Wreck-Gar (G1)
Wreck-Gar is an Autobot-allied Junkion from the Generation 1 franchise.
Wreck-Gar is the leader of the Junkions, a tribe (or possibly race) of junk-robot Transformers who call the planet Junkion "home sweet home". Like all Junkions, Wreck-Gar's speech is a hodge-podge mish-mash of phrases taken from Earth broadcasting, especially television, which has become the focal point of Junkion culture. He is generally suspicious of strangers, but once he considers you a friend, he's a steadfast and selfless individual. He oversees his people's daily activities of "sorting" through their planet's collection of scrap, though what basis they use to sort the material has yet to be identified. He seems to have some sort of relationship with a Junkion lady named Nancy.
In battle, Wreck-Gar is easy to knock down, but near-impossible to keep down, thanks to the very unique physiology of the Junkions. He tends to lose pieces easily when he takes damage, but he can repair that damage with lightning speed, and it's possible that even if he's reduced to a pile of parts it's only a short time before he's back on his feet again swinging his axe. This rapid-healing ability reaches almost instantaneous speed on his home planet of Junk, or anywhere he can get his hands on scrap metal. Many would-be conquerors have mistaken the Junkions for harmless idiots. Most of them are currently scattered across the rusted surface of Junk.
French-Canadian name: Ferraille
Fiction
Animated continuity
Voice actors: Eric Idle, Tony Pope (US); Toshirō Ishii (Japan)
At first Wreck-Gar views the Autobots as thieves and enemies. Attacking without warning after Ultra Magnus' 'death', Wreck-Gar and his fellow Junkions soon learn that they were wrong. Wreck-Gar fights Springer for a while, before being taken down by Daniel Witwicky, with a steel bar to the back of the head.
Following their defeat and the arrival of Hot Rod, Kup, Wheelie and the Dinobots--and subsequent pacification with the Universal Greeting, Wreck-Gar has the Junkions rebuild Ultra Magnus, and dance with the Autobots to "Weird Al" Yankovic until they decide maybe they should protect Cybertron from Unicron after all.
After boogying down for an unspecified amount of time, the Junkions reveal their rather cruddy-looking ship to the Autobots and prepare to destroy Unicron, kill the Grand Poobah, and remove even the toughest stains.
Against Unicron, Wreck-Gar doesn't inflict much damage, really. Revealing the Junkions as mostly bluster, they fly around annoying Unicron until the ship is crushed by Unicron's hand.
Wreck-Gar survived as did Perceptor, appearing with the rest of Rodimus Prime's Autobot team. He took over from Ratchet as the team's main surgeon, after these events.
Marvel Comics continuity
Battle on the Junk Planet
Sticker Book When an Autobot Shuttle is forced to land on The Junk Planet for repairs, Blurr catches the attention of Wreck-Gar. Wreck-Gar is impressed by Blurr's powerful engine... and decides he wants it! He attacks the Autobots with a horde of Junkions, intent on hacking the still-sputtering engine from Blurr's body, and fights Springer in the process.
The misunderstanding comes to an end when Kup, an old hand at negotiating with natives, locates their missing shuttle and instead engages the Junkions in a barter session, trading weapons and energon. The Junkions wave as their new friends depart with all their parts intact.
Blackthorn Comics continuity
Dreamwave comics continuity
Wreck-Gar found the chassis of the near-dead Megatron floating in space, where it had been abandoned by Starscream while on a supply run. Wreck-Gar brought Megatron back on-line, and even salvaged several Air Warrior drone bodies from the surface of Junk for him so he could reclaim his position ad leader of the Decepticons. For his efforts, Megatron stabbed Wreck-Gar through the chest.
(Note: Dreamwave declared bankruptcy before many of its plot threads could be resolved. Due to the Junkions' rapid-repair, very-hard-to-kill physiology, it seems unlikely that Wreck-Gar was a fatality.)
Legends anthology
"Collect and Save" by Tim Waggoner
When the Recyclons arrived on Junk, intending to convert the planet into energon for their overseers the Harvest Lords of Sigrath, Wreck-Gar apprached the leader Salvage, and got two blaster bolts in the chest. After a near-instantaneous repair job, Wreck-Gar called out his fellows and swarmed the Recyclons, severely damaging them and forcing them to retreat to their ship the Reclamation and lift off.
Salvage returned to the planet's surface, leaving the Reclamation in orbit, in order to make peace with Wreck-Gar. But it was all a ruse; Salavge slapped a device on Wreck-Gar, a more powerful version of the Junkion leader's own decelerator laser, preventing him from attacking or calling his people while the orbiting Recyclons fired a beam from the Prime Processing Unit to convert the planet to energon from space. However, Wreck-Gar proved even stronger than Salvage expected, and he called the Junkions to fire a tractor beam at the Reclamation, sending it crashing into Junk seconds before the Prime Processing Unit activated, causing the ship to explode. Salvage himself lived only a few seconds more than his fellows, as the Junkions closed in on him immediately afterwards.
Toys
Generation 1
- Wreck-Gar (Autobot Hero, 1986)
- Japanese ID number: C-81
- Wreck-Gar's only toy transforms into a Cybertronic "junk" motorcycle, and is noteworthy for being one of the earliest uses of ball-and-socket joints in the Transformers toy line. The original toy commercial portrayed him as a Decepticon, presumably to keep with the theme of the movie and not spoil a surprise... even though the toy was always labelled and packaged as an Autobot.
- Unfortunately, two Wreck-Gar toys are completely incapable of riding one another, as seen in the movie.
- For nearly 20 years, Wreck-Gar was the only Junkion toy, until the creation of the e-Hobby exclusive Detritus.
Merchandise
A plastic "super deformed" mini-figurine of Wreck-Gar was created as part of the second wave of MyClone Transformers in Japan. These toys could be disassembled and their parts mixed-and-matched thanks to a generic base body. In Wreck-Gar's case, this is especially appropriate.
Trivia
- In Wreck-Gar's starring toy commercial, he is voiced by Frank Welker rather than Tony Pope.
External links
