TRANSFORMERS: Revisiting The Characters Of Generation 1 - SKULLGRIN

TRANSFORMERS:  Revisiting the Characters of Generation 1

    "Those who stand against me shall soon fall before me!" - Skullgrin, 1988.

DECEPTICON

Name - SKULLGRIN

Function - Siege Warrior

Series Debut - 1988 / Wave 5

Sub-Group - Pretender

BACKGROUND...

        Truly a destructive force!  In a complete rage, Skullgrin will smash everything in his path until nothing is left standing.  Even if the battle is lost, it's nearly impossible to get him to give up and retreat.  He is so out-of-control that even communicating with him is difficult.  The most you can get is just snorts and grunts like a crazed beast.

    Skullgrin was among a handful of Decepticon warriors chosen to be a part of the "Pretender process".  The idea was to give these troops another layer of disguise and protection.  They were given organic outer shells in which the robot can be hidden inside.  These shells were made to appear as large alien-like creatures.  At will, the robot could exit the organic shell to attack.  He could then radio-control the shell so that they could fight as two!  

    Skullgrin's robot form can transform into a Cybertronian assault tank with powerful treads that can traverse various types of terrain.  The tank is armed with double-barrel "Slagmaker" laser cannons.  Either the shell or robot can utilize this weapon as well as a vibro-sword.

MY THOUGHTS...

    Skullgrin was always one of the more interesting of the Pretender characters.  He had a unique appearance with the crazy skull-head that looks like it could be on the cover of some 80's metal band!  There is also the fact that he had a cool solo story in the Transformers comics where he became a movie star.

    If I was on the fence with 1987's Headmasters, I was officially signed off with Transformers when the Pretenders came out.  These massive creatures and humans (the Autobots) with smaller robots inside was just odd to me.  I thought the idea had merit, but something was off with the execution.  The "humans" were as large as most transformers, which meant they would tower over a normal human.  Not the best "disguise".  The Pretender creatures being enormous at least made a little more sense...

    In later years, the Hasbro team has tried to correct this.  One instance was the 2018 Power of the Primes line with the Prime Masters.  These were small "Titan Master" character that hid inside the decoy armor that looked like the former Pretender shells.  

    Skullgrin here is represented by the 2018 "Prime Master" Liege Maximo and the 2022 Legacy Skullgrin.  The Legacy version attempts to fuse the 2 ideas together - that the beast-looking character IS the Transformer and he can convert into a strange, futuristic tank.

      Both are good ideas and a fresh take on the Pretender concept.  The Prime Master looks great and the figure hides perfectly inside.  Unfortunately, he is tiny and has limited articulation.  The Legacy Skullgrin has a better size and articulation, but looks more robot than beast.  

    Let's take a brief moment to talk about Legacy Skullgrin's gun swords.  Hasbro seems to do this on a fairly regular basis these days.  From Combiner Wars to the new Legacy series... it seems like a good idea, but it's really not.  It feels like a cop-out to me, like "hey, let's save money and give these guys guns, that can ALSO be swords".  No, this does not work.  Tell me if you would rather have a gun sword for Skullgrin over the cool vibro-sword he originally had.  The original sword that was JUST a sword is WAY cooler!  Hasbro, please, just stop.  Make original, wicked-looking weapons again!  

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