Springer

Springer is the 1986 line's action hero: a triple-changer who converts to a Cybertronian armoured car and a helicopter, physically enormous, casually brave, and never without a dry line. "I've got better things to do tonight than die" is his introduction at the Battle of Autobot City, and it sets the register. He is among the first Autobots into that fight, helps Arcee shift the city into its fortress configuration, and hauls out an oversized artillery piece to shell Devastator.

Underneath the swagger the writing keeps testing whether he can carry responsibility, and it does not always let him win. In "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 2" a dying Rodimus Prime prepares to hand him the Matrix, the first of two times he is named as successor and neither comes to pass. In Part 3 the garbage-disposal machine on Goo 8739-B takes him apart entirely and the Junkions have to rebuild him. He is the one who tells the others to give Rodimus room to think, then loses his temper completely when Rodimus scrambles his own circuitry: "Get up, you... you moron!"

Season three uses him as the field officer who does the physical work. He lowers Cybertron's new power core into place by helicopter, climbs the Dweller to tear its casing open and free Wreck-Gar, and is drained for his trouble. In "Only Human" he is converted into a human body by Victor Drath, works his way into the gang driving his own stolen chassis, then deliberately opens fire on Autobot City to force its defences up before the bomb-laden Autobot shells can get inside, getting himself shot down to do it. His attachment to Arcee is never stated outright but the show keeps pointing at it.

A triple changer whose alternate modes combine, in Hasbro's phrasing, the attributes of a battle tank and a speed car plus a helicopter, backed by a massive physique and high strength, endurance and speed ratings. His legs give him extraordinary springing power, letting him cover ground in pogo-like leaps, and his retro thrusters let him move fast across a battlefield and clear tall structures; his name comes directly from this. He carries a laser that generates giant wind funnels, and his helicopter rotor folds into a light saber capable of cutting concrete. His stated weakness is skill: at 4 it is by far the lowest number on his spec, the trade for all that raw power. He is fast but not superhumanly so, and in the fiction his real failure mode is confidence collapsing under the weight of command.

• Arcee: never made explicit in the cartoon, but he volunteers to hunt the saboteur with her, helps her fortify Autobot City, and in "Dark Awakening" is conspicuously eager to avenge her in particular.
• Rodimus Prime: his commanding officer, twice named as his successor, and the one Autobot he will openly shout at when Rodimus does something reckless.
• Blurr: his usual monitor-duty partner on Cybertron, and the pair sent to bring Sandstorm in during "Fight or Flee".
• The Wreckers (Marvel only): Impactor names him leader with his dying breath in "Target: 2006", a role the cartoon never acknowledges.

Marvel UK gave Springer the arc the cartoon never did, making him Impactor's chosen successor as leader of the Wreckers in "Target: 2006" and then putting that command under sustained pressure, with his self-doubt collapsing entirely when he faces Impactor's zombie in "Legion of the Lost!" before he recovers to volunteer for a suicide run in "Meltdown!". The Wreckers do not exist in the G1 cartoon, where he is simply a capable field officer under Rodimus Prime.

He survives the G1 cartoon intact, still serving on Cybertron through season three; the Wreckers leadership and its consequences belong to Marvel UK continuity, where he also survives.

• In the movie's first draft Springer was a muscular martial artist modelled on Arnold Schwarzenegger and not a triple changer at all, proposed instead as a jet-powered steamroller or a mobile missile launcher; the wisecracking persona came from a dropped human character, Rusty Steel, with a handwritten script note reading "he is Rusty Steel".
• His name comes from his jumping ability, which, as tfwiki dryly notes, he barely uses once he has a flying alt mode.
• Early runs of the 1986 toy had a die-cast metal chestplate painted yellow; later runs switched it to yellow plastic, and the 1991 European Classics reissue used the plastic version with the rubsign indent filled in.
• Like all the movie-created characters he has an earlier alternate model that fed the toy design and the Marvel comics; it appears in animation for the whole of "Only Human" and gives him built-in neutron plasma pulsators and shoulder capture beams.
• GiG's Italian release swapped his name with Sandstorm's between the packaging and the instructions, so Italian packaging calls him Ghibli while the ads and the dub call him Bora, and nobody can now establish which was intended.

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.

• Springer's leadership of the Wreckers is Marvel UK material with no cartoon equivalent; the cartoon never uses the team at all.
• The bio's signature pogo-jumping ability is essentially absent from the cartoon, which prefers his helicopter mode.
• Italian G1 sources contradict each other on his name, with packaging saying Ghibli and the dub and advertising saying Bora.
• He is twice designated Rodimus Prime's successor to the Matrix and never actually receives it.