Wasp

This article is about the ill-destined wasp robot from Transformers Animated. For the ill-destined wasp robot from the Beast Era, see Waspinator.

Wasp is an Autobot from the Transformers Animated continuity family. After a freak mutation, he took the name Waspinator.

Wasp and Bee. Obvious, with hindsight.

Wasp is a lot like Bumblebee...physically, at least. Built from the same chassis and sharing many of the same specifications and subroutines, the two Autobots attended boot camp together. Wasp's pompous, smarmy personality leaves something to be desired, but he had a lot going for him as a soldier, being highly skilled in the use of his stingers and knowing just how to toe the line with the drill sergeant. In a better life, he might have been Cybertron Elite Guard commander material.

Might have.

These days, though, Wasp is a broken bot, mentally unstable and on the run from the Autobots who have branded him a traitor. What little remains of his mind is focused on just one goal...destroying Bumblebee, the bot who ruined his life!

“	You were always mean to me and Bumblebee. You may not be a traitor...but you were never a good bot.	”
—Bulkhead tells Wasp off, "Where Is Thy Sting?"

Fiction

Animated cartoon

Voice actor: Tom Kenny (English), Jaron Löwenberg (German)

This section covers fiction that is ongoing. It will be added to as the story progresses. If it isn't current, you can help by updating it.

Wasp was a cadet in the same group as Bumblebee, Bulkhead, Ironhide and Longarm. Right away, Wasp took a dislike to Bumblebee, insulting him out of the blue as the yellow bot mused to himself about his future in the Elite Guard. He also dubbed Bulkhead a "mudflap", much to the amusement of his fellow cadets. The loud-mouthed drill sergeant Sentinel Minor took an immediate liking to "Wasp", as he dubbed him. Wasp and Ironhide quickly became close friends, often competing in little tests of strength, usually involving Wasp hitting or stinging Ironhide while the latter was in armor mode.

After Bumblebee "bumbled" several times, leading to many transform-ups for the whole group, Wasp and Ironhide decided to take matters into their own hands, unscrewing Bumblebee's lower legs and leaving them out of reach even before they dumped the rest of him in a locker.

Unbeknownst to Wasp, however, the reason for Bumblebee's foul-ups was that he was trying to out a traitor in the group—and had pegged Wasp as the likely culprit after seeing him walk out of a hangar in which someone had contacted Megatron. (Plus, let's face it, he was a complete jerk. And Decepticons are jerks, right?) At Longarm's prompting, Bumblebee eventually found evidence incriminating Wasp as a spy. Wasp was stripped of his Autobot insignia and wheeled away, protesting his innocence and swearing revenge on Bumblebee.

Wasp was once a 'Bot...

Many years later, Wasp escaped from Autobot custody and apparently eluded the now-Sentinel Prime by jumping through a space bridge. What was left of Wasp hid beneath the bridge as Sentinel left, buzzing and twittering to himself, still swearing revenge on "Bumblebot". In reality, however, the innocent bot—broken mentally by his years of imprisonment—had been set up with evidence planted by "Longarm", who had also arranged Wasp's "escape" to divert suspicion from himself. Autoboot Camp

Needless to say, when the truth was revealed to Bumblebee by his old "friend", Longarm Prime (aka the Decepticon Shockwave), he took it pretty hard. A Bridge Too Close, Part II

Bee-st Wars!

Wasp headed straight for the Autobots' base on Earth, with Sentinel Prime and Jazz in pursuit. Waiting until Bumblebee was left alone on monitor duty (and actually playing Ninja Gladiator instead), he struck during a power outage, knocking Bumbleebee cold and switching color schemes, helmets and even speech synthesizers with his rival. When Bumblebee came to, the others had returned and had him prisoner, with the disguised Wasp at their side. Despite Bumblebee's muffled cries, the Autobots fell for Wasp's ruse, forcing Bumblebee to flee into the night. Wasp stayed behind as the others tracked Bumblebee down, allowing him to try beating Bumblebee's video game and to search through Bumblebee's personal files.

