Tailgate (G1)
| The name or term "Tailgate" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Tailgate (disambiguation). |
- Tailgate is an Autobot from the Generation 1 continuity family.
The naïve Tailgate needs to be liked. It's hardly the most unique of flaws, but he has an unfortunate, childlike tendency towards extremes. Placed in a situation with Autobots who don't know him from Primon, this sanitation 'Bot will spin a tall tale the height of a Metrotitan in an attempt to impress his fellows before it all comes crashing down. And it ultimately will - while he's a 'Bot with a spark of gold, he's broadly unfocused, frequently distracted and easily led, and often gets impulsive, irrational obsessions. And his timekeeping sucks.
Easily his most distinctive mental issue is his occasional inability to tell the difference between a non-living Earth machine and sentient robotic life such as himself. While it's a mistake many other Cybertronians have made at first, typically they learn quickly and let it go. Not Tailgate. Once he gets it into his head, his compassion turns to rage against the "enslavers", and is quite vocal in his desire to "free" the machines of Earth.
That boy ain't right.
Sometimes, he acts as a scout—with strict orders not to break cover for any reason. In this, he is aided by a ridiculously powerful iron-cobalt magnet installed behind his bumper, which he can use to follow closely behind other vehicles and travel far into enemy territory using minimal fuel.
Fiction
Generation 1 cartoon continuity
Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers manga
With the Autobots being framed by the Decepticon Trailer Brigade for numerous crimes, Kenji was feeling a bit dejected at how his schoolyard chums were suddenly turning on them. Tailgate appeared to give him a lift home from school and attempted to cheer him up, reminding him that as an Honorary Autobot he had nothing to worry about. Their drive was interrupted by a crowd gathering around a display put on by a pair of robed figures (secretly Rumble and Frenzy), decrying the Autobots and preaching the heroism of the Decepticons. The rest of the Autobots soon arrived to straighten things out. Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers #7
Tailgate later responded to a distress signal sent from Powerglide, who was fighting to rescue a puppy that was brimming over with Decepticon super science from the Combaticons. Dying from its wounds, the dog transferred the super science into Powerglide, giving him brief access to Scramble Power. Along with the other Minibots, Tailgate merged with Powerglide into a Minibot combiner and swiftly defeated Bructicus. Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers #8
The Transformers cartoon
- Voice actor: Ted Schwartz (English), Ken Shiroyama (Japanese), Jorge García (Latin American)
Tailgate was one of a group of Minibots stationed at the Ark in 2006. When the Constructicons built Trypticon out of a human city, Mount St. Hilary and the Ark were the first stop on his journey to destroy Metroplex. Tailgate and the other Autobots on duty rolled out to defend the Ark with all the firepower at their disposal. It didn't go very well. The Ark was left devastated in Trypticon's mighty wake, and Tailgate's troops were beaten and scattered by the colossal dinosaur. Five Faces of Darkness, Part 5
Wings Universe
Tailgate was present at the first "meeting" of Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus nine million years ago. Battle Lines, Part 6
Marvel Comics continuity
Marvel The Transformers comics
Tailgate was one of the Autobots working with Emirate Xaaron and Ultra Magnus's covert cell on Cybertron, and was briefly seen when Optimus Prime came to Cybertron and rallied the troops for an assault on Darkmount. Resurrection!
He eventually finished his training at the Autobot Military Academy, but upon graduation was provoked into joining Flattop and Subsea in venturing underground, in order to prove his courage. When a group of Cybertronian Mutants attacked and slaughtered his fellow cadets, Tailgate stood his ground. A blast into Smeltdown's chest-furnace obliterated most of the sewer-dwellers, leaving only the ape-like Rotgut. However, a little quick thinking, and Tailgate was able to use the larger machine's bulk against him, flipping Rotgut into the pyre left in Smeltdown's wake. Thus, he proved he was not a coward... and also not very good at watching his friends' backs in a fight. Pipes and Outback eventually arrived as Tailgate surfaced and let them know of his fellow cadets' fate.
Unfortunately, Tailgate's actions inadvertently woke something worse than the Mutants... Underworld!
