Grapple

Grapple is the Autobot architect, and his tech spec motto tells you everything about the tension in the character: "Beauty is in everything except war." On Cybertron his buildings were considered works of art. On Earth his ideas are limited by the war effort, and he takes it badly. The profile card says plainly that he takes great pride in his work and is prone to severe depression when his creations are destroyed in battle, which on a 1985 toy card is an unusually specific piece of characterisation.

That frustration is the engine of his one real spotlight, "The Master Builders." Grapple has designed a solar tower capable of powering the Autobots indefinitely and has even built a model of it. Optimus Prime refuses to authorise construction, reasoning that the Decepticons would simply take it. Grapple, stung, goes off to sulk and runs straight into the Constructicons, to whom he explains his entire brilliant rejected idea. They volunteer to help. Megatron, of course, takes over the project, and once the tower is complete Devastator seals Grapple and his friend Hoist inside it. Prime's objection turns out to have been correct in every particular, and the other Autobots have to come and pull them out.

Elsewhere he is a background figure with flashes of competence. He is captured in "Prime Target" by Lord Chumley and made to hold up a boulder as bait for Optimus Prime. In "Masquerade" he fights alongside Hoist and Inferno against Breakdown and Wildrider on a stretch of highway. His lament in "Auto-Berserk," that he wants to build something just once that does not get trashed, is the cleanest summary of the character anyone wrote.

In crane mode Grapple can lift and place a 35-ton object with precision, making him the Autobots' construction specialist. In robot mode he carries a high-temperature arc-welder rifle and can launch rockets up to 4.5 miles from wrist sockets. He is rated strength 8, intelligence 8 and skill 9, but speed only 3, and his endurance rating of 4 is the weakest number on his card. The tech spec names his limits directly: he is prone to breakdown in vehicle mode, and his artistic temperament leaves him moody and unreliable. His judgement is also a liability. In "The Master Builders" his wounded pride leads him to hand a strategically dangerous design straight to the Constructicons.

• Hoist, his closest friend and the Autobot who talks him down when his artistic temperament turns black; they build the solar tower together and are captured together.
• Optimus Prime, whose refusal to authorise the solar tower Grapple takes as a personal slight, and whose reasoning turns out to be exactly right.
• The Constructicons, briefly and disastrously his collaborators, professional peers on the wrong side of the war.
• Inferno, with whom he shares a toy mould and appears alongside in the field, another vehicle Autobot of the same working-machinery class.

Marvel makes Grapple a builder of genuine consequence, constructing Omega Supreme on his own and even standing in as field medic when Ratchet vanishes, whereas the cartoon uses him mainly as a wounded artist whose one great project is hijacked. The comics also give him a strange origin, his mind stored on a memory crystal aboard the Ark and downloaded into a new body four million years later.

Grapple has no on-screen death in the cartoon; he simply disappears after season two along with most of the 1985 truck-based Autobots, his toy having been discontinued. In Marvel continuity he is badly wounded by Scourge in "Target 2006," repaired, and last seen exchanging fire with Wildrider during the moon battle in "Totaled!" with his fate left unresolved.

• The toy shares its mould with Inferno, both originating as Diaclone Mitsubishi Fuso truck mecha; the crane version became Grapple and the fire engine version became Inferno and later Artfire.
• The Grapple version of the mould was reused for Hauler, sold in some markets as Load Hauler, an ex-Constructicon crane character who looks all but identical to him.
• His forearm spring-loaded launchers, which fire either his fists or silver rockets, were severely weakened for the US release on safety grounds and removed entirely from the 2004 Commemorative Series reissue.
• Takara never included Grapple in their Transformers Collection reissue line; his only classic-era reissue came from Hasbro's 2004 Commemorative Series, which also changed his eyes from yellow to blue.
• His endurance rating of 4 is one of the lowest given to any 1985 Autobot car, matching the tech spec's note that he breaks down in vehicle mode.
• In the Marvel comics he is credited with single-handedly building Omega Supreme, a feat the cartoon never gives him.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• A robot resembling Grapple appears in the Autobot City battle in the 1986 movie, but the design is close enough to a background reuse that his presence is not securely established.
• The Marvel memory-crystal origin, which he shares with Hoist, Tracks, Smokescreen and Skids, has no equivalent in the cartoon and raises the question of whether an original Grapple still exists elsewhere.
• In the Marvel Books Big Looker storybook "Insecticon Attack" he is drawn using Hook's character model for most of the story, correct only in close-ups.