Dinobot (G1)
| The name or term "Dinobot" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Dinobot (disambiguation). |
- The Dinobots are an Autobot subgroup from the Generation 1 continuity family. In some continuities, before they arrive on Earth, they are known as the Dynobots.
The Dinobots are a rowdy, arrogant, lowbrow, disobedient band of warriors that some Autobots would rather scrap than deal with. They're also one of the most devastatingly powerful and close-knit combat units in the Autobot army, being incredibly powerful in robot mode and taking alternate modes based on dinosaurs, the most powerful creatures to ever roam the Earth.
Most of them dislike Optimus Prime, so whether or not they follow the Autobot leader's orders depends on what those orders are. If it's to destroy stuff, they're down with that. If it's to help people, it kinda depends on what the weather is like.
The group's members are:
- Grimlock (the leader)
- Slag (the bad boy)
- Sludge (the dim one)
- Snarl (the quiet one)
- Swoop (the sensitive one)
In some universes, they occasionally gain extra members, who have included:
- Paddles (the "Pete Best" one)
- Grimmaster (the one-man band)
- Skar (the tragic motivating backstory)
In at least one universe, the Dinobots can combine to form a monstrous super-robot called the Beast. (Grimlock explicitly states that this is not the case in another universe, though he has been known to stretch the truth. Hopefully not here though.)
Fiction
Generation 1 cartoon continuity
The Transformers cartoon
The Dinobots were modeled after the dinosaur fossils that Ironhide found in the volcanic caves near the Ark. Grimlock, Slag, and Sludge were built first. S.O.S. Dinobots After some initial troubles, their performance pleased Optimus Prime enough that he had two more built, adding Snarl and Swoop to the ranks. War of the Dinobots
The Dinobots' role was simply to pulverize anyone or anything that was too strong for the Autobots to handle on their own. In the process, they frequently mouthed off, rebelled and started brawls inside of Autobot Headquarters (and the occasional dinosaur-shaped city).
At one point, the Dinobots became sick of only being used as the hammer of the Autobot army, so they deserted, saying that they would fight when they wanted to. However, the Dinobots were called in when the Autobots and the Decepticons began suffering from Cybertonium depletion. During the battle with the Constructicons, they were accidentally sent to Cybertron, where they briefly reduced Shockwave to the role of chew toy. Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 1 However, Shockwave altered the Dinobots' memory circuits and forced them to work in the Cybertonium Pit. Spike Witwicky and Carly managed to rescue them, and the Dinobots decided to follow Optimus Prime's orders... until such time that they decided not to do so. Desertion of the Dinobots, Part 2
During the Battle of Autobot City, the Dinobots were dispatched to defeat Devastator. Despite their incredible strength, Devastator manhandled them. During Galvatron's subsequent attack, Kup and Hot Rod literally had to drag them aboard the shuttle, which was shot down over Quintessa. The Dinobots managed to avoid being captured and met Wheelie, who helped them find Kup and Hot Rod. Later, the Dinobots literally kicked the butt of a god. The Transformers: The Movie
Marvel Comics continuity
Shortly after the crash, the Ark's computer detected Shockwave landing on the planet in the Antarctic land-out-of-time that would one day become known as the Savage Land. The Ark used the last of its capabilities to revive these five warriors and rebuild them to transform into the Savage Land's dominant lifeform: dinosaurs. The Last Stand They were then dispatched to deal with the Decepticon, where they sank to the bottom of a tar pit and remained dormant until Ratchet revived them in the 1980s. Repeat Performance!
