Needler (G1)

This article is about the Generation 1 Action Master partner. For the 2015 Robots in Disguise Decepticon, see Needler (RID).

Needler is a Decepticon Action Master partner from the toyline portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Needler is the green one...

Needler is the mechanoid partner to Bombshell, who uses his pincers and flamethrowers to destroy anything Bombshell doesn't mind-warp first.

Fiction

Dreamwave Generation One continuity

He's just friendly.

Bombshell used a type of cerebro-shell patterned on Needler. Infestation

This shell probably does not represent Needler him/itself. Needler's connection to cerebro-shell technology (if any) is unknown but can likely be attributed to Dreamwave's rampant use of Easter eggs.

Toys

The Transformers

• Bombshell with Needler (Action Master, 1991)

• Known designers: Andy Couzens (Hasbro), Takio Ejima (TakaraTomy)

Needler is a robotic scarab who was only sold with the Action Master version of Bombshell, available only in the European markets. He can plug into Bombshell's back, and pressing a trigger flips his head up and over Bombshell's, forming a battle mask of sorts.

• More information on Needler at TFU.info

Merchandise

Transformers Trading Card Game

• Raider Needler, Ground Force-Demolitions/Steelbite Incisor Mask (2019)
  • Wave 4: War for Cybertron: Siege II
  • Rarity: UT
  • Card Number: T34/T52
  • Stars: 7

Raider Needler, Ground Force-Demolitions is one of fifty-two double-sided character cards available in Wave 4 of the Transformers Trading Card Game, War for Cybertron: Siege II. As a Battle Master, Raider Needler, Ground Force-Demolitions begins the game in Bot Mode. Instead of being sent to the KO Area once his Health drops to zero, the card is flipped to the Upgrade side, becoming the Steelbite Incisor Mask, and equipped in the Weapons slot of another character on the player's side of the battlefield . In order to represent Needler's size as a Battle Master, the card is the size of a battle card, about half the size of a normal character card.

The card received original artwork, with line-art for both modes by Andrew Griffith.

ULTIMATES!

• Bombshell (ULTIMATES!, 2021)

Part of the first wave of Transformers ULTIMATES! from Super7, packed in with traditional partner Bombshell, Needler is an upscaled version of his original toy. He can be plugged into a socket on Bombshell's back.

Preorders for Bombshell (and the rest of Wave 1) opened on January 29 2021, and closed on February 28, with the toys purportedly shipping in winter of that year but actually arriving in May 2022.

Notes

• In Dreamwave's More than Meets the Eye profile series, every Action Master partner robot profiled was retroactively given the "Targetmaster" classification, though the partners to characters who had previous, non-Action Master toys were omitted from the books' lineup. However, the across-the-board application of the Targetmaster term for those that did appear makes a pretty clear inference that all of the Action Master partner-bots are Targetmasters... at least, as far as the Dreamwave universe is concerned.

Foreign names

• Italian: Gort