Playback (G1)

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

"I, for one, welcome our new Decepticon masters."

'Playback is a communications specialist. He's not really one for fighting, so when Decepticons show up he tends to roll over. Or get killed.

Fiction

The Transformers cartoon

Voice actor: Laurie Faso (English), ??? (Japanese)

Playback was in charge of the Paradron communications tower when Cyclonus and Scourge came to use the facility to contact Galvatron. Though he protested that the pair weren't allowed to be there, Scourge kicked him across the room, embedding him helplessly in a monitor.

After the Decepticons took control of the planet, Playback was given the job of guarding his imprisoned fellows. Autobot reinforcements from off-planet attacked the prison, blowing up the guard tower he was in. The explosion expelled him and he fell to the ground below. Fight or Flee

Marvel The Transformers comics

Playback appeared exclusively in the UK portion of the Marvel Comics continuity.

I LIVE! I HUNGER!

Playback was an Autobot prisoner of war on Cybertron. He was released, along with Hosehead and Horsepower, to be hunted by Thunderwing as part of a Decepticon High Council test to see if the hunter was fit to become leader of the Decepticons. Playback was the first of the three Autobots to die, left to rust on a beach, which attracted the attention of the Autobot detective Nightbeat. While his noisy partner Siren chased after Hosehead and Horsepower, Nightbeat investigated Playback's body, determining that the dead Autobot was a Decepticon prisoner of war.

Further investigation was interrupted when Siren and Hosehead returned with Thunderwing in tow. Nightbeat's Headmaster unit Muzzle linked up with Playback's corpse, frightening the Decepticon enough for the Autobots to destroy Playback's fuel tanks, sending a burning Thunderwing into the sea. The Big Shutdown!

Notes

• Playback as a name for the Paradron communicator came decades later in the voluminous pages of Ask Vector Prime, retroactively declaring him one and the same as the robot slain by Thunderwing.
• The "Fight or Flee" script denotes this character as "COMMUNICATION AUTOBOT (PRIMATIVE [sic] BLASTER)", although his lines are only attributed to "ROBOT". As you can see, he didn't end up resembling Blaster very much.
• 8 The script also does not specifically call the communication Autobot out as later standing guard over his fellow Paradronians; that scene was only scripted as featuring "generic Decepticon guards, which are much more R2D2 than Transformer". That tidbit explains the strange little robot who stands next to the communication Autobot in the tower, although not why the Autobot was animated as being there in the first place...
• Unlike the other Autobots on Paradron, he doesn't seem to wear a faction symbol. That must really save time when siding with invading oppressive forces.
• His fate when the planet exploded is unknown. He may have been able to evacuate, but he was never seen again.
• When pressed for information on the comics version, Dreadwind said Playback was "a Cybertronian Autobot, another of the cassette ones, I think."
• As the title of the story in which Playback appears is an obvious homage to the classic detective novel The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, writer Simon Furman most likely took Playback's name from the title of a different Chandler novel, Playback.

External links

• Transformers #244 Letters Page on Transfans.co.uk