Butch Witwicky (G1)
| This article is about the little-known Witwicky son. For his evil mirror-universe counterpart, see Butch Witwicky (SG){{#switch:{{#sub:Butch Witwicky (SG)|-1}}|!=|.=|?=|.}} For a list of other meanings, see Butch (disambiguation). |
- Butch Witwicky is a human from the Forest Rescue Mission portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Butch Witwicky is the young son of Sparkplug Witwicky. He is a friend to Autobots and forests everywhere. His hobbies include fishing and helping Hound play pranks on Megatron.
Fiction
[edit]Forest Rescue Mission
[edit]Optimus Prime and the Autobots decided to take a vacation with their friends Sparkplug and his son Butch. Optimus Prime had a hunch that the Decepticons might be up to something so he sent Hound to investigate. Hound discovered that Megatron had chosen this forest to build a Decepticon factory. In the ensuing battle, Megatron attempted to kidnap Sparkplug and Butch in a plan to get the Autobots to surrender. But it turns out he was only chasing holograms projected by Hound!
After the day was won, Butch thanked the Autobots for putting the forest back to normal. Forest Rescue Mission
Behind the scenes
[edit]"Butch" is a mostly abandoned name for Sparkplug's son.
At OTFCC 2004, Bob Budiansky stated that the story treatment he received from Hasbro used the name Spike. However, his copy of the treatment has the name crossed out and replaced with Buster in his own writing. Budiansky could not recall the details, but speculated at the convention that Hasbro had asked for the name to be changed. However, according to Jim Shooter, who claims to have created the name "Spike", the change to "Buster" had been mandated by the cartoon producers because it sounded less aggressive.<ref>"The Secret Origin of the TRANSFORMERS – Part 2" post on Jim Shooter's blog</ref> The fact that they ended up using "Spike" in the cartoon anyway is, Jim says, "typical."<ref>Followup post by Shooter</ref>
The new name may have been Budiansky's choice, or may have been told to him by somebody at Hasbro. Nevertheless, the name was changed to "Buster" only for the comics series. In the cartoon and most other associated products, Sparkplug's son remained "Spike". The comic series would later see a second son called "Spike" be introduced because of the need to promote the Fortress Maximus toy, which came with "Spike" as a Headmaster unit.
What this implies for "Butch" is that it was probably a very, very, very early name for the character, used in the earliest draft of Shooter's treatment. The one lingering trace of this in the document itself is in its description of the Witwicky boy, which reads: "Spike, despite his name, isn't much like his father," a sentence that reads better if you imagine it used to say "Butch," but had "Spike" swapped in in a later revision. This opens up the possibility that Shooter could have been mistaken in his recollection, and that it was "Butch" that was rejected, leading to the creation of "Spike" for the cartoon, though that still wouldn't explain where "Buster" came from.
Whatever the case, presumably, this early draft must have gone out to some licensors for use in their products, though the only example of a licensed product which uses the name is the coloring book Forest Rescue Mission. Somewhat surprisingly, this book is published with a copyright of 1985. Most errors such as name mistakes and off-model drawings are found in 1984 products which, presumably, were prepared while the names and models were still in development.