Colorforms audiobooks continuity
The Dinobots, led by Snarl, arrived at Doctor Heath Blaisedale's solar plant in time to take part in a fight to defend the plant against the Decepticons. Unfortunately in their enthusiasm, as well as fighting off the Decepticons, they completely trashed the solar reactor which it had taken ten years for the doctor to construct. Sun Raid
The Beast Within
The Dinobots combine into the Beast to fight the Decepticons, but the Beast is so savage and kill-crazy that the Autobots have to kill it. The Beast Within
Dreamwave comics continuity
It was established that Grimlock once commanded a splinter faction of Autobots known as the Lightning Strike Coalition, which included the Dynobots. It was also established that following this, these five robots used the Cybertronian designation "Dynobots". The War Within: The Dark Ages
The Dynobots traveled to Earth separately from the rest of the Autobots. Grimlock emerged on his own, and the Ark Autobots found him battling the Insecticons. The fate of the other Dinobots was unknown, but somehow Megatron had captured them and kept them in stasis in a secret base. After being freed, they traveled to Cybertron and helped liberate it from Shockwave's control. War and Peace
Devil's Due comic continuity
The Dinobots were originally five present-day Autobots who were sent back in time by Teletran 3 and reformatted into dinosaurs. When G.I. Joe traveled back in time, they recovered the Dinobots, who proceeded to beat Shockwave's Decepticons three ways from Sunday. G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers II issue 4
Grimlock was later sent to Earth to oversee the decommissioning of Cybertronian technology The Art of War #1, where his team found that human scientists had used the deactivated Megatron's technology to create the evil Serpent Organic Robot. The Art of War #2 Grimlock and the others followed this new threat back to Cybertron, only to be captured and imprisoned by the Decepticons. The Art of War #3 He was eventually freed by his G.I. Joe allies The Art of War #4, and helped defeat Serpent O.R. Meanwhile, Snarl was seen among the Autobot troops fighting against Serpent O.R.'s army. The Art of War #5
Legends anthology
The story "Paddles" features a sixth Dinobot of the same name. This is also the only appearance of the character. Paddles
IDW Generation 1 continuity
Grimlock and Slag were soldiers even before the war, and met eachother when they were both thrown in a brig for pissing off their commanding officers (shooting them in Slag's case). Bonding over their mutual desire to get things done and ignore the rules, they decided to form their own strike team: the Dynobots. In a personal quirk, however, Slag didn't want them to be seen as a proper team. Maximum Dinobots #2 Their newly formed team of misfits became members of the Primal Vanguard under Nominus Prime and (somehow) model soldiers, acting as a Covert Strike Force with a spotless and admirable service record until one mission went wrong. While searching for terrorists beneath the Toraxxis Plains, the group ran into strange cyber-morphic predators, leading to an encounter that killed their medic Skar and left the others unstable and with dangerous monstrous altmodes scanned from the beasts. Upon their return supervisors wanted to study them to learn about Skar's method of dynamic altform adaption, but the team feeling broken and betrayed broke free and went on the run. Underworld
Following their disappearance from the public eye, the Dynobots began competing in underground gladiator fights at the Forge in Kaon. When Megatron put out a call for combatants, the Dynobots were amongst those who were shown grudging respect by the Predacons as opposed to the remainder of the "amateurs" in the crowd. Megatron Origin #3
While fighting in the Ring of Trials, the Dynobots witnessed a call from Optimus Prime to rally against the Decepticon tyranny on Cybertron. Broadcast For reasons known only to themselves, they responded to the call and aided Prime's new Autobot army in Iacon by crushing some Decepticon tanks. Endgame While they began wearing the Autobot insignia after the battle, the Dynobots couldn't stay with Prime's forces. By this time their beastly altmodes were influencing their minds by turning them increasingly aggressive, causing them to stop transforming out of fear that they might eventually snap and become the vicious monsters they had scanned. Unwilling to endanger the people of Cybertron with their presence, the team turned to a life of crime in an attempt to gather enough money to make it offworld. Derelicts
The Dynobots' biggest heist was an attempt to steal several tankers worth of energon from the Toraxxis mega-refinery. Wreckage Unfortunately, Scorponok's Decepticons had the same idea, leading to a battle between the two groups of robbers. Annoyed by Grimlock's bossy attitude, Slag briefly left the Dynobots during the heist but came back to his pals in time to help them fight the Decepticons. Faces of Darkness Grimlock triggered the refinery's alarm to summon the Autobots then tried to disappear in the chaos, but was chased down and attacked by Scorponok. He defeated the Decepticon by resorting to using his altmode, only to be arrested by Optimus Prime in the aftermath, causing him to turn desperate and threaten to blow up the refinery. While he didn't go through with it, Scorponok did. Rage The destruction of Toraxxis scattered the Dynobots, leaving Grimlock alone. Fallout
Eons later, the Dynobots followed Shockwave to prehistoric Earth on a revenge-fueled crusade, after Optimus had told them to get over it already. The planet's energon fields forced them to take on the forms of the local animal life. Thus protected, they attacked Shockwave on the surface. Sadly, it did not protect the Dynobots from Shockwave's energy blasts, which melted the artificial skin and caused the Dynobots to go into stasis lock due to excessive energon radiation. Due to a deadman's switch, The Dynobots' ship (the Skyfire) blasted a volcano that buried everyone in molten lava. They were later unearthed by a human archaeological dig Spotlight: Shockwave which was taken over by government agents. Escalation #5
Though Grimlock was the first to be brought back online, he was freed from Skywatch's control through a virus implanted by a Machination spy (under orders from Scorponok). Scorponok wanted Grimlock to join him, but Grimlock refused, fought Scorponok and escaped, vowing to find and rescue the other Dynobots. Scorponok, however, planned to take control of the Dynobots himself and use them to assassinate Grimlock. Spotlight: Grimlock
Reactivated by Skywatch, the Dynobots were put through their paces, seemingly to great success (secretly because the Machination had "helped" set up Skywatch's neural nets). When Grimlock appeared in Fallon, the town was cordoned off and the "Thunder Lizards" were sent to engage him. Maximum Dinobots #1 The resulting clash caused massive damage to Fallon, helped along by Scorponok causing the neural nets to fluctuate so he could increase the conflict between the Dynobots.
