Hoist

Hoist is the Autobots' maintenance officer, and his tech spec puts him in the role of general practitioner to Ratchet's surgeon: "No exceptions!" reads the card, meaning every Autobot submits to his maintenance schedule. His motto is "You have to be rolling before you can be fighting." He is jovial, he enjoys the work, and he is good at it, from a full engine overhaul down to the smallest leaky gasket. Voice actor Michael Chain gave him a cultured, faintly British delivery that made him one of the more distinctive voices in the ensemble.

In practice the cartoon uses him as the good-natured one who gets dragged into other people's messes. He is Grapple's closest friend and spends his off-hours playing Watson to Grapple's troubled artist, which is how he ends up co-building the unauthorised solar tower in "The Master Builders" and being sealed inside it by Devastator. In "A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court" he and Warpath are thrown back to sixth-century England with Spike, stranded with no way home and no means of refuelling, and have to fight similarly displaced Decepticons using medieval-level technology.

His own showcase is "Hoist Goes Hollywood," in which he and several other Autobots are cast in a film production. The episode is a comedy of errors, complete with a director who repeatedly calls him "Moist," and it ends with Hoist helping Spike and Carly fake the destruction of the film reel to persuade the Decepticons to leave. More seriously, in "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1" he is one of the Autobots who travels to Cybertron aboard Omega Supreme, helps create the Aerialbots, and works with Ratchet to save Alpha Trion's life.

As a tow truck Hoist hauls 40,000 lbs. In robot mode the tech spec calls him very strong (rated 8) and arms him with heat-seeking missiles launched from wrist sockets. His signature equipment is the full spectrum multi-sensor mounted behind his head, which determines an object's composition, density, tensile strength and energy properties, making him a diagnostic specialist as much as a repairman. His skill rating of 9 is among the highest on the 1985 Autobot cards. Against that, his speed is rated 3 and his firepower only 6, and his function is support rather than combat; he is a maintenance officer sent into fights, not a warrior. In "A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court" he is defeated less by Decepticons than by having no way to refuel.

• Grapple, his closest friend, whose depressive artistic moods Hoist works to lift; the tech-spec-level pairing is Watson to Grapple's troubled artist.
• Ratchet, the Autobots' chief surgeon to Hoist's family doctor; the two work together on Alpha Trion in "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1."
• Warpath, his partner in the medieval time-displacement story, a mismatch of loud gunner and mild-mannered mechanic.
• The Autobot ranks generally, all of whom are required to report to him for routine check-ups whether they want to or not.

Marvel drops the British accent, the comedy and the Grapple friendship almost entirely, using Hoist as a field medic and scout, most memorably in "The Mission" where he falls into a snow-covered mineshaft in Alaska and then has to drag a brain-damaged Jazz to safety while the Constructicons hunt them. The cartoon's Hoist is a genial ensemble player; the comics' Hoist is a working soldier.

Hoist survives the 1986 movie period without an on-screen death in the US cartoon and, like Grapple and Tracks, effectively disappears after season two once his toy was out of production. In Marvel continuity he is among the Autobots wiped out by the Underbase-powered Starscream in New York in "Dark Star!"

• The toy is a retool of 1984's Trailbreaker with a new head and an orange towing rig replacing Trailbreaker's canopy; both originate as the Diaclone "4WD Hi-Lux Wrecker-type."
• The Diaclone versions came in red or blue; the green-and-orange scheme everyone knows was created specifically for Transformers.
• Some Mexican releases used Trailbreaker's original head mould, cast in green plastic rather than Hoist's own head.
• His preliminary name during development was Winch.
• The mould's spring-loaded wrist launchers were significantly weakened for all US releases, as with most 1985 Autobot cars.
• The 1997 Machine Wars Hoist is an entirely unrelated mould, a redeco of Machine Wars Hubcap, and oddly its colours are based on Trailbreaker rather than Hoist.

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.

• The cultured British-sounding voice is purely a cartoon invention; nothing in the tech spec or the Marvel comics supports it.
• Marvel has Hoist stored as a brainwave pattern on a crystal aboard the Ark and reactivated in 1984, an origin the cartoon never acknowledges.
• The tech spec makes maintenance his whole function, while both cartoon and comics regularly deploy him as a combat-capable field Autobot with a strength rating of 8.