Special Teams

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

"Just suppose you take a deep breath, relax and tell me all about it."
"The universe is a very large place."

Special Teams is a collective name given to several combiner teams released after the Constructicons.

Most commonly associated with the term are the four "Scramble City"-style combiner teams that debuted in 1986:

• The Aerialbots
• The Combaticons
• The Protectobots
• The Stunticons

The name is also less commonly associated with the two "Scramble City"-style combiner teams that debuted in 1987:

• The Technobots
• The Terrorcons

Additionally, a member of a combiner team that didn't follow the "Scramble City" concept was also retroactively declared a member of a "Special Team":

• The Predacons

Use of the term

This puts an entirely new spin on the phrase "There's no 'I' in 'Team'".

The term "Special Teams" was heavily used in newspaper ads for the toys in 1986, and to a lesser degree in 1987. Whether the application of the term "Special Teams" to the Technobots and Terrorcons through those 1987 ads qualifies as an "official" use is questionable, since the ads were created in-house by retailers and presumably weren't approved by Hasbro, and might have therefore reflected outdated marketing terminology; after all, one of those ads referred to each individual member of the Technobots as a"Special Teams".

On the fiction side of things, it was employed predominantly in the Marvel UK Comics, first used in "The Special Teams Have Arrived" and continuing in "Second Generation!". Though the ad included with "The Special Teams Have Arrived" referred to the "Special Team Collection", later ads in the UK comics simply called them the "New Teams". The term was never used in the US Marvel Comic, but was used in Dreamwave's War Within: The Dark Ages series and in DK's Transformers: The Ultimate Guide.

In 2008, the second Universe toyline featured a five-pack named "Special Team Leaders", which featured tiny Legends Class figures representing of Hot Spot (named "Hot Zone" for trademark reasons), Scattershot (named "Scattorshot"), Razorclaw, Hun-Gurrr, and Silverbolt. While this solidified the previously questionable status of the Technobots and Terrorcons as "Special Teams", it marked the first time the term also encompassed a member of the Predacons.

In 2013, the term popped up in, of all things, a UK Prime comic.