Eventually they were allowed to have their sentience so they could find out Grimlock had set up the deadman's switch, which left them buried on Earth, without telling them. While feeling some guilt for what he did, Grimlock defended his actions by saying "er, hello, we're vicious amoral rule-breakers, of course I did it". Which worked. Maximum Dinobots #2
Rightfully so, the Dynobots were pissed with their leader, and walked away after Swoop read Grimlock the riot act. When Grimlock was attacked and almost destroyed by the Sunstreaker clones, however, the team reunited once again for battle. Although fighting valiantly, they might have been destroyed, if not for the intervention of the Monsterbots, whom were earlier contacted by Grimlock. Maximum Dinobots #3
Aboard the Monsterbots' ship, the Dynobots wondered why Grimlock would side with the outcasts. They gave Grimlock a stern look when he exited the cockpit. The Dynobots didn't see the point of fighting Scorponok, but Grimlock said that Scorponok made it their fight when he turned the Dynobots against him. Snarl disagreed, saying that it has always been Grimlock's fight, that he and the other Dynobots went along with him, and that it was now Grimlock's wounded pride at stake. After the Monsterbots blasted away the defenses, Grimlock exited the ship, saying that there was no way he could let this go, and that with or without the Dynobots, there would be a reckoning for Scorponok. The Dynobots decided that arguing is pointless and followed Grimlock. When Hunter O'Nion pulled the cords from Sunstreaker's head, shutting him down, the clones ceased to function. Sludge cried out in victory, but the moment is short-lived as Scorponok blasted Sludge into stasis. Maximum Dinobots #4
Grimlock stared down at Sludge's dead body, brooding about how it was his fault Sludge was dead... while a battle between Scorponok and Shockwave (for rights of revenge upon Grimlock) raged on around him. Eventually Snarl, Slag, and Swoop decide to get to the Monsterbots' ship while the getting was good, but Grimlock stayed behind with Sludge. Grimlock tried infusing some of his spark energy into Sludge to revive him, but it seemed to have no effect. Shockwave got the upper hand and let Scorponok escape, and in frustration, Grimlock attacked Shockwave. Grimlock and Shockwave were too busy fighting to notice the return of Slag, Snarl, and Swoop, who reasoned that, while helping Grimlock might not be much of a cause, it still beat being no better than the Monsterbots. They were noticed by Sludge, however, who seemed to have recovered due to Grimlock's treatment after all. The four of them dove into the fray proper, but Grimlock ordered them to go after Scorponok instead. When Hot Rod was about to get squished by Scorponok, the remaining Dynobots showed up in just the nick of time. At Hot Rod's urgings, Swoop severed the connections keeping Scorponok's head conscious. But before the Dynobots could kill the rest of Scorponok, Ultra Magnus showed up and told them that Scorponok would be revived and made to answer to a tribunal instead. He then said they should purge the entire Machination facility, gather up all related Machination technology, and get as far away from Earth as possible as soon as possible—a plan that the Dynobots, Hot Rod, and Hunter were all perfectly OK with. Ultra Magnus later told Grimlock that having Scorponok and Shockwave in custody could help offset Grimlock's own sentence, and that the other Dynobots' warrants had been canceled, and Grimlock was content with that and the fact that Sludge was alive again thanks to him. On Earth, the other Dynobots meanwhile happily repaired the Skyfire. Maximum Dinobots #5
Slag, Sludge, Snarl and Swoop spent the next few years wandering through space, at some point changing their team name to the Dinobots and appointing Slag their new leader. When the war finally ended, they returned home to Cybertron and were recruited by Ironhide for a mission to search the wilderness for the missing Aerialbots. They found traces of fighting, but before they could do much investigating the Dinobots were overcome by a strange influence and violently turned on each other and Ironhide. Dinobot Hunt! The source of the influence was Megatron, who was using them as test subjects for a mysterious energy that could turn Transformers into combiners, but the Dinobots' egos proved too strong to be easily subdued and merged together. Before the Dawn They eventually stopped fighting amongst themselves and instead teamed up on Ironhide, but he was saved from them by the intervention of Superion, another result of Megatron's tests. Night and the City
After recovering from Megatron's influence, the Dinobots followed Ironhide and Superion back to Iacon Before the Dawn where they joined the other Autobots in defending the city from a Decepticon uprising. Plan for Everything When the battle was over, Starscream convinced the city's neutral population that both the Autobots and Decepticons were bad news, and the Dinobots found themselves exiled into the wilderness alongside the rest of their faction. Heavy Is the Head
Toys
Generation 1
- The five Dinobots were sold individually in boxed packages from 1985 to 1986. They featured a uniform color scheme of red for their die-cast metal parts, black plastic for legs and forearms, smoky translucent for remnant cockpits, and golden metalized plastic highlights depicting machine details. Most had fairly good articulation for G1 toys; only Slag had the conjoined foot-base common to many of the automobile-based Transformers in G1.
