Sunstreaker

Sunstreaker is the Autobot nobody wants to share a patrol with. A yellow Lamborghini Countach LP500S with an exposed rear-mounted engine, he is convinced to the core that he is better looking and better in a fight than anyone else on the roster, and he says so constantly. His Hasbro tech spec calls him a complete egotist who is contemptuous of the other Autobot cars, his twin Sideswipe included, and states plainly that his inability to work as part of a team reduces his value to the army. He is not, however, a coward or a fool: he is a front-line warrior whose polymer-steel torso armour shrugs off artillery fire, and Optimus Prime keeps him because he is effective.

The cartoon gave him far less to do than his reputation suggests. He is present from the Ark's awakening onward, but rarely drives an episode. His clearest moments are comic ones: in "The Autobot Run" he transforms while announcing that he can see his own true beauty emerging, and in "The Core" he leads the patrol that stumbles on the Decepticons' drilling operation, tag-teaming Devastator with an invisible Mirage and a grappling hook. In "Dinobot Island, Part 2" he and Hound hold a time warp open so a band of displaced barbarians can be sent back.

The Marvel comic is where his nastiness reads as genuinely dangerous. In UK material he is a former gladiator whom Megatron nearly killed in the Games, and a member of the Magnificent Six, whose careless joke about a bombed museum turns a town of neutrals against the unit and gets them all captured and tortured. In the US book his usefulness ends early: Shockwave dismantles his body as a demonstration of power.

Robot mode carries a shoulder-mounted, laser-guided ground-to-air missile launcher powerful enough to bring down a Decepticon jet at long range, plus an electron-pulse gun firing rapid bursts of highly energised electrons; his upper torso uses a tough polymer-steel skin that makes him unusually resistant to artillery fire, and he is skilled in essentially all forms of combat. The limits are behavioural rather than mechanical: the tech spec identifies his ego and his refusal to function as part of a team as the weakness that diminishes his overall value, and he is unwilling to slow down or help comrades who cannot keep up. He is also reluctant to risk his own finish, and in Marvel's "...Perchance to Dream" he abandons a thrashed Jazz rather than have his paintwork ruined.

• Sideswipe: his twin brother and the only Autobot he genuinely gets on with, though even that relationship is strained by his constant one-upmanship.
• Optimus Prime: tolerates him purely for his battlefield value, since Sunstreaker offers nothing in the way of morale or teamwork.
• Mirage: an effective field pairing in "The Core", where Mirage's invisibility and Sunstreaker's aggression complement each other.
• Megatron: in Marvel UK's "State Games" he was a gladiator beaten near to death by Megatron and saved only by Optimus Prime's intervention.

The cartoon Sunstreaker is a mostly harmless background vain guy who rarely affects an episode, while Marvel builds him a real history as a gladiator, a member of the Magnificent Six and a self-serving soldier who once ran out on Jazz to protect his paint. Marvel also disposes of him early, having Shockwave destroy his body as a show of force, whereas the cartoon simply keeps him standing around.

In the cartoon he survives the Earth-based war and is still active by 2005, though he is written out along with the rest of the 1984 cast after The Transformers: The Movie. In Marvel he is wrecked by Shockwave and strung up in the Ark's ceiling, eventually repaired, then badly damaged again during the fight that interrupts the Blaster/Grimlock duel in "Totaled!" and returned to stasis.

• Early Transformers material, including page 17 of the cartoon show bible and a 1984 Marvel Age article, calls Sideswipe's brother "Spinout" or "Spin-Out" rather than Sunstreaker.
• The twins' moulds were swapped late in development: the yellow character was originally to use the Diaclone New Countach LP500S mould that became Sideswipe. The swap left permanent artefacts, including Sideswipe being credited with a jet pack that is really Sunstreaker's exposed engine, and Sunstreaker's red shoulder stickers inherited from an intended red toy.
• When Hasbro launched the line in continental Europe through Milton Bradley in 1985, the Sunstreaker toy was packaged in Sideswipe's box, complete with Sideswipe's instructions and sticker sheet for an entirely different sculpt.
• Sunstreaker was not sold at retail in Japan, appearing only in a special versus set with Skids and Buzzsaw; the Japanese dub nonetheless kept him and Sideswipe as brothers, which led some Japanese fans to treat the three Lamborghini characters as triplets.
• In 2006 former Dreamwave staffer Matt Moylan claimed writers Adam Patyk and James McDonough had written Sunstreaker as gay; both writers publicly denied it.

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 toy bio and the Marvel comic present him as genuinely cold-blooded and near-sociopathic, while the cartoon plays his vanity as harmless comedy.
• In the movie era the cartoon places him simultaneously on Optimus Prime's Moonbase crew and among Ultra Magnus's troops at Autobot City on Earth.
• A Marvel flashback in "Club Con!" puts him on Cybertron detecting the Underbase centuries earlier, which contradicts his established presence on Earth.