Regeneration One
Template:Noterg1 Tailgate particpated in the defense of Iacon against the onslaught of the Blitz Engines and the Decepticon crew of the Warworld. He didn't have time to do much of anything except get shot by Needlenose. Destiny, Part Five
Dreamwave Generation One continuity
Tailgate was among the Autobot civilians who watched Shockwave's anti-Optimus-Prime propaganda broadcasts. Cold War Didn't seem to do the trick, though, as he was later seen training alongside several Autobot recruits against auto-combatants following Shockwave's defeat. None of them fared particularly well in training, however, much to Prowl and Ironhide's dismay. Black Sunshine
IDW Generation 1 continuity
Tailgate was born in Rivets Field six million years ago, two weeks before the launch of the Ark-1. This Calamitous Life Assigned the role of fourth-class sanitation 'bot, he was tasked with cleaning out the craft's coolant tubes before take-off, Cybertronian Homesick Blues but ran late to the job and made the mistake of trying to make up the time by short-cutting across the fragile Mitteous Plateau. The terrain collapsed out from under him, leaving him badly damaged and trapped underground, but he soon hit upon the plan of detonating the trailer-full of energon rations he had brought with him in hopes of blasting his way out. Unfortunately for him, he kept repeatedly passing out as he set this up, and with his chronometer damaged had no way of measuring the passage of time. He finally succeeded six million years later, and was dragged from his pit by a group of Autobots who were on their way to depart the planet on the starship Lost Light. Suffering a panic attack and passing out when he saw his explosion had damaged Whirl, the unconscious Tailgate was brought aboard the Lost Light by the Autobots, since he'd mentioned "the launch" and they had who had no idea who he was. How to Say Goodbye and Mean It
Ratchet soon discovered Tailgate's age when he studied his ancient systems, and called Swerve in to carbon-date him. Tailgate woke up before that was necessary (happily observing that he hadn't killed "Nut-Job", as he mistakenly thought Whirl was called), so Swerve instead gleefully took it upon himself to inform him how long he'd been offline. Hangers On Tailgate was horrified and heartbroken: by all rights, he should have been found in days, but the length of his absence made it clear he was so unimportant that nobody had noticed or cared he was missing. Since there was nobody around who knew the truth, and since he had always wanted to do something big and heroic with this life, Tailgate decided to make up a dramatic, overblown past for himself. Cybertronian Homesick Blues He and Swerve went for a walk, during which he claimed that the damaged "Waste Disposal" decal on his arm actually read "Bomb Disposal", and that he had been part of the Primal Vanguard, though Swerve was more interested in seeing his alternate mode. After Tailgate was introduced to Chromedome and Rewind, the group were caught up in a battle between the amnesiac Skids and some strange robots, in whose repeated chanting of "nineteen-eighty-four" Tailgate took an interest.
