Blaster

This spotlight is on Blaster, the Autobot counterpart to the popular Decepticon Soundwave! Similar to Soundwave, Blaster transformed into a stereo cassette player. Blaster definitely felt like an Autobot with his bright red, yellow, and gray color scheme. His transformation was pretty simple. You simply unfold the speakers to form the legs, flip out the arms, slide out the fists and elbows, and flip up the head. In the beginning, Blaster wasn't marketed with cassette forces of his own like Soundwave. Blaster eventually had some cassette warriors released during year three of the original Transformers toy line. The first four cassettes included two robots (Rewind and Eject) and two animals (Steeljaw, the lion, and Ramhorn, the rhino). Blaster was a great figure and a great addition to the Autobot forces.

The only problem with Blaster was his scale. The figure transformed into a decent size radio, but his robot mode ended up being massive. In Blaster's original toy commercial, two children had Optimus Prime and Blaster figures battling Soundwave, and Blaster was double the size of Prime. However, in the animated series, they are the same height. Go figure. If you want to get your hands on Blaster, Hasbro recently reissued the figure with some of his cassettes as part of this year's Comic-Con.