Slag (Transformers)
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Slag (Scories in Canada, Tricex in Italy) is the Triceratops Dinobot.
Contents |
[edit] Transformers: Generation 1 (1985)
| Transformers character | |
 |
|
| Slag | |
|---|---|
| Allegiance | Autobot |
| Sub-Group | Dinobots Dynobots Lightning Strike Coalition |
| Function | Flame Thrower |
| Motto | "I have no need for friends, even less for enemies." |
| Alternate mode | Mechanical Triceratops Cybertronian Tank Triceratops |
| Series | Transformers: Generation 1 Transformers: Generation 2 |
| Voice actors: | Neil Ross (English) |
Slag is very tough, strong and possesses impressive firepower. In dinosaur mode, Slag can spew from his mouth a bolt of 3,000 degrees Celsius flame up to 80 feet (25 m). He possesses enormous strength and can shatter a brick building with a single blow from his armored head. His horns can also shoot high powered lasers. In Autobot mode he carries a high-energy laser rifle, an energo sword and a rocket pod.
Slag's biggest weakness is his over-aggressive behavior, which can cause problems with his relationships with other Autobots. He is also noticed for being the only Dinobot who would dare argue with the leader Grimlock over his commands (ironically, he is usually seen as the group's second in command). He joined the Autobots in the cartoon and comics in their first year, but didn't have a toy until 1985. The other members of the Dinobots are Sludge, Snarl, Swoop and their leader, Grimlock.
[edit] Animated series
Slag was created by Wheeljack and Ratchet on Earth in 1984. He was created along with Grimlock and Sludge as the original three Dinobots. It has not been explained why he or the other dinobots were able to be fitted with personalities which can only be found on Cybertron from Vector Sigma. Apearantly there is a difference between the brain and personalities in Transformers. Their brains are simple, yet still it is the personalities that make them sentient. It is evident that addition of personalities or "sparks" and its origin was after the fact, and was hoped that this inconsistancy would be overlooked.
At first they rampaged through the Ark and Optimus Prime ordered that the Dinobots be put offline permanently but when he and the other Autobots were captured by Megatron, Slag and the other Dinobots were given cerebral upgrades and thus were able to rescue Optimus and the other Autobots. Shortly after, Megatron convinced Slag and the Dinobots that Optimus and the Autobots were their enemies and the Dinobots kidnapped Optimus Prime. Wheeljack and Ratchet, with the help of Chip Chase, created Swoop and Snarl and the two new Dinobots were used to rescue Prime from Grimlock, Slag, and Sludge. During that battle, Optimus saved the original Dinobots' lives and they then realized that the Autobots were really their friends.
In 1985, an Island with real dinosaurs was found by Powerglide and Bumblebee. Optimus decided that Dinobot Island would be a good place for the Dinobots to train and practice their fighting skills, because the Ark was too small for the giant Dinobots; moreso, they were also placed there so they could learn how to co-exist together as one group. Megatron and the Decepticons found out about the island and wanted to harvest it for all the energy it produced. The Dinobots were thrown into a tar pit, but they all survived and used real Dinosaurs to help them attack Megatron.
Later, the Cybertronian Autobots and Decepticons began to malfunction because they ran out of Cybertronium, a crystalline substance only found on Cybertron. The Dinobots were made on Earth, so they were the only Transformers not affected and were sent to Cybertron to get some. When they got to Cybertron, they disappeared. Spike and Carly went to Cybertron to find them and found Swoop, who led them to the other Dinobots that were captured and working for Shockwave. Eventually they were freed and brought the Cybertronium back so that the Autobot's bodies could be restored.
In Transformers: The Movie, the Dinobots came in the shuttle with Optimus Prime towards the end of the attack on Autobot City. When Galvatron attacked, they went in the shuttle with Kup and Hot Rod. The shuttle was shot down on Quintessa and Kup and Hot Rod were captured by the Quintessons. On Quintessa, the Dinobots met Wheelie, who led them to Kup and Hot Rod and they were able to rescue the two Autobots from the Quintessons. They took a ship to the planet of Junk and were with the Autobots when they attacked Unicron. They helped with the attack on Unicron but were not very effective.
None of the Dinobots but Grimlock played large roles in the episodes following the movie. However, in the post-movie episode Call of the Primitives, Slag briefly took on the leadership role of the Dinobots, when it was presumed that Grimlock was destroyed.
[edit] Marvel Comics
Slag was among the crew of the Autobot ship the Ark when it crashed on Earth four million years ago. He was reformatted into the form resembling an Earth dinosaur by the ship's computer, Teletran-1 and sent to stop the Decepticon Shockwave in the Savage Land, where was left deactive in a tar pit. He was the first Dinobot to be reactivated by Ratchet to fight Megatron (who overpowered them) and liberate the Ark.
Following the assumed death of Swoop, the Dinobots went AWOL. Unknown to them, the stay in the tar pit had corroded their neural circuits and they reverted to animalistic savagery; the Autobots instigated a Dinobot Hunt and Slag, threatening cowboys in the badlands, was taken down by Jetfire. The Dinobots were rebuilt but spent a while in a coma, with Slag reliving the battle against Shockwave over and over (this particular storyline was exclusive to the UK series and may not fit into US continuity).
When they woke up, they got fed up of Optimus Prime's leadership and Slag joined his comrades in going AWOL once more, where they battled against both corrupt intelligence organisation Triple-I, the Decepticons and Galvatron. Following Optimus Prime's death, they returned to the Ark and supported Grimlock's regime, fighting the Predacons and also helping pursue Sky Lynx & the Spacehikers in order to force Blaster to surrender. He was deactivated by the Underbase-powered Starscream and eventually revived by Nucleon, arriving to help Unicron's assault on in 1991 (Transformers #75). In the final issue, he was one of the few remaining Autobots after the disastrous ambush on Klo.
