I'm always up for more vintage alt modes. rts Lugnut, hftd Highbrow and Hubcap are amound my favorite transformers.
I'd love to see a wave of Generations devoted to the Dreamwave GiJoe vs Transformers crossover designs (the one set in ww2)

 

Do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it (in the G1 cartoon)?

 

I could totally imagine Soundwave as a surveillance van. It could fairly easily lend itself to his traditional robot mode, and would also fit with his position as an information officer.

 

Sorry. Believe it or not I forgot G1 Soundwave turned into a device for listening to music. I guess that has no more to do with communication than a gaming device.

 

Yes. Cassette decks are such an important part of history and there is no any kid would ever know about them unless they had a Transformer that turned into one. Keeping Soundwave un-updated would serve as an excellent lesson to kids that would definitely serve them well in the future...

The whole purpose of Transformers is that they're robots in disguise. A cassette deck simply doesn't work today as well as it did in the 80's. A cassette deck sitting around is just not a normal thing, which is the whole point on why Soundwave used to turn into one. And cassette decks aren't exactly some super important historical lesson or anything for it to be justifiable as that. A kid would know what a cassette deck is anyway without needing to have a toy of it.

 

Yes, we've come so far, slide up phones aren't normal!!!!!!!!!!!!   It's got to be an Iphone 5s or 5c   Fucking Apple.

 

He wasn't a walkman, he was a micro tape recorder - the kind used by reporters.

 

I'm thinking some Earth version of the WFC/FOC Soundwave communications van (which also triple changed into a boombox-like alt mode as well.

 

I know some people will hate me for suggesting this... but what about a smartphone? I mean Soundwave is communications officer after all. His minions could be SD-Cards or materialized holograms, disguised as apps.

And all smartphones can play music, so that's a little plus  

 

I'm really into Soundwave remaining some kind of electronic device. Most of the DS systems have voice-recording capabilities, a smartphone makes sense, just...something that small. Despite his bulky frame in robot mode (at least in G1 where his robot mode was always HUGE for some reason) the idea of Soundwave turning into a vehicle kinda goes against what his original concept was. Some black and purple 3DS sitting somewhere gathering information is just as incongruous now as a tape deck would have been back in the 80s, and it gives an easy way to incorporate his minions. I'm all about it, and I much prefer this to Soundwave being some kind of news truck.

 

if you want command and communication...E3 Sentry AWACS...not sure how the bot mode would go or how you do the minions but its a good alt mode

 

What about turning into a Large Tablet or LED/HDTV screen?

 

My main issue with Soundwave as an electronic device is the size. While I accept that it happens, I'd still like to keep excessive mass-shifting to a minimum when thinking of hypothetical alt-modes.

Also, modern electronic devices have become so thin and flat that there's simply no mass to work with anymore. He'd wind up stick-thin in robot mode.

 

Generations Perceptor is the perfect modernized, re-imagined, vehicular form I'd like to see for Soundwave. Keeping him a small device-former is the last thing I'd ever want to see.

THE biggest and most obvious problem for revising Soundwave has always been the minions, which is why all these years later he's still on the drawing board for a new version. Those transforming cassettes were the entire gimmick for that character and original alt mode concept, and no one has ever really come up with a good alternate idea of A) what they could all be instead, and B) how they'd remain integrated with Soundwave.

 

his Foc body worked in concept the way the minions were deployed killed it,

 

I've always wanted to do Soundwave and the tapes as a desktop computer and accessories. Soundwave would be the actual PC box, Frumble some external speakers, Ravage the Keyboard, Lazerbeak the monitor, Ratbat the mouse, Slugfest the printer, and Overkill an external CD ROM drive. That way they all turn into pretty much boxes allowing them to keep the same sort of transformations as the originals. In my universe they'd be no mass shifting either, so they'd all be tiny robots, able to sneak around and hide and listen in.

 

This right here. A cargo van could probably hold 2-4 minions. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw could be flying drones while Ravage could be a Boston Dynamics-type quadruped.
Do away with mass-shifting, like they did with Megatron by turning him into a vehicles.

 

Did everyone forget that Soundwave was a smartphone once?



Granted.... it looks nothing like Soundwave and more like one of his minions but I digress...

 

That figure looks great, but smartphones are probably going to end up like the cassette player in a few decades from now, so a smartphone as Soundwave’s alt-mode won’t be a permanent fix. I personally think Soundwave looks best as a news van.