Wow, why didn't I think of that? Like, yesterday...?

"I’d like to see him as a large communications van, with the cassette bots as motorcycles hauled in the back, but the birds as drones. Frenzy as a v-twin cruiser and Ravage as a sleek sport bike would be cool."

But hey, I can't say I don't agree.  

 

I'd go with communications or surveillance van, but I did think of a way to get his minions to fit in a way there can be as many as needed.

So in the most watered down description, cassette tapes are just rectangles. In Dark of the Moon, Laseebeak turned into a flatscreen tv at one point. So I'd have Soundwave's minions all turn into all the computer screens that go into the back of surveillance vans, and they can just jump out the back door in vehicle mode.

And even if you still want Soundwave to be a tape player, the War for Cybertron games did just have be a van and a giant boom box thing, so that kind of works.

 

phone/MP3 player and Ravage/Laserbeak/etc are microSD cards that pop out

That way the "eject" line still works and they still go completely inside.

 

Either a stealth drone or space satellite.

 

soundwave should transform into a gun since megatron can't anymore. megatron can be a tape deck.

 

Ford Excursion.

 

He's worked pretty well as a van in a few lines - Animated, WFC/FOC, Cyberverse.

 

A Scion xB.

 

Fun fact, that would have been Classics Soundwave.

 

And there is even an awesome custom of it. (Don’t have a link to it, unfortunately, but it’s in Radicons somewhere.)

 

I know, and I’m still cheese’d we didn’t get him.

 

What do you think the cassettes would have transformed into?

 

Okay, hear me out- HEADMASTER/ Human
Think about it, paranoia was is a classic part of the g1 transformers zeitgeist, hence why the villains turned into mundane objects one could reasonably hold (in addition to planes). What else induces paranoia such as a literal alien invader in human form? This allows soundwave to infiltrate spaces without needing to mass shift, and possibly interact with modernized minions, And any number of transtectors allow him to scale with decepticons/ carry his minions.
That said, the TR Toy is kinda mediocre, so here's my pitch.
His transtector is a mobile sound stage:

It's self propelled, transformable, thematically appropriate, and gives him enough mass to scale with jets and tanks. This also allows the screen to form Soundwave's iconic chest window, while giving him something large enough to carry around his minions. So far, the only solid idea I have for them is ratbat being made from his speakers, while the other guys turn into vehicles for the human scaled soundwave headmaster.

 

Luggage?

 

A radar tank ?

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Soundwave should be a stealth jet (Preferably a B2 or U2) that drops his cassettes from high altitudes like HALO jumpers. I'd personally have Rumble and Frenzy as separate motorcycle minions and the other three as "bombs," but whatever works. Just let him fly and be able to collect information from high up.

 

perfect for soundwave.

 

Lol that’ll likely be my next ride, after 20+ years of minivan prison. It’ll be so nice to get back to a manual transmission.

I don’t think it really fits the character of Soundwave, though. Yeah, it’s a blue box, but not really suited to his function.

 

A stealth bomber.

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