Flobsters on Parade
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| "Flobsters on Parade" | ||||||
| Production company | Hasbro Studios | |||||
| Airdate | March 3, 2012 | |||||
| Writer | Brian Hohlfeld | |||||
| Director | Nathan Chew | |||||
| Animation studio | Atomic Cartoons | |||||
Chase, Blades and Boulder must battle a swarm of flying lobsters.
Synopsis
Cody Burns and Frankie Greene are attending the Lobster and Technology Festival. While Cody prefers the lobster dinner, Frankie is looking forward to the technology parade, in which she'll get to ride on her dad's float. Discussing which is better, they find Chief Burns and Doc Greene inflating a helium lobster balloon. Frankie scoffs at the fact that the Rescue Bots are taking part on the parade too, but at that moment a strong gust of wind causes the balloon's cable tubes to snap. One catches Doc Greene's leg, and as the balloon drifts away, he's taken with it. The others give chase, collecting Chase along the way, but even the Autobot is unable to save Doc Greene from being whisked away.
Back at the fire station, the other Rescue Bots and the rest of the Burns family get the alert and roll out. Doc Greene manages to catch on to a building and, following Chief Burns's suggestion, unties the rope from his ankle, freeing himself from the balloon. While Kade and Heatwave rescue the Doc from the building, Blades and Dani hook the balloon and bring it back down to earth. As the Doc thanks Kade, Heatwave makes a throat-clearing noise, and Chief Burns asks Cody to remind the bots that they're supposed to be pretending to be robots.
As Cody instructs the Rescue Bots again, he notices Heatwave is missing. Boulder is also distracted by a robin out the window, so Cody holds an impromptu game of "Simon Says" to help them get acting like robots. Heatwave picks that moment to appear, announcing he's not going to be in the parade because he hates acting like a robot and being climbed all over by kids. Thus when the rest of the Burns family arrives to leave for the parade, Heatwave fakes an engine problem. Kade's just happy not to have to deal with Heatwave, so the others head out without him. They arrive at the parade, where Doc Greene is filling balloons with his latest invention, floatium, which is a more controllable version of helium. The parade soon starts, with the Rescue Bots marching along behind the floats, though Boulder has to be shushed by Chase. Back at base, Heatwave watches the parade on TV while doing combat practices and is irritated by the reporter's comments about his paint choice and the fact that people don't miss him.
Back at the fairgrounds, a hungry fair-goer accidentally knocks the tank of floatium into the lobster tank and the lobsters inside immediately begin floating out of the tank. After the Rescue Bots return to the square, Cody points out the flobsters now filling the sky. While the Bots continue to pretend to be robots, despite a flobster having a close encounter with Blades's face, the humans investigate. Doc Greene quickly calculates it will take two days for the effects of the floatium to wear off, and heads back to the lab to work on a solution. Unfortunately the flobsters quickly turn hostile to the humans present. Coby formulates a plan, and Dani and Blades scoop up a bunch of the flobsters in a cage, before dropping the whole cage back into the lobster tank.
Cody takes control of the ComTab, and the Rescue Bots and their partners are soon responding to flobster-related emergency calls all over Griffin Rock. Boulder and Graham help Mayor Luskey after a flobster severs a nearby power cable tubess. Kade calls the station and attempts to be polite in talking to Heatwave. More flobsters trap Frankie in a phone booth, attracted to the starfish on the back of her jacket. She calls Cody for help, but luckily Heatwave is nearby and gets rid of the flobsters with his hose. As the others celebrate Frankie's rescue, Dani calls them back to the town square, where Doc Greene shows off the destabilizing compound he's created to remove the floatium from the water and flobsters. They can spray the compound directly on the flobsters, but there's only one batch and the flobsters are everywhere. Cody has the idea of using the giant lobster balloons to scare the flobsters and herd them back to the town square where Heatwave can spray them, ending the flobster menace.
The people of Griffin Rock enjoy their lobster lunches, while Blades finally gets the flobster joke, and Heatwave has kids climb all over him.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Humans |
|---|---|
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Quotes
"Simon did not authorize that last movement."
- —Chase wins the game of "Simon Says".
"What do human children put on their fingers, anyway? Last time I let one climb on me, I was sticky for days."
- —Heatwave does not approve of kiddy antics.
"Ah, at least it's not livestock again."
- —Charlie Burns on seeing the flobsters.
Notes
Animation and technical errors
Continuity errors
- The common form of helium isn't radioactive and thus does not have a half life. Also, to make a helium balloon neutrally buoyant, all you need to do is add an appropriate amount of weight or use a appropriate helium/air mix rather than pure helium, there's no need to invent a new gas.
- One should probably also not ask how floatium gives lobsters the ability to cut through tree branches and power cables with their claws.
Real-world references
- Doc Greene's tenuous grip on the courthouse roof before being rescued bears a suspicious resemblance to the same in the movie Back to the Future.
