I'm not sure if this is known, but I've never heard anything about it. On the cockpit piece, there is a flip out panel revealing landing gear. It is totally useless, unless you remove the cannon piece. I think it was something that hasbro decided to scrap, but couldn't stop production in time to remove it.
ya thats been known since the original...but its sort of pointless as you mentioned due to the big design flaw
yah most pointless thing ever but i suppose it could come in handy if you have the cannon off of it in vehicle mode for some reason
I love little things like this in TFs. Design flaw or not. Reminds me of the seemingly little known tidbits like that g1 Motormaster + Onslaught can link up with Trypticon.
I saw it ages ago. I always just assumed it was there so that you could still have a semi-decent helicopter mode if you ever lost the piece of his cockpit/arm that has the cannon. It is partly a parts-former, after all.
General consensus is it's there in case the child looses the canon that they can still "land" it. If nothing else, looking at the TF wiki to see if it's noted will often clue one in on how well noted a feature may be.
all four (motomaster, onslaught, hot spot, and silverbolt) link up with metroplex to make scramble city factions be damned
Huh. Never thought much about that landing gear but that makes sense. And hell yes. The TF wiki is one awesome little resource.
Maybe the cannon was originally going to transform into something (a mini jet drone or freestanding gun emplacement maybe) so the extra set of landing gear was put there for when the drone is in use. Hmm... now I'm wishing that had done that. An additional thought now I'm pondering this is that Megatron was designed so other things could clip onto his alt there, perhaps future characters in alt mode, Starscream or a clone Seeker, or... a Targetmaster partner.
You forgot that Hun-grr can also combine with trypticon, albeit not very well. (I'm not joking, look it up)