Waspinator (BW)


 * Waspinator is a Predacon in the Beast Era portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.



Waspinator is the universe's whipping boy. If something goes wrong, it happens to him. If something blows up, he is usually at the center of the explosion (or at least close enough to it) and is therefore blasted into his components. He also doesn't talk very well (he hazz a problem with pronounzzing certain letterzz), so he's easy to make fun of. Some might consider it a "lisp", but really, he just likes the letter "Z" a bit too much. Megatron has classified the harebrained Predacon as expendable, much to Waspinator's dismay. This is especially true after the many Transmetal upgrades that enabled Megatron himself to take to the sky.

Waspinator's not stupid, and has caught on to his lot in life, and tries to avoid his fate as often as possible, but fate always finds him - in the forms of friend and foe, fleshlings, and even Mother Nature. Thankfully, Waspinator is almost supernaturally durable, and has survived the most devastating and humiliating of defeats. Whether this is a boon or a curse is anyone's guess.


 * Spanish name: Avispón
 * French name: Bourdon, Bizznator
 * Italian name: Punginator
 * Japanese name: Waspitar

Timelines: Dawn of Future's Past


While Megatron, his lieutenant, and another underling stole a Maximal relic, the Golden Disk, the Predacon who would later name himself Waspinator stole a ship along with an accomplice he nicknamed "Beakbot." The two had a contest to name the ship, but "Waspinator" lost, and thus the stolen ship was dubbed Darksyde. "Waspinator" believed Buzzerbot would have been a better name.

He's not alone on that one.

After escaping Cybertron, the Darksyde was intercepted by the Axalon and the Chromia 10, but after an intense space battle, only the Darksyde and the Axalon remained. Megatron ordered "Waspinator" to execute their planned transwarp jump, opening up a portal which both ships entered.

Beast Wars

 * Voice Actor: Scott McNeil (US), Kensō Katō (Japan)

Waspinator, part of Megatron's rogue band of Predacons, landed on an unknown planet with dangerous levels of unstable energon. To protect themselves from the energon, the Predacons took organic beast modes. In Waspinator's case, he now transformed into a large green wasp. The first conflict between the stranded Predacons and their Maximal pursuers came when the Maximal Cheetor stumbled across Waspinator.

When Rhinox had his personality program converted to that of a Predacon, he started surreptitiously taking out he various Predacons. He swung a cargo crate into Waspinator, giving him a concussion, and he (Waspy) flew around in a daze, claiming to be the Insecticon Shrapnel. This seems to have been reversed when later, Rattrap got annoyed at his yattering and shot him down.

The Ghost of Starscream travelled through time and possessed his body. It took a major explosion to dislodge Starscream's immortal spark from Waspinator's body.

After the aliens detonated the unstable energon using the second moon, Waspinator was the first to realize that this seemingly unknown planet is, in fact, Earth. Dinobot had made the same realization and stole into the Darksyde to retrieve both of Megatron's disks. In the process, Waspinator was crushed into a cube by the disks' security contraption.

After the destruction of the Darksyde at Tigerhawk's hands, Megatron sent Waspinator, Inferno and Quickstrike on an errand to find a new base, which was really nothing more than pointless busywork while Megatron went to do more important things. As the trio staked out an early human tribe that had take up residence in a series of caves, Waspinator finally had enough, and ripped off his Predacon symbol, declaring himself out of the Beast Wars. Inferno and Quickstrike promptly blasted him to pieces without a word.

His parts recovered by the tribe, Waspinator remained on Earth while all the other surviving Transformers set off for Cybertron, and led the tribe.

For a bit, at least.

Beast Machines


Sadly, for Waspinator, the Protohumans he had ruled over grew tired of his presence and forced him to leave the planet and return to Cybertron under his own power. There his spark was removed and used to power the Vehicon general, Thrust. He was discovered by Blackarachnia after she thought he was Silverbolt.

Waspinator remained in the "background" and let Thrust run the show, until Cheetor used an extractor to remove Waspinator's spark from the body shell.

After Cybertron's technorganic reformatting, Waspinator returned in his beast mode with Thrust's head, and the size of a standard wasp. He complained to Rattrap about how much he wanted glory and power, but Rattrap simply swatted him away.

Beast Wars: Transmetals (N64 & PSX)

 * Voice Actor: Scott McNeil (US), ??? (Japan)

In an alternate timeline, Transmetal Waspinator joins his fellow Predacons in distributing various one-on-one beat downs to the Maximals.

Beast Wars

 * Waspinator (Deluxe, 1996/1997)
 * Japanese ID number: D-3
 * This mold was also used to make Buzz Saw and Dirgegun.




 * Waspinator (Deluxe Transmetal, 1998)
 * Japanese ID number: D-42


 * Waspinator (Deluxe, 1999)
 * This toy is a redeco of the first Waspinator toy. A "FoxKids!" sticker on the packaging promoted the cartoon, which was playing on Fox at the time.


 * Waspinator (Deluxe Transmetal, 2000)
 * This toy is a redeco of the Transmetal Waspinator toy. A "FoxKids!" sticker on the packaging promoted the cartoon, which was playing on Fox at the time. The toy's new deco bears more than a passing resemblance to Buzz Saw.


 * Waspinator (Tenth Anniversary, 2006)
 * This toy is a slight redeco of the first Waspinator toy to make it closer to Waspinator's cartoon appearance.

Timelines

 * Darksyde Megatron and Darksyde Waspinator (Bagged set, 2006)
 * Available exclusively at the BotCon 2006 event itself, this two-pack represents Waspinator and Megatron before the events of Beast Wars. "Darksyde Waspinator" is a Basic-sized figure, originally used for Machine Wars Skywarp and Thundercracker, which autotransforms to robot mode from a Dassault Rafale fighter jet. (One can surmise, however, that it is in this case meant to represent a Cybertronic design.)
 * This mold was also used to make Beast Wars II Dirge, Robots in Disguise Skyfire, and Robot Masters Wing Stun.

Trivia

 * Waspinator was originally chosen by Hasbro to be one of the characters killed off for the second season of the Beast Wars cartoon to help make way for new characters (read: product). However, story editors Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio convinced them to spare Waspinator on the grounds of his popularity with the online fan-base, so Terrorsaur and Scorponok took the plunge instead.


 * Waspinator was originally slated to appear in the very first Beast Wars video game, and even had a character model built. However, he was ultimately unused, and only appeared in footage taken from the Beast Wars cartoon.


 * Waspinator appears to be the inspiration for Buzzer-Bot from the ''Playskool Go-Bots line.