Predaking

Predaking is the fusion of the five Predacons: team leader Razorclaw, Divebomb, Headstrong, Rampage and Tantrum, the Decepticons' beast-form hunting unit, and he is the exception that proves how badly gestalt technology usually works. Where Devastator is reduced to a consensus of grunts and Menasor tears himself apart, the Predacons are united by a single shared appetite: the hunt. That common ground produces something no other Decepticon combiner achieves, a complete and coherent persona that keeps each component's physical abilities and personality intact rather than averaging them into stupidity.

The result is the most genuinely frightening weapon in the Decepticon arsenal. He is enormous, fantastically strong, and fights with animal instinct speed rather than the lumbering gait of his peers, carrying a laser sword and shoulder cannons. As a weapon he is without equal; as a warrior he is without restraint, and that lack of restraint is his actual flaw: Predaking hunts, and a hunter who will not disengage is a hunter who can be led.

His cartoon record is oddly poor for something so dangerous. He debuts in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 5" during the Decepticon-Quintesson alliance, trying to stop Blurr, Wheelie, Marissa Faireborn and Sky Lynx escaping Io with Metroplex's transformation cog, and is beaten by Sky Lynx. On the slave-mining world of Dredd he is far more effective, blocking the mine entrance with his laser sword and shrugging off Autobot fire while forcing them back, until Kup lures the monster Chaos out of the volcano and the resulting landslide buries him. In "Call of the Primitives" he combines only because Headstrong would rather stand and fight than die running, and Tornedron stasis-locks him anyway.

Colossal strength; his bio credits him with lifting a million tons without straining a circuit, combined with something no other combiner has: intact mental acuity and near-instinctive reaction speed, because all five Predacons share the hunting drive that forms his personality. He wields Razorclaw's sonic sword and beast-mode cannon, with Tantrum and Headstrong's back cannons becoming his feet and Divebomb's wings his own, giving him flight. Dreamwave adds a deflector energy field and foot-mounted cannons. His weaknesses are physical and behavioural rather than psychological: he is a large, exposed target who can be buried under terrain, as Kup arranges on Dredd, and he can be outmanoeuvred by faster opponents; Sky Lynx beats him on his own debut, and Megatron's fusion cannon knocks him unconscious in Marvel's "Gone But Not Forgotten". Energy-draining attacks such as Tornedron's put him straight into stasis lock. Above all, his refusal to break off a hunt can be used to steer him.

• Razorclaw - torso and head; supplies the sonic sword and beast-mode cannon
• Divebomb - arm; his wings become Predaking's wings
• Rampage - arm
• Headstrong - leg; his back-mounted cannon becomes a foot
• Tantrum - leg; his back-mounted cannon becomes a foot
• Note: Predaking's limbs are NOT interchangeable, unlike Scramble City combiners. The cartoon and comic model reverses Rampage and Divebomb relative to the original toy, a discrepancy the 2006 Titanium figure follows the animation on rather than the toy.

• Razorclaw: the Predacon leader and Predaking's torso; his hunter's discipline is what holds the merged personality together.
• Sky Lynx: his personal jinx, defeating him on his debut and surviving being buried under rock to drive him off again on Dredd.
• The Quintessons: a Japanese TV Magazine story page claims Predaking was built through Decepticon-Quintesson cooperation, which would make them his co-creators; the American series never says.
• Bruticus: the other Decepticon combiner whose components get along; Dreamwave stages a fight between them in which Predaking wins decisively.

Marvel uses Predaking far better than the cartoon does, and at a fraction of the size; he is stated to be 80 feet tall there, not the 200 metres his cartoon-era bio claims. His introduction in "Prey" is a genuine hunt: the Predacons stalk Optimus Prime, are defeated individually, then merge and run him down, and Predaking's role is explicitly to flush Prime into the open and wear him down so Megatron can take the kill. That makes him a tool of a larger scheme rather than a blunt instrument. His second Earth outing in "Gone But Not Forgotten" is a Shockwave plot to break Megatron's sanity: the Predacons wear fake Autobrands and ambush Megatron in the Florida swamps, exploiting his amnesia. Predaking does no better than his components and is knocked out by a fusion cannon blast from the deranged Megatron. Dreamwave takes a third route entirely, having the Predacons banished from Cybertron to the world Beest, where they degenerate into feral beasts until a deposed Megatron finds them and modifies them into a combiner, and there Predaking impales Bruticus on Headstrong's horn.

Predaking survives the American cartoon, buried under rock on Dredd and stasis-locked by Tornedron but still active among the Decepticons late in 2006. The Headmasters series keeps him around mainly as a punching bag for Fortress Maximus. The Japanese Zone continuity kills him: recruited as Violen Jygar's Beast General and re-armed, he fails to steal the Zodiac, and after watching King Poseidon and Trypticon die he tries to flee. Dai Atlas slices him in two from head to crotch.

• The Generation One Predaking is by far the largest of the traditional central-torso combiner toys, and unlike Scramble City figures such as Bruticus his arms and legs are not interchangeable.
• The cartoon never explains where the Predacons came from; they simply appear in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 5". A Japanese TV Magazine story page later claimed Predaking was a joint Decepticon-Quintesson creation, though whether the American writers intended that is unknown.
• The Predacons were released in both plastic and diecast-metal versions; Japan received only the plastic ones during the original run, and Hasbro never sold a giftset, making Predaking a longstanding collector's grail until the 2004 reissue.
• A Predaking Action Master was designed but never produced, intended as the rider of a transforming dirt bike. The bike survived the cancellation and was reworked as Action Master Axer's vehicle.
• The 2006 Titanium 3-inch Predaking swaps Rampage and Divebomb into each other's positions to match the cartoon and comic model rather than the original toy.

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.

• Height: his cartoon-era profile puts him at 200 metres, while Marvel Comics explicitly states 80 feet.
• Origin: the American cartoon never explains where the Predacons came from; a Japanese TV Magazine story page claims Decepticon-Quintesson co-creation; Dreamwave says they were exiles on Beest whose higher functions degraded until Megatron rebuilt them as a combiner.
• Limb placement: the original toy and the animation/comic model disagree on which arm Rampage and Divebomb occupy.
• Reputation versus record: he is billed as the deadliest weapon in the Decepticon arsenal, yet is beaten in nearly every cartoon appearance, most embarrassingly by Sky Lynx on his debut.