TRANSFORMERS: Revisiting The Characters Of Generation 1 - CLIFFJUMPER

 TRANSFORMERS:  Revisiting the Characters of Generation 1

"Strike first, strike fast, strike hard." - Cliffjumper, 1984.

AUTOBOT

Name - CLIFFJUMPER

Function - Warrior

Series Debut - 1984 / Wave 1

Sub-Group - None

BACKGROUND...

    Though one of the smaller of the Autobots, Cliffjumper is an eager and brave warrior.  He is impulsive and easily leaps into battle, sometime finding that he has bit off more than he can chew.  His competitive nature is ready to win this long-running war with the Decepticons.  

    Cliffjumper was a member of Optimus Prime's Autobots that ventured into space in search of new energy sources for their battle-torn home planet of Cybertron.  After a Decepticon ambush found all of them smashing into the Earth, all aboard lay deactivated for a long time.  As the Autobot ship was awakened by a volcanic eruption, it immediately set to repairing both Autobots and Decepticons and preparing them for life on the new planet.  Cliffjumper is not the biggest fan of the vastly different terrain on Earth and looks forward to returning to Cybertron.  

    The computers on the Autobot spacecraft gave him the alt-mode of a small red sports car.  In this mode he is extremely fast and uses his speed to draw enemy fire away from his teammates.  Cliffjumper is armed with "Glass Gas", which can make metal as brittle as glass.

MY THOUGHTS...

    As I mentioned in the Brawn write-up...  Several of us neighborhood kids used to have a large "battle" on Saturdays during the summer.  You could use He-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe... whatever.  For three consecutive weekends I was using my allowance to pick up the mini-cars and building up my army.  Brawn and Bumblebee, then Cliffjumper and Windcharger, and finally Huffer and Gears.  As a bonus, most of them came with the mini-spies!  Such a fun time!

    In Transformers: The Movie, when so many Autobots were getting killed off left and right, we all thought Cliffjumper and Jazz (as well as Bumblebee and Spike) died when their Moon Bases were eaten by Unicron.  Yet, all four ended up surviving at the end of the Movie.  I've always wondered why...  

    If the plan was to "get rid of the old characters to make room for the new", why did they make it appear as if those 4 died only to spare them at the end?  Why did they pull their punches on them?  It's not because they were popular characters - Ironhide and Starscream were popular too.  Don't get me wrong, after watching 2 of my favorite Transformers, Prowl and Skywarp, get erased from the series with many others, I was RELIEVED when Cliffjumper and the others escaped the bowels of Unicron!  Anyone have any thoughts on this?

    Standing in for the original G1 figure is the 2014 30th Anniversary Generations Cliffjumper.  I really like this figure's car mode!  Very compact, yet sleek-looking.  The robot mode is okay, but it is a little bit off.  They nailed the head sculpt though!  I also added a pic of one of those little mini Robot Heroes (is that what they were called??).

First line-up of Autobot mini-cars from the 1984 catalog!

    (Information on the character's lore was taken from the Sunbow Transformers cartoon series, including the Movie and the figure's original Tech-Spec.)