Scrapmetal (race)

The name or term "Scrapmetal" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Scrapmetal (disambiguation).

The ants come marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah...

No one's quite sure where the Scrapmetal originally come from, or why they look like Transformers. What is known is that they're a dangerous scourge that swarm from planet to planet, devouring everything in their path, and now thousands of them have infested the abandoned Cybertron!

Individual Scrapmetal have only a base animal-level intelligence, and by Cybertron standards are small and weak, easily crushed. However, Scrapmetal are almost never witnessed as individuals, only in large swarms that can overwhelm robots far larger than they through sheer strength of numbers, no matter how many of their own dead they skitter over. They appear to follow the orders of a single (barely) sentient Scrapmetal, physically identical to his kin, but just bright enough to make the swarm really dangerous by giving them direction.

Fiction

Cybertron toy bios

Once, they were just a breed of mechanical vermin from Cybertron's lower levels. But the Unicron Singularity mutated them, and under the command of the power-hungry sentient Scrapmetal, they swarmed the surface of Cybertron!

Unicron Trilogy cartoon continuity

Cybertron cartoon

SWAAAAAAAAAARM!

The Transformers knew about Scrapmetal as a planet-hopping scourge, and Hot Shot was creeped out by the way they resembled small Transformers. Cybertron

The Scrapmetal were first sighted when the Cybertron Defense Team headed to Cybertron across the space bridge. Watching from the Autobots' base on Earth, Lori was creeped out by them, as they reminded her of spiders. Red Alert recognized them as Scrapmetal. Starscream

Despite unleashing their full (impressive) arsenals, the Defense Team were quickly overwhelmed by the creatures Starscream, prompting Optimus Prime to send Evac, Leobreaker and Override (who was carrying the Omega Lock) across the Space Bridge to assist them. Megatron and a horde of his underlings followed in pursuit, hoping to acquire the Lock and its three Cyber Planet Keys. United The Defense Team, meanwhile, drove off the first wave by themselves anyway. Red Alert believed they may have come from other planets the black hole had destroyed. Cybertron

The Scrapmetal regrouped and returned, badly injuring Crumplezone. Balance One of them subsequently attacked Megatron after his rebirth as a ghostly entity, only to have its shots-and itself-devoured by the shadowy mist surrounding his body. Darkness The Autobots would have to spend a while clearing the pests off God. Family

A red Scrapmetal husk was later rebuilt into a non-sentient drone that was piloted by Coby Hansen and used both in battle and in infiltration of enemy ships.

Cybertron comic

As the Scrapmetals swarmed over the abandoned Cybertron underneath the Unicron Singularity, several menaced the new arrival Skyfall before being destroyed by the corrupted Dark Scorponok. Other Scrapmetals were co-opted by Nemesis Prime and Ramjet in the service of Unicron himself. Balancing Act, Part 2

The Scrapmetals followed Ramjet into battle when he confronted Skyfall. Balancing Act, Part 3 The Coming Storm: Part 1 Later, Ramjet used the Scrapmetals to attack Primus's spark core chamber. Although Ramjet succeeded, the chamber's defender Downshift destroyed the Scrapmetals following Unicron's herald. Balancing Act, Part 4

Scrapmetals continued to infest Cybertron's infrastructure, prompting Over-Run to try and fix up Vector Sigma to aid him in understanding and repairing the planet. Revelations Part 2

Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity

The Praetorian tried to use the corrupted Reconfiguration Matrix to turn all of the robotic life in the Vega Sector into loyal Scrapmetal. He was stopped by the Multiforce. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/06/01

Waspscream continuity

In Primax 208.06 Zeta, Inferno was given command of the Scrapmetal Drones as one of Megatron's Vehicon Generals. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/08/16

Swindle's Spiel

Swindle, Swindle and Swindle had Scrapmetals among their Terrorcon drones for sale. Swindle's Spiel, 2015/10/05

Toys

Cybertron

File:Cybertron-toy ScrapmetalRed.JPG

Stop...

File:Cybertron-toy ScrapmetalYellow.JPG

...caution...

File:Bluescrapmetaltoy.jpg

...go! ...WAIT, IT'S NOT GREE..."gets run through"

• Scrapmetal / Ramble [sic] (Scout, 2005)
  • Japanese ID number: GD-13
  • Accessories: Blade, Cybertron Decepticon-style Cyber Key

Part of the "Scout"-class price-point, the Scrapmetal transforms into a four-legged "spider tank" with a rear-mounted cannon (see Notes). Inserting a Cyber Planet Key into the back end of the cannon swings out a removable clear-plastic sawblade-sword from the main chamber of the cannon. In robot mode, the fists can be covered with the tank-mode spikes or "pile drivers". It comes with a Decepticon-insignia Cybertron-style Cyber Planet Key. The toy can represent either the mindless drone or Scrapmetal himself, making it ideal for army-building.

In Japan, three different colors of Rumble were made available: red, blue and yellow, produced in equal numbers. For the Hasbro Cybertron line, at first only the red version was available with a few minor paint operation changes. The Hasbro release also has the Key Code sf2x printed on the back of its Key. Later, the yellow version (with all of the paint operations from the Japanese release) was sold in Cybertron as well, this one with the Key Code "s1j5". The two Hasbro releases, despite sporting the same name with no modifiers (such as prefixes or suffixes), came on individual cardbacks not only depicting the correct color, but also sporting individual product code numbers, thus arguably making them separate products rather than variants.

A slight retool and redeco of the toy is used for the Coby Sen'yō Rumble. For BotCon 2006, attendees who signed up for the custom-painting class received unpainted, unassembled red Scrapmetal, with their parts still on the manufacturing sprues (including the Coby head), to be made into Universe incarnations of Rumble and Inferno.

• More information on Scrapmetal at TFU.info

Notes

• Scrapmetal's alternate mode appears to be based on a mini crawler crane. The toy replaces the crane arm with a cannon, thus making it a "tank" rather than a crane. More importantly, the "legs" on actual mini crawler cranes are actually just stabilizers, whereas the crane in fact moves on treads. The toy turns them into actual legs, however.
• It is said that there was once a race of three insect-like transformers that had clone minions. Is it possible that the Scrapmetals are descendants of these 'bots?

Foreign names

• Japanese: Rumble (ランブル Ranburu)
• Hungarian: Fémroppantó ("Metal-cracker")
• Russian: Metalloed (Металлоед, "Metal-eater")