Kibble

Rhinox photographed from behind, showcasing the several large pieces of rhinoceros hanging loosely from his body.

Kibble is a feature of many Transformers, both in their toys and in their animation/comic designs. In its modern usage (see below for earlier meanings) it refers to pieces which have no clear purpose in one mode but are there only because they are part of another mode. In most cases, "kibble" is used to refer to pieces of the character's alternate mode which "hang" or stick out in their robot mode. Sometimes these pieces are there as a matter of aesthetics, and sometimes it's simply because there wasn't any place better to put the stuff.

Much less frequently, the word is used to refer to "robot parts" which are badly hidden in an altmode; This is most common in figures with aircraft altmodes, where whole limbs or compressed torsos were left exposed on the underside. In this case, the term undercarriage junk is more often used. During the Beast Wars era, the term was also applied to any figure with robot mode limbs hanging from underneath the animal mode shell.

Parts of one mode which are merely visible in other modes are not necessarily kibble. For example, an altmode part which is well-integrated into the robot's form—like the front of a car or truck that becomes a character's chest—is not kibble because it is an integral part of the robot's body, rather than being "tacked on".

When "kibble" entered the Transfan lexicon, it had a different meaning, and referred to a Transformer's accessories and detachable parts which had nowhere to go when not attached/worn/held. This meaning has almost, if not completely, disappeared from use, except perhaps in the context of "combiner kibble", parts used only by combined robots, generally hands and feet.

Examples of kibble

Penguins, after reaching a certain size, undergo a process that scientists have taken to calling "second-stage hatching".

Although it was most prominent during the Beast Era and the 2001 Robots in Disguise franchise, kibble has been a part of Transformers from the very beginning. G1 Prowl, for example, has car doors that stick out behind his shoulders. The doors have no purpose in robot mode. They are not part of his actual body; they are just there, serving as decoration, but otherwise pointless. Those doors are kibble. In the robot modes of the G1 Seeker toys, the jet's nosecone and tailfins are also kibble. The jet wings, despite being one of the Seekers' most prominent features, are kibble as well because they are not needed for the robot mode. In the old sense of the word, their fists can also be considered kibble since they are removed for jet mode yet do not store anywhere in said mode.

It really is two toys in one.

One of the most infamous examples of beast kibble on a robot mode is Big Convoy from Beast Wars Neo. Many of the Neo toys are kibble heavy, with "panels" of beast skin attached to the robot body by swiveling rods. This is also common in the Car Robots/Robots in Disguise line, most notably with the Autobot Brothers (Prowl, Side Burn, and X-Brawn).

For further information, see: Shellformer

Connotation

Prowl's car door "wings" are kibble, and so are his removable missiles and launchers.

Kibble is usually only brought up when it is being used derisively. Indeed, kibble often has a negative impact on a toy. It can restrict movement by getting in the way, it can make a toy unbalanced if it is too concentrated in one part of the body such as a "backpack", and it can simply make the robot look like a purely humanoid robot that has car or animal parts stuck to it, rather than being a robot composed of car or animal parts.

However, kibble serves an important purpose in Transformer design, often giving characters distinctive or interesting silhouettes. As mentioned above, the airplane wings on the Seekers' backs, as well as the doors on Prowl, are among their most memorable features. They look "cool" even if they are not integrated into the robot body. Thus, kibble is not an intrinsically bad thing. Most Transformers have it, and it may even be seen as an integral part of some characters' designs. Actually, if all kibble was removed from most Transformers, they would pretty much look like stick figures.

Some kibble can also serve a purpose in the fiction even if it has no purpose on the toy. For example Animated Wreck-Gar's backpack. On the toy it's just most of his garbage truck mode folded up on his back. However, on the show it holds a phenomenal amount of junk that Wreck-Gar can pull out and use, often for comedic effect.

Other meanings / development of term

"Combiner kibble." These pieces have nowhere to go while Superion is broken up into his smaller components.

The word "kibble" was first applied to Transformers in February 1996, when Lizard coined the term "combiner kibble" in a post to the newsgroup alt.toys.transformers. At that time, and for the next two years, the word kibble was used mainly to refer to detachable parts or accessories. It seems to have acquired its modern meaning sometime in 1998. A more detailed discussion follows:

In Google's archive of ATT, there are no recorded uses of the word "kibble" until the year 1996. In that year it was used only in reference to detachable parts and/or accessories, usually (but not always) in reference to pieces needed for combiners to combine properly, such as Scramble City style feet, heads and fists. The very first instance of the word comes from a post by Lizard which is missing from the archive, but appears quoted in other posts:

Now, if only there was a convenient place to store "Combiner Kibble" - all the hands, feet, chestplates, etc, that go into making a combiner... (Quoted text in <3122E99A.19BB@texas.net>, Feb 1996)

Said Lizard when reflecting on this ten years later, "The word comes from, of course, pet food — I guess I felt the plethora of small pieces of Transformers detritus strongly resembled the little bits of cat food batted all over the kitchen." Lizard also used the word to refer to G1 Megatron's accessories in his BotCon 1996 report. Three other fans referred to "combiner kibble" in the first half of 1996 after Lizard's use of the term, all of them either placing it in quotes or adding an emoticon, which emphasizes the newness of the term. Later in the year the word shows up about a dozen more times, always in reference to combiner pieces or other detachable parts.