A little later, back on the Lost Light, Swerve finally convinced Tailgate to attempt to transform, Hangers On but he wound up getting stuck halfway. It was at this inopportune moment that the crew were ordered back to their rooms, since a Sparkeater had been reported loose aboard the ship; spotting Cyclonus, another Transformer from his time, Tailgate asked for some help getting to a room. Cyclonus carried the half-transformed Tailgate there and quite rudely dumped him on the ground. As the Sparkeater situation unfolded outside, the two ancient 'bots discussed the six million year gap in history they missed; Cyclonus described the Autobot-Decepticon conflict to Tailgate as he understood it, romanticizing the Decepticons' position enough that later, as Ratchet was unsticking his half-transformed body, Tailgate declared that he wanted to be a Decepticon! The Chaos of Warm Things
Learning of Tailigate's aims, Ultra Magnus insisted that ship's captain Rodimus set the "confirmed Decepticon sympathizer" straight, so Rodimus recruited Rewind to beam a compressed visual history of the war directly into Tailgate's head. Sobered by what he saw and realizing that the Decepticons were the "bad guys", Tailgate fumed at Cyclonus for misleading him and impotently struck him, leading his icy roommate to reciprcoate with a vicious backhand. Leaving their room, Cyclonus kicked the downed Tailgate on his way out, leaving him cowering on the floor. Life After the Big Bang
Determined to be one of the "good guys", Tailgate requested that Ultra Magnus teach him the Autobot Code. By this point, Tailgate had edited his own Autopedia entry to reflect the false history he had created for himself—claiming he had studied metaphysics under Omega Supreme, was a champion kick-boxer who graduated from the Ibex School of Epistemology, helped invent the idealised heat engine, coordinated a search for the long-lost Luna 1, and he was part of Nova Prime's inner circle, encouraging him to explore space—and the impressed Magnus agreed to educate him. Alas, Tailgate was soon to discover this meant an excruciating slog through an intense analysis of ten thousand pages of text. He was briefly interested in section 19, subsection 80, paragraph four because it reminded him of the robots that attacked Skids, How Ratchet Got His Hands Back but by and large the experience was a grueling one, and he moaned long and loud about it in Swerve's bar, especially once he discovered there was an abridged version of the Code. Interiors
Ultimately, Tailgate passed his Autobot Code exam, though he professed it was not with "his best grades ever". Asking Cyclonus to attend his Act of Affiliation, a step on the way to the full Rite of the Autobrand, he was seemingly ignored - although his fellow Ancient Cybertronian would secretly attend. At the ceremony itself, however, Rodimus was briefly possessed by a Metrotitan and, rather than drawing his probationary Autobot symbol, scrawled "Set Me Free" in Old Cybertronian on his chest. You, Me, and Other Revelations
Tailgate loved "Movie Night" in Rewind and Chromedome's quarters, where he watched such films as the old public information piece "Proteus' Promise", with several other members of the crew Who's Afraid of the DJD? and would later recall it as the happiest time of his life. Before & After He was invited to listen in on Rewind's third communal storytelling session, part of an attempt to help the damaged Rung regain his memories; Tailgate had to interrupt Drift to ask what a Relinquishment Clinic was, Post Hoc and was particularly impressed by the skills of one Orion Pax Patternism even though he hadn't realized that Orion was actually Optimus Prime, despite the notes he'd been making to keep track of all the characters. An Intimate Beheading
Tailgate joined a mission to Temptoria to investigate the possibility that the Circle of Light were being held there. While the larger Autobots roughed up the occupying Decepticons, Tailgate and Rewind investigated the contents of The Battery only to find that the Decepticons didn't have the Circle and were merely converting the native life forms to energon, and had rigged up a bomb. Before & After Now forced to actually dispose of a bomb, Tailgate tricked Rewind into telling him how to actually do it. Cybertronian Homesick Blues Unfortunately he accidentally triggered a timer, and when he refused to stop work and escape, he had to be physically thrown from the room by Cyclonus. Cyclonus and Rewind were caught in the bomb's explosion, and Tailgate dragged the severely-damaged Cyclonus back to the Lost Light's medibay on his own. Observing the other Autobots leaving offerings of innermost energon for Rewind, Tailgate attempted to leave an offering for Cyclonus, only for it to be rebuked. Cyclonus did seem to have a change of heart after seeing Rewind's offerings, and helped Tailgate pick up the pieces of the shattered vial. Before & After
Some time later, he went to the bars on Hedonia with his usual crowd (his psycho-reactive holomatter avatar taking the form of a human baby). When Rewind was about to show a recording of the Ark-1 opening ceremony that included the naming of its original crew, Cyclonus suddenly flew into a "drunken rage" that disrupted the proceedings. Tailgate ushered the others away so he could calm him down; after they had departed, it became clear Cyclonus had done this so the others wouldn't realize Tailgate wsn't part of the crew. Cyclonus revealed he had known from the start that Tailgate had been lying, and the little 'bot broke down and admitted to having falsified his past, and his grief over being a nobody. Cyclonus took pity on Tailgate and taught him how to sing an Old Cybertronian anthem. Cybertronian Homesick Blues
While lounging around in the ship's oil reservoir, Tailgate, Swerve and Rewind took to discussