Raindance

Raindance is an Autobot Mini-Cassette from the Generation 1 continuity family.

Little known fact: His default mode is actually a pair of legs and this jet fighter just a cunning disguise.

Raindance is a daredevil photojournalist who'll risk anything to capture a great picture. Witty and likeable, he has seen thousands of battles and has thousands of war stories that he's more than happy to share. His lively and exciting narratives never fail to entertain his listeners.

He can combine with Grand Slam to form Slamdance.

Fiction

Marvel Comics continuity

Oh no, this is the whole Rumble blue and Frenzy red fiasco all over again!

Hundreds of years ago, a troop of Autobot astronomers on Cybertron detected the legendary Underbase making its way towards Earth. In order to alert their Autobot colleagues on that world, they encoded the information (along with several bonus features and "Making of the Underbase Legend" documentaries) onto two Mini-Cassette warriors, Raindance and Grand Slam. Their ship was damaged on the way, however, and the two Autobots crashed into the sea. The impact apparently left them insensate and mode-locked, for they never again demonstrated sentience or transforming capability.

The inert Autobots were found in their cassette modes by a band of 18th century pirates, who locked them away in a treasure chest just before a storm destroyed their ship, sinking it in the ocean. In the present era, Decepticon leaders on Cybertron stumbled across this long-lost information, and commanded Ratbat and his Decepticons of Earth to find the lost tapes. They moved their disguised desert island starship to the rough coordinates of the shipwreck, and opened a Club Con vacation resort for fleshlings to disguise their true purposes there. The Seacons successfully retrieved Raindance and Grand Slam from the treasure chest, despite a brief altercation with the Autobot known as Blaster. Club Con! Ratbat and his communications expert Soundwave were able to learn from the cassettes that the Underbase was set to pass by Earth in less than a week's time.

The cassettes were promptly forgotten about by all parties after this. The Flames of Boltax!

If you noticed a few glaring inconsistencies above, you're not alone. The Autobots of Cybertron thought Optimus Prime and his crew missing and presumed dead until 1986, and the idea of a warning being sent hundreds of years before it was relevant, becoming lost, and then ultimately found just in time to BE relevant defies plausibility.

Dreamwave Comics continuity

Merged as Slamdance, Raindance and Grand Slam served as a correspondent overseeing the Pax Cybertronia between the Autobots, Decepticons, and Ultracons. Engineered by Ultra Magnus and accepted by Shockwave and Ratbat as a means for pooling their dwindling energy resources, the Pax was to be an ending of the Dark Ages. Unfortunately, a bombing run followed by an all-out assault by Starscream and his Predacons ended all hopes of an easy truce, and the dramatic return of Megatron with his cloned Aerospace Extermination Squadron ended any ideas of truce at all. Slamdance avoided the termination sweeps only by falling deep underground. He eventually linked up with the resistance movement organizated by Blaster and Perceptor. War Within: The Age of Wrath

Toys

Generation 1

• Raindance and Grand Slam (Cassette 2-pack, 1988)
  • Accessories: 2 "Proton Missiles"

Raindance transforms from a blue microcassette into a Cybertronian hover plane. He has two 'proton missiles' to add to his plane mode. He was sold with Grand Slam, and he combines with him to form Slamdance.

• More information on Raindance at TFU.info

Notes

• Raindance's Dreamwave Profile artwork incorrectly shows Squawktalk's guns mounted on top of his jet form instead of his own missiles mounted correctly below. This was likely a mistake made due to those two being archenemies, toyetically. Not only is it possible to attach both sets of weapons at once, but Slamdance can easily accommodate them in addition to all of his own weapons, so if you happen to have extra cassette weapons, there's no reason not to make your Raindance Dreamwave-accurate. Besides, this error is just an extension of the proud tradition of Slamdance never having a published photograph with his weapons in their proper configuration.