| SLAUGHTERHOUSE
PROJECT 229.1
CLASSIFICATION: KITBASH
BASE FIGURE: HEROES OF CYBERTRON STARSCREAM
MATERIALS USED: HOBBY KNIFE, SUPER GLUE, SAFETY PIN, ACRYLIC PAINTS
FIRST APPEARANCE: "FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS" PART 3
"Very well, then. With your intellect, and
the strength of my Decepticons, we shall wipe the Autobots and the humans
off the map of the galaxy!"
Preamble: Slaughterhouse was one of the
Decepticon troops present on board the Quintesson cruiser when Galvatron
cemented his short-lived alliance with the Quintessons during "Five Faces
of Darkness" part 3. He shares a body type with more prominently-featured
Decepticon jets like Starscream, but he has distinctly different colors (actually
the color scheme for Combaticon leader Onslaught, hence the name I've assigned
to him). Back when the cartoon first aired, I used to dismiss character
appearances like this as animation mistakes. Lately, however, I've
come to celebrate these generic background characters, giving them individual
names and biographies and creating figurines in the likeness of these largely
unsung warriors. (There's just something strangely appealing about
owning a figurine of a Transformer in the "wrong" colors, and yet at the
same time, I know he's a perfectly valid and canonical character, albeit
an extremely obscure one. I think what's happening here, probably,
is that I've come to know the G1 cartoon so well that I find myself delving
deeper and deeper into obscure aspects of the show.)
This figure was the first of my ever-growing
collection of Heroes of Cybertron figurines repainted into generic
Decepticon jets. I'd originally submitted this idea as a possibility
for the CybCon 2003 convention exclusive toy; the plan was to repaint each
figure into a different representation of one of the background Decepticons
from the cartoon (at last count, there are over 27 of them) and assign individual
names and profiles to each of them. I even put together a packaging
concept as part of my presentation to the organizers, using Slaughterhouse
as my guinea pigatron. The decision was made to go in a different direction
for that year, but my interest in creating three-dimensional likenesses of
these obscure characters remained, so I went ahead with my plans and started
buying up extra HoC figurines. (A year after I finished this project,
though, the Slaughterhouse character was selected to appear in his Cybertronic
jet mode as one of the CybCon 2004
exclusives. He always said he was going to be a big star one day.)
Construction: Slaughterhouse wasn't carrying
weapons in his only animated appearance, so I took that to mean the
character doesn't use the arm-mounted cannons of his airborne brethren.
Removing his weapons left rather large peg-holes in the sides of his
arms, though, so I plugged the holes with bits of round scrap plastic.
(The unused weapons are currently adorning my Action Master version
of Starscream.)
I also put together a packaging concept as part
of my CybCon pitch. I dubbed the series Heroes of CybCon: the Skyraiders
Collection, putting together individual card art for Slaughterhouse (actually
a digitally-manipulated image of Heroes of Cybertron Starscream with the
arm guns edited out). I completely redesigned the back of the card,
placing emphasis on each character and his role in the show, including a
screen shot of the character in question (which would also help to validate
his existence for fans who weren't intimately familiar with the cartoon).
I also put together a rather hasty cross-sell featuring some of the
other background characters that would have been part of this
assortment.
Later, after I'd finished several more generic
Decepticons and had begun making physical modifications to them in many cases,
I realized that Slaughterhouse really needed to be able to perform a ceremonial
salute, as seen in his screen shot above. I didn't want to just permanently
glue his elbow in a new position, though, because I still wanted him to fit
in the custom packaging. I ended up building two moving joints for
the figure, one of them an elbow hinge and the other a rotating shoulder
joint, using the axle from a die-cast car and running it through the length
of the upper arm. His arm wasn't quite long enough to stretch across
the canopy and air intakes on his chest, though, so I also had to cut those
components off and trim them down from the inside, flattening his chest enough
that he could assume this pose more easily.
Comments: Interestingly enough, in
2004, a year after Slaughterhouse made his debut, two official Heroes
of Cybertron toys were created based on generic Decepticons from the
cartoon, available as exclusives for the Official Transformers Convention.
One of then was Sunstorm, the TOTCon 2004 preregistration exclusive,
which is based on the Takara toy of the same name (but isn't a particularly
accurate likeness of the character as seen in "More Than Meets the Eye" part
1). The other is a generic, light purple character called "Air Warrior,"
three of which were included in the TOTCon Heroes of Cybertron 6-pack.
(There weren't actually three purple generics in the show, but
they get points for trying, anyway.)
I wrote the biography for Slaughterhouse below,
as well as every other subsequent generic Decepticon jet character I've worked
on. I've tried to capture the general style of the original Hasbro
tech specs.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE
FUNCTION: DEMOLITIONS & SALVAGE
"You break it, I'll take it!"
Maintains storehouse of spare parts and
assorted junk for quick repairs. Greedy, stubborn...entire inventory
was exhausted by the Combaticons, now forbids any Decepticons from touching
his wares. Steals from Autobots, Junkions, or Earth scrapyards.
Loyal to Decepticon cause only as long as it furthers his personal
goals. Jet mode can reach speeds of Mach 3...armed with acid pellet
cannons. Can replace fists with welding guns. Effective in close
combat, but lack of long-range weaponry a hindrance.
STR: 9 INT: 7 SPD: 9 END: 8 RNK: 4 CRG: 7
FPW: 4 SKL: 8
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