In the Earthforce stories in the UK comic, it was revealed Slag has a "four million year itch" that, similar to Dinobot Hunt, causes him to lapse into primitive homicidal rages. The first time this happened, he wiped out the unit he was in and the other Dinobots covered it up. He also made several appearences in the future-set post-movie stories.
In the Generation 2 comics, he was one of several Autobots who had left Cybertron to find new wars to fight and ran into the Cybertronian Empire under Jhiaxus. He fought viciously against the Empire before finally being attacked and presumably killed by the Swarm in #12.
[edit] Dreamwave Productions
When civil war broke out on the planet Cybertron 8.7 million years ago between the Autobots and Deceptions, Slag joined the Autobot cause.
When Autobot leader Optimus Prime and Decepticon leader Megatron disappeared in an accident with the space bridge 7.4 million years ago, the Autobot and Decepticon forces broke up into factions. Slag joined up with the Lightning Strike Coalition under the command of Grimlock.
Grimlock lead L.S.C. members Ironhide, Kup, Slag, Sludge, Snarl, Swoop and Wheeljack in stealing a shipment of energon from Starscream and the Predacons at the Moon Alpha Space Port (Transformers: The War Within - The Dark Ages #1).
Ultra Magnus reunited the Autobot factions, with Grimlock working as one of his advisors. Slag became a member of the Dynobots, a special Autobot unit directly under Grimlock's command.
The Dynobots were assigned to security at the peace talks between the Autobots, Decepticons and Ultracons 6 million years ago. It was their actions which saved the participants from being blown up in a sneak attack by Starscream and his Predacons (Transformers: Age of Wrath #1).
After Optimus Prime and the crew of the Autobot ship the Ark were lost in space 4 million years ago, the Dynobots formed a search party to recover them. They tracked the Autobot ship to the planet Earth, where the Dynobots were reformatted into mechanical dinosaurs, and Slag gained his current form. The Dynobots were ambushed by the Insecticons, and left in stasis lock until they were discovered by Prime and his crew in the 1980's. Because of their new alternate forms they were renamed the Dinobots.
[edit] Devil's Due Comics
In 2004 Slag was among the Autobots under the leadership Optimus Prime who attempted to take back the planet Cybertron from the Decepticon tyrant Shockwave (Transformers). After an accident with the teleportational systems of the supercomputer Teletran-3, Slag found himself sent back in time and on the planet Earth. He was reformatted in the form of an Earth dinosaur with several other Autobots. A group of humans were able to bring the new Dinobots back to Cybertron and they helped overcome Shockwave (G.I. Joe vs. The Transformers II #4).
[edit] IDW Publishing
In the Transformers Spotlight issue on Shockwave, Grimlock and the 'Dynobots' (sporting Cybertronian designs much like their War Within designs) appear in a story that partially homages their Marvel G1 origin. Seeking payback for a humiliating defeat by Shockwave, Grimlock pursued him to prehistoric Earth (which Shockwave was seeding with Energon). In order to protect themselves against Energon surges, the Dynobots required alternate modes covered by a layer of synthetic flesh; Grimlock refused to transform into Ice Age mammals and made the decision to go with dinosaurian forms instead as he thought them more impressive. The Dynobots got the initial jump on Shockwave, as their attack was too illogical for him to understand, but he quickly recovered and blasted the entire team into stasis lock with their synthetic skins destroyed. Grimlock got the final laugh, as the Dynobot ship fired a pre-programmed blast into the surrounding volcanoes to unleash a flow of lava that engulfs all six Transformers until they were uncovered by human paleontologists in 2006.
[edit] Transformers: Generation 2
Slag was released recolored green and without his missile launcher for Generation Two. He continued to appear in his Generation 1 colors in the US comic, and appeared in his recolored form in the short lived UK Generation 2 comic series.
[edit] Toys
- Generation 1 Slag (1985)
- Knockoffs of this toy have appeared on the market. Some with extra horns and gold color.
- Generation 2 Slag
- A redeco of Generation 1 Slag, with the shoulder missile launcher left out.
- Smallest Transformers Sllag
- A third-party unlicnesed version of Slag, done to the scale of the Smallest Transformers line.
- TransformersCon Sllag (2007)
- The exclusive figure available at TransformersCon 2007, this redeco of Sllag is done in Generation 2 colors.
[edit] Transformers: Classics (2007)
Although no Slag appeared in the Transformers: Classics line, a triceratops named Knockdown appeared in the Transformers: Classics line as a Mini-Con, part of the Dinobots Mini-Con Team. It is believed that because Hasbro couldn't trademark the name Slag they used this as a substitute.
[edit] Other Uses of Slag in Transformers
The word slag was also used in the extended biography of original Megatron, where he was nicknamed "The Slag Maker".
The Decepticon Skullgrin carries a Slagmaker Carbine weapon.
Starting in Beast Wars, the word "slag" has come to be used as a common slang word in Transformers fiction, used in such expressions as: "Piece of slag," "What the slag?," "slaggin'," "Holy slag," "Eat slag," etc.. In the smelting process, pure metals are extracted from ores and the byproduct left behind when the pure molten metal is removed is called slag. This is not unprecedented as Starscream used the word "slag" in the original cartoon television episode The Immobilizer.
In the Beast Wars series, a character named Ramulus carried a Slagmaker Cannon.
The pirate ship commanded by the Decepticon Cannonball is called the Sea Slag.
