Pilot is a great career path, perhaps not as glamorous as a lot of people think but still a good one. I know a couple pilots, one even flies international for Qantas. I can tell you that if your statement above is true, Pilots don't earn much in Australia and he'd be better off working in retail. When I moved from the Aerospace sector to Mechanical, my wage increased significantly and it was only because of the market needs for mechanical over aero.
Just noticed Brawl's handgun in his character model is based on an M2. I can't remember how well that actually translated into the animation of the G1 cartoon, but it's a nice touch.
![]()
mp28 can store his guns on his back in robot mode just behind his shoulders
Huh. Until Verno's comment tonight I have never thought about putting first year Pretender inner robots into other Pretender shells. In theory Cloudburst might fit in Skullgrin's shell? Carnival could sit in Catilla's. And so on right? I had several as a kid but never even thought to put Landmine in Sky High's shell.
I used to do this when I was a kid, but the interchangeability on Pretenders varies. Some can change shells better than others, because the shells are essentially form-fitted to the individual robot. Some make it difficult to close the shell halves while others fit in snugly. So it's not quite as universally interchangeable as the Headmaster, Targetmaster and Powermaster gimmicks; those gimmicks were intended to be interchangeable ("Cross Head On!") whereas if any Pretender can fit in another's shell, it's more of a happy accident.![]()
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.
変われ! ヘッドマスター! Kaware! Headmaster!
戦え! ヘッドマスター! Tatakae! Headmaster!
I kinda imagine that to be similiar to the "body-gloving" used in IDW/MTMTE - gain the advantage of a new alt-mode...
And while the original pretenders weren't designed to be interchanged, who's to say any potential new attempt wont be different and operate on this interchangeable concept.
With a heavily modified Dead End/Streetwise mould being used for Chromedome, I'm not imagining a combining headmaster in a pretender shell. And it's be someone stupid too, either totally obscure, or Bumblebee.
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.