One is What was the swarm and was it in the show. and was g-1 scourge what you would consider a shell former/soapdish?
The Swarm, which was featured in the Generation 2 Marvel comic written by Simon Furman, was an evil "entity" that was formed during a period of time when Transformers were actually splitting in to two pieces, a "second generation" if you will. Every time that happened, a bit of this "entity" was released. It eventually made one big cloud and then started destroying everything. Optimus Prime then let the Swarm envelope him and the Matrix, thus showing the Swarm a side it had never seen before - goodness and all things yay, and then it revived him and went about being a happy Swarm. G1 Scourge is considered a "soapdish" because he's flat yet his edges are all curved and round. I think of him like if you take pizza dough and slam it on a table - there's your G1 Scourge. The upcoming Titanium Scourge is supposed to be pretty kick-ass though.
Rumble02: See, you really asked 3 questions here, since the set of all shellformers and the set of all soapdishes do not completely intersect. I would like to disagree a bit with Kickback and say that the Swarm was /not/ presented as an evil creature. Transformers were given consciousness, conscience, and purpose by the power of Primus; deprived of these by its origins, the Swarm longed for them. Devouring the Transformers allowed it to satisfy this longing, but only briefly. The Swarm was certainly hungry and purposeless, but without malice or any real desire to do harm. Now for the other two: G1 SCOURGE NOT SOPE DISH WAAAAH SOPE DISH HAS TWO ROUND ENS AND PLACE FOR SOPE TO GO SCOURGE NOT TRUKK NOT DRAGGON EITHER WAAAAAH but the fact is, he looks an awful lot like an old-fashioned iron. G1 Scourge is indeed a shellformer - about 1/3 of his 'boat' hull opens up and hangs on his back, but it's handled well, and the resulting 'wings' certainly do a lot for his robot mode, instead of being huge, unwieldy encumbrances like Thunderblast's hull, or randomly placed kibbles & bits like G1 Jazz's whole roof.
All Fear The Mighty Soapdish!!! Able To Contain Powerful Weapons That Not Only Clean Hands But Smell Nice Too!!!!!
He looks like an iron, but not convincingly enough. He looks more like a bar of soap that is used more on one end than the other.
Soapdish, Iron, half-used bar of soap, all I know is he's pretty cool in robot mode. Always felt his head was a bit large, though. Or is that is limbs being too small?