Hi,I have a question ,why Overkill and Slugfest not feature in Transformers Gen 1 Headmasters serial while Buzzsaw ,Lazerbeak and Ravage make a return in Headmasters after absent in season 3 us edition . Is that a waste this 2 guy not feature in Headmasters serial ? Thanks.
Sorry. I thought we were talking about Headmasters, not Rebirths 1-3. Overkill and Slugfest appeared in Call if The Primatives.
I can't say for sure, but my guess is that they weren't on the shelves at the time or Takara just wasn't (or rather, the writers just weren't) interested. There's a lot of characters who didn't appear in the G1 cartoon, or appeared for a second in said cartoon. The same applies to the Headmasters.
IDK but it just dawned on me that the only character that they could remold Gnaw into is possibility Kremzek.
When they were making the cartoon, the writers and animators were basically dictated to by Hasbro. 'Starscream's Ghost' was originally going to feature Astrotrain as a main character, but on Hasbro's orders they changed it to Octane. Likewise, the Protectobots originally didn't feature in any Season Two scripts (because Hasbro were slow in providing the necessary information to Sunbow), but were eventually crowbarred in to a couple of episodes at the last minute. Given that Slugfest and Overkill don't have any lines in 'Call of the Primitives' (and that they only appear in a single hi-then-bye scene before vanishing), my guess is that they weren't in the original script, but Hasbro insisted they make a brief cameo, just for the sake of giving them a quick appearance. When you think about it, the later cassettes were the oddities of the G1 line, considering that they were still being made available (and new ones introduced) even after the Blaster and Soundwave toys had long been discontinued. My guess is that they were figures designed by Takara especially for the Japanese market (where the Blaster and Soundwave molds were available pretty much continuously), with no Hasbro input at all. I'd postulate that they were released by Hasbro in Western markets almost grudgingly, as a quick money-spinner and simply because the moulds were available. It's perhaps telling that Slugfest and Overkill were the only 1986 figures released in the West NOT to feature some kind of special gimmick - unlike all the other Transformers released that year, they weren't Headmasters, Targetmasters, clones, combiners or multi-changers, didn't shoot sparks or have pull-back-and-go motors. As far as I'm aware none of the later cassettes appeared in the comics either [except for the briefest of non-speaking appearances by Raindance and Grandslam, who were shown in their cassette modes only]. As such, I'd wager that Hasbro just simply weren't interested in pushing them, preferring instead to concentrate their marketing on the figures that they themselves had a hand in, rather than these Takara solo efforts.
