Quote Originally Posted by SuspectimusPrime View Post
Sounds like an unused/missed opportunity for the fiction?

It would have been very advantageous for Pretenders to be capturing and hijacking opposing faction's shells and then impersonating them. Headmasters swapping out heads and gaining even more awesome powers and strength increases makes zero sense.
The Pretenders' shells were psychically synced with their host Transformers. This allowed the hosts to remotely control their shells as extensions of themselves, so if they were separate from their shells, it would act as their own personal backup. The downside to this was that whatever damage was done to the shell would be felt by its owner, and critical damage was so intense that it could render the owner unconscious. The greater the critical damage, the greater the mental feedback. Bumblebee was knocked out for some time after Thunderwing blasted his shell. Carnivac allowed Spinister to destroy his shell (to make the Mayhem Attack Squad believe that they had killed him), and the pain that he felt from the destruction of his his shell was so intense that it nearly killed him.

So I doubt that, canonically speaking, Pretenders can swap shells since they seem to be 'imprinted' onto their owners. In G1 Anglophone continuity anyway.