Top 10 Most Iconic G1 Decepticons

[GoktimusPrime]

I chose other because I consider Ravage and Laserbeak more significant than Rumble despite their lack of speech as they were more influential in the G1 cartoon (in my opinion).

Ravage speaks.

In the G1 comics he (and the other Decepticon cassettes) spoke a lot. As I mentioned before, it was Ravage who counselled Shockwave and snapped him out of his stupor in the Time Wars. In the G1 cartoon Ravage spoke once. It was "More Than Meets the Eye, Part 3," where he said, "The rocket base is one hundred and forty kilometres due west of the Autobot camp." Then of course in Beast Wars, Ravage spoke lots (and he was still a cassette tape )!

[DaptoDog]

Out of interest, which Rumble are you referring to? The red / black or blue mini-cassette.

Oh I'm not going there lol. I'm referring to the character that was portrayed in in the cartoon since I've barely read the comics. I would imagine that Rumble and Frenzy's exposure was far more balanced in the comics, whereas in the cartoon I can't remember Frenzy saying anything.

[GoktimusPrime]

Oh I'm not going there lol. I'm referring to the character that was portrayed in in the cartoon since I've barely read the comics. I would imagine that Rumble and Frenzy's exposure was far more balanced in the comics, whereas in the cartoon I can't remember Frenzy saying anything.

Then FIRRIB it is. Unless you're watching the Japanese dub.

Frenzy's appearance in the G1 cartoon was indeed limited with only a handful of classy lines like...
"Hey, I didn't volunteer for this geeky assignment!" (Countdown to Extinction)
"Yeah, let's kick tailgate!" (The Transformers The Movie)

Frenzy and Rumble did indeed have a more balanced appearance in the G1 comics, and they had toy-accurate RIRFIB colours too (the cartoon was the only G1 canon that went by FIRRIB, every other source was RIRFIB). Also the comics portrayed Frumble more accurately in that...
* Rumble generated earthquakes by transmitting high sound waves through his body, exactly as the toy bio describes. It also makes more sense when you consider how seismic activity works in real life.
* Frenzy generated debilitating sound waves through his chest, again, being accurate to the toy bio. IDW comics modified Frenzy's ability so that he screams out of his mouth like a banshee. In G2 Wheeljack amplified Frenzy's power to the point where Frenzy vibrated himself to death (although very happily so). IMO Frenzy was more powerful than Rumble because while Rumble would make his enemies fall over, Frenzy crippled them. The only time we saw Frenzy's power in the G1 cartoon was in The Ultimate Doom, but it was used by Soundwave, not Frenzy - called 'audio disruptor waves.' These waves nullified Dr Arkeville's hypno-chips, and Wheeljack later reverse-engineered it into his "lunchbox" which he later used to free all of the Decepticons' human slaves.
* Rumble and Frenzy had different personalities. In the G1 cartoon they both had Rumble's personality - being basic punks. But in the G1 comics Frenzy was the lunatic who got off on sowing destruction, again being accurate to his bio.

The neat thing about Rumble and Frenzy's powers is that they're meant to be based on sound waves. This was cool because they were cassettes and they were partnered with Soundwave, and Soundwave's ability was his super hearing. So Soundwave and his humanoid cassettes all shared abilities that revolved around sound. This was lost in the G1 cartoon which I always thought was a shame. We know that Rumble smashes through Blaster's window through with his piledrivers, but if he'd been more toy-accurate then he could've used his hands to vibrate the glass until it smashed, similar to when Quicksilver freed Magneto in X-Men Days of Future Past. Although Rumble would've done it in a microsecond considering that he's able to vibrate the earth itself and topple structures! (not just crack the ground open)

It was also a really cool way to make kids interested in the properties of sound itself. This is one thing I really miss about G1 - they talked up to kids, not down. G1 pretty much spoke to kids like adults rather than simplifying things (which is condescending). I didn't know what sound waves were in 1984-85, but after reading Frenzy and Rumble's bios and their appearances in the comics, it made me curious to find out about it. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that I never knew which I first encountered in Transformers. I don't see that so much these days. Your average toy bio now is, "This Transformer is awesome and kicks much butt! He is unstoppable in his butt-kicking awesomeness!" yeah, every bio reads like this ... boooring ...