gun, which greatly amplifies his firepower. Although he is extremely intelligent, his logic-driven mind can also prove to be a downfall as more intuitive and emotional thoughts tend to confuse him. He also find humans to be very confounding and finds their existance "illogical".
Now for the toy itself. This is one of my favorites! Transformer toys that came out in the early 80's weren't known for looking accurate to their cartoon counterparts, but Shockwave was one of the few that looked just like he did on TV. He stands at a whopping 9 inches (very tall for an individual character), which is weird because that makes him much taller than the original Megatron and Optimus Prime. Look how puny Starscream is compared to him!
His articulation is not bad. His head rotates all the way around but his arms only bends up and down at the elbows at a 90 degree angle (in other words, he cant point his whole arm forward) His shoulders also only go up and down from the side. His legs move nicely, as they bend from the waist and the knees. Below he displays that by dominating Starscream (why didn't you do that in the cartoon!?). There's also a cool feature that his "gun hand" lights up and makes "pew pew" noise when you press the trigger on his waist (need batteries for that). That also works in gun-mode, where the cannon lights up instead. Below is the toy commercial for the American release, where he battles the traitor Sky- I mean Jetfire!



That's it for today folks! Please follow our blogsite for more features and coming soon: Kayfabe TIME! A surprise for our chief editor, Aaron, who thinks he is such a better dancer than I am. I will launch an attack that would baffle even the mighty Shockwave!