When the others returned, joined by Sentinel, Jazz, Jetfire and Jetstorm, Wasp was able to recount several of Bumblebee's adventures which were logged in his files to keep the Autobots confused as to which bot was which. Unfortunately for Wasp, Bulkhead proposed the two battle against each other in in Ninja Gladiator, so that Bumblebee's video game skills would be readily apparent and the traitor revealed. Before their video game could begin, Wasp panicked and attacked Bumblebee, holding him hostage so he could make his escape. Wasp left Bumblebee with one final indignity, turning off the electronic paintjob he'd installed in Bee and stealing his helmet back...tricking Bulkhead into pummeling the real Bumblebee while Wasp fled. Where Is Thy Sting?

Plot details for Predacons Rising follow. Spoilers have expired, you may remove this tag

The Autobots continued to pursue an erratic Wasp, though for different reasons: Sentinel Prime was still commanding the Elite Guard to bring him in on suspicion of treason, while Optimus and Bumblebee just want to help him (or at least keep him from damaging himself and bystanders during his crazed flight). Bumblebee tries once again to convince Wasp that he is now known to be innocent and was set up by Longarm, but Wasp refuses to listen. During the chase, Wasp is suddenly abducted by Swoop, who carries him to Dinobot Island. Wasp soon finds himself in Meltdown's old underground lab going ga-ga over Blackarachnia. The spiderbot uses her feminine wiles and familiar-sounding sob stories of Autobot betrayal to win Wasp's trust, and she convinces him to undergo an organic power augmentation procedure by impressing him with the ferocity of her own beast mode (while shielding him from seeing the disfigured mutant corpses left behind from her prior experiments). Wasp enters one transwarp chamber, a real organic wasp is put into another, and out comes.... Waspinator, three times larger than before, with energy "stings" and a heavily processed voice. When he is finally tracked down by Bumblebee, who apologizes to him, he decides that while "Wasp" forgives his former accuser, "Waspinator" prefers violent revenge. But before Waspinator can deliver the final blow, he overhears Blackarachnia admitting to the Autobots that she only views her new "friend" as another experimental attempt to cure her own organic infection. Irate at yet another betrayal, Waspinator now starts attacking everybody—and if that wasn't scary enough, his transwarp energy becomes unstable. Just as he reaches critical mass, Blackarachnia spins one of her energy webs around the two of them: he explodes, but the transwarp energy also teleports them halfway around the world, to an African jungle. There, Waspinator slowly begins to piece himself back together—because he "hazz planzzz!" Predacons Rising

Toys

Finally Blackarachnia has a pal...and by "pal", we mean "guinea pig".

Transformers Animated

• Waspinator (Deluxe class, 2009)

Despite his cartoon origins, Waspinator is not a redeco or retooling of Bumblebee. Part of the sixth wave of Animated Deluxe-class toys, Waspinator transforms from a techno-organic wasp into a techno-organic, four-armed, winged robot that resembles his Beast Wars namesake, only far freakier-looking. In both modes, a lever on the thorax flaps his wings back and forth.

Notes

• A wasp and a bee, sharing the same mold? How preposterous!

• Wasp's time in prison seems to have shattered his mind and transformed him into a character akin to Waspinator of Beast Wars fame. Both of these bots have mishap sprung upon them, but this character's misfortune is in a more serious vein than slapstick violence. The role of whipping boy is another's.

• The small, vestigial arms present on the Deluxe Waspinator toy's robot mode torso have their origin in an early design concept for Lockdown; the bounty hunter robot's character model was subsequently altered to make his appearance less monstrous, but Derrick Wyatt loved the concept of the vestigial arms enough to incorporate them instead into Waspinator's design.

• The Deluxe Waspinator toy's packaging states that he is able to survive being blown to pieces, which harks back to the original's propensity for continually getting blasted to bits and yet surviving and coming back seemingly unscathed each time.