- Pretender Classics (1989)
- Grimlock
- A much smaller and simpler version of Grimlock, with a Pretender shell, was part of the Classic Pretenders line.
- Action Masters (1990)
- Grimlock
- Snarl
- Both Grimlock and Snarl were given new toy forms as part of the Action Masters line.
Generation 2
- Dinobots (1993)
- Grimlock
- Slag
- Snarl
- Three of the original five Dinobot molds were reissued in new colors.
Beast Wars
- Grimlock (Deluxe, 1997)
- A redeco of Dinobot.
Alternators
- Grimlock (2005)
- He turns into a 1/24th scale Ford Mustang.
Classics
- Swoop (Mini-Con Dinobots Team, 2006)
- A new mold for the original character, alongside two new-character teammates Knockdown and Terrorsaur.
- Grimlock (Deluxe, 2006)
- A new mold based on his original design, with an updated dinosaur mode.
Masterpiece
- Grimlock (2009)
Notes
- The Dinobots are the first Transformers whose creation is shown in the cartoon. It seems simple enough: The Autobots simply construct their bodies, flick the switch, and they're animate. Wheeljack later upgrades their brains, after which they display sentience. However, the later episode "The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1" heavily implies that there's no way to bring a Transformer to life without the use of the supercomputer Vector Sigma. Still other episodes would show the creation of Trypticon and the Technobots without the use of Vector Sigma. For more on this issue, see the separate article Reproduction.
- The commercials (And package art) for the Dinobots show their swords, Slag's horns, and Swoop's lower beak and missiles as being chromed like the Diaclone versions. However, the actual release versions have these parts as bare red. This is due to the swords and horns being changed to soft plastic for safety reasons (it was either that or retool them blunt like Blitzwing's sword), as the chrome plating does not bond to soft plastic. Swoop's jaw and missiles probably didn't need this, but that's gang-molding for you.
- Four of the original five Dinobot designs served as the templates for the "Geisters", recurring villainous henchmen on the Takara/Sunrise co-production Brave Exkaiser; Slag became Horn Geist, Sludge became Thunder Geist, Snarl became Armor Geist, and Swoop became Ptera Geist. In what might be called a vision of things to come, the four were once briefly fused into a single robot called "Mad Geister" (マッドガイスター Maddogaisutā). However, because each Geister controlled a portion of the combined body—and, aside from Ptera Geist, they had the accumulated brain power of a Froot Loop—this ended rather badly for them. In a more successful (if not also prescient) later development, the Geisters learned to merge in groups of two, with Ptera Geist and Thunder Geist forming the centaur-esque "Pteder" (プテダー Putedā) and Horn Geist and Armor Geist forming "Hormor" (ホーマー Hōmā).
- The 2003 Dinobots line, a Wal-mart exclusive, reuses most of the Generation 1 Dinobots' names. In the absence of any bios or fiction, however, it is unclear if they are meant to represent the same characters.
- The 2005 Grimlock and Swoop two-pack was originally intended to portray the Generation 1 characters, but ended up as part of the Energon toyline instead, representing new characters.
Foreign names
- Japanese: Dinobot (ダイノボット Dainobotto)
- Portuguese: Dinobóticos (Portugal comic), Robodinos (Brazil comic)
- Indonesian: Dinobot (디노봍 Dinobot)
- Hungarian: Vasállatok (first The Movie dub, "Iron-animals") Dínók (second The Movie dub)
