Tankor (BM)
| The name or term "Tankor" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Tankor (disambiguation). |
- Tankor is a Vehicon in the Beast Machines portion of the Generation 1 /Beast Era continuity family.
Tankor SMAAAAAASHHH! Tankor PULLLVERIZZZZEEE! Tankor SLAG BEAST BOTS! Tankor is the brute force part of Megatron's first trio of Vehicon generals, and commander of the powerful Tank Drones. He's slow, simple-minded and immensely powerful. Lovably dim, his limited intelligence can sometimes be a drawback; he can easily be confused, misled, or even turned against Megatron, though temporarily. However, this is balanced out by his natural state of blind frustration and destuctive rage, which makes getting him to listen to any cajoling a less than simple task.
Tankor is in actuality a programmed shell personality given life by the spark of the Maximal Rhinox.
Outside of normal space and time, an alternate-universe incarnation of Tankor serves the will of Unicron.
Fiction
Animated continuity
Beast Machines
Voice actor: Paul Dobson, Richard Newman (as Rhinox, later himself) (US), Daiki Nakamura (Japan)
Unfortunately for the Maximals, as they attempted to return home to Cybertron, Megatron broke free from his restraints and fell out of transwarp space, thus they arrived home to hostile fire from an already conquered planet. Upon landing, Rhinox and the others fled an army of tank drones, but Megatron's transformation virus and canisters of "devolution gas" whipped them good. (Were they not men?). Those Maximals that had Transmetal or Transmetal 2 forms were reverted to the first beast mode in their datatrax, but managed to escape. Rhinox and Silverbolt, who had no other forms to revert to, entered stasis lock and captured. Rhinox's spark was forcibly removed and stored in a canister in Megatron's citadel.
When Megatron found that he needed underlings to properly control his Vehicon armies in battle, he used Rhinox's spark to power his tank general Tankor. Figuring that if the Maximal's discovered their new enemy had once been their close friend it would make them less willing to fight him. Rhinox's spark/consciousness remained conscious inside Tankor but could not act.
True to Megatron's expectations, the Maximals did attempt to reach Tankor's spark and discovering Rhinox there, they endeavored to wake his spark. They succeeded, but the Rhinox they got was not the Rhinox they expected. Tainted and embittered by his time inside Tankor, Rhinox rejected the Maximals and embraced Megatron's plan for a peaceful (because everyone else was dead) technologically pure Cybertron, only with himself at its head instead of Megatron.
(This new Tankor-Rhinox acts much like the temporary Predacon-ized version of Rhinox seen in Beast Wars. It has thus been speculated that it may be similarly the result of awakening Rhinox's spark without shutting down the Tankor shell program. This is supported "in-show" by the imagery of Rhinox and Tankor fused at the waist into one spark, apparently struggling and in pain. The BM story editors however opined that they believed Rhinox was totally free when he chose this path, though that seems less in character.)
Tankor-Rhinox immediately began plotting against both Megatron and the Maximals. He caught and reprogrammed one of Megatron's diagnostic drones, forcing it to work for him. He found the Oracle and, using the diagnostic drone, retrieved the Key to Vector Sigma from within. He then faked his own death and attempted to manipulate Megatron into firing the key on a planetary scale which would have killed all the organics, the Maximals and Megatron, leaving Rhinox to rule a pure mechanical world. Tankor's manipulations failed when he tried to attack Megatron, and a provision against doing so, hard-wired into his programming, shut him down. Due to Tankor's manipulations however, Primal opened the Plasma Energy Chamber and Megatron fired the Key and in the ensuing clash of energies Tankor-Rhinox's body was destroyed and his spark joined the Matrix.
Primal meets Rhinox's spark one last time within the Matrix, where Rhinox seems to express regret over his recent actions.
Toys
Beast Machines
- Tankor (Mega, 1999)
- Part of the first wave of Beast Machines product, Tankor transforms into a large Cybertronic tank. Aside from a spring-loaded missile launcher, he also features a light-piped "scanner eye" on his turret, and twin sawblades that spin via gear-wheel system when his tank mode is pushed along. In robot mode, all of these gimmicks are retained, though the "scanner eye" is this time in his robot head.
- Despite all of these features, the toy and its transformation scheme bear very little resemblance to the show's CG model.
- This toy was redecoed into Universe Tankor. The toy's likeness was also used for the non-toy Beast Era incarnation of Quake and his drones.
- Tankor (Happy Meal Toy, 2000)
- One of nine Beast Mahcines Happy Meal toys from McDonald's resturants, Tankor transforms into a small Cybertronic tank based a bit more on the show's CGI model.
- This mold was later used as a kids' meal prize for the Australian Red Rooster resturant chain. Aside from the original coloration, this mold was also cast in the colors of the other three molds used by Red Rooster: Jetstorm, Megatron and Rattrap.
- Tankor (Basic, 2005)
- Japanese ID number: BR-06
- Released in the second wave of the Japanese Toys "R" Us exclusive Beast Wars Returns line (the Japanese name for Beast Machines), Tankor is a redeco of the Basic Tank Drone, transforming into a Cybertronic four-tracked tank. Pressing the spark crystal on his cannon fires a spring-loaded "energy blast" missile. A gear-wheel system on the underside of his tank mode also activates this attack, while spinning his tank barrel in the process.
- It is highly (in fact, almost perfectly) show-accurate, although woefully out of scale with the other BM toys. Like the rest of the line, actually...
- This mold was also used to make Stockade.