The first archived use of the word kibble to refer to something other than detachable parts is a January 1997 review of Claw Jaw, by Dave Richter. "In beast mode, he looks great from head on, but the abdomen (made out of robot legs and jointed squid kibble) doesn't look too solid if viewed from the side." (<32F023AC.397A@virginia.edu>, 29 Jan 1997) In March, Dave made a more explicitly modern use of the word in response to another fan. This post serves reasonably well as a definition:

IMO, toys should look cool from any angle. You should be able to turn a BW or any figure around have it look as cool as it does in the front. The rear should not be a place for a toy designer to throw any excess pieces on the figure that are not needed in robot mode. There are much more better designs than that.

I don't know, you've got to put the animal kibble somewhere. This is standard TF fare; look at all the T-rex [sic] bitz Grimlock has hanging off his back. BW has alot of junk hanging off the back of many of it's entries, but it doesn't overbalance them, so what does it matter? (<33237FCB.656E@virginia.edu>, 9 Mar 1997)

Still, through 1997 the "detachable parts" sense was more heavily used, with six uses to the modern meaning's three. In the previous year, 1996, the word was used to refer to detachable parts 16 times. In 1998 Dave Van Domelen began to use the word regularly in his posted toy reviews. He used it in both senses, but more often in the modern one. Overall, the word appeared in ATT 21 distinct times in 1998, with 13 of those being the new/current meaning. In 1999, usage exploded, with virtually all instances of the word being in its modern usage.

The original "detachable parts" meaning has essentially become archaic and all but unknown, most likely due to the toyline itself largely abandoning that form of construction. Indeed, it is very unusual for a modern Transformers toy not to integrate or at least try to store all of its parts in all modes (even if it's just a 5 mm post to stick the weapon into). With regards to combiner kibble, combiner teams themselves became less common for a long period and either had no kibble (e.g. Rail Racer and Bruticus) or gave their kibble an extra function when the team was separated (e.g. the Maximus teams and Combiner Wars toys use their combiner kibble as weapons, while the Micromaster teams can combine their kibble into separate vehicles)-it's still kibble, but it's kibble with play value!

By November 1999, the meaning was well enough entrenched in ATT that Straight-Edge gave this definition, from which the meaning has not drifted at all in the years since:

It means pieces of the alternate mode (Beast mode, vehicle mode) being not only visible, but actually hanging off the robot body. IE the Doors hanging off of Prowl's shoulders, and the Crab Legs/Claws on Rampage's robot mode. They are not part of an anthropomorphic robot, hence they are kibble. (<19991109002603.08548.00002231@ng-fg1.aol.com>, 9 Nov 1999)

It can't be determined from the limited breadth of the Usenet archive how the word "kibble" shifted its meaning, but it seems reasonable to guess that the earliest uses in the modern sense were simply an extension of the idea of "parts that stick on". Kibble, as we discuss it today, is just that—parts that are "stuck on".

"Faux-parts"

Please ignore the roof. Please.

There is a related phenomenon with no generally accepted name, in which a toy's robot mode has obvious elements of its alternate mode showing (usually in the chest area), which are not in fact part of its alt mode. This typically happens when the toy is based on an existing design with prominent elements of its alternate mode present in robot mode, but due to budget, size or other reasons, the transformation could not be designed to reflect the existing design accordingly.

The first and most famous toy to pull this trick was 1988's Powermaster Optimus Prime. As the first new Optimus Prime toy since the original, it had an entire fake truck-chest to make sure that the figure matched Optimus's already-classic appearance, while the real truck parts wound up on the toy's back. Many subsequent Optimus Prime toys have employed—and continue to employ to this day—similar tricks in order to ensure the character maintains his iconic windshield "pecs" and "grill" abs, regardless of where the actual truck parts wind up. In recent years, The Transformers: Masterpiece toyline has taken this practice to an extreme new level, painstakingly designing figures loaded with faux-parts in order to replicate the appearance of the characters in the original animated series as closely as possible.

Faux-parts were fairly rare for the franchise's first two decades of life, but beginning with the first live-action movie and Transformers Animated in 2007, they have become increasingly more common, as it has become standard practice for Transformers characters to be designed for animation and film first, and for toys to then be created based on those designs, rather than vice versa. The extreme complexity of the live-action movie designs often force design shortcuts, particularly on smaller, simpler figures (witness 2007 Legends-class Jazz, pictured at right, whose car-bumper chest winds up on his roof in vehicle mode) while the cartoonish designs of Animated and 2015's Robots in Disguise often depict details and body-parts deforming in ways that it's impossible for a toy to replicate.

In fiction

• In IDW's More than Meets the Eye #24, Brainstorm refers to an Ammonite's chest turret as "part of some secondary anatomy", a clear indication for an alt mode.
• In "Little Victories", Rung admits that he was forced to wear a false wheel by the Functionist Council to "reassure" the population as to what kind of altmode he had when his true altmode was actually an immobile and unidentifiable object.
• In the Functionist Universe of "The Custom-Made Now" some transformers would add "conspicuous kibble" to their robot mode, such as a cockpit or microscope, to try to pass themselves off as members of a higher class.
• The Monoformer Demus had such a strong aversion to his alternate mode that he had his kibble surgically removed.

Notes

• When asked about terms like "kibble" and "faux-parts" and the concepts they refer to in the Q&A session for March 2010, Hasbro confirmed using "many of the same terms that the fans do"—effectively, the names fans came up with provide Hasbro with easy ways to refer to these concepts when they come up as "desired or undesired results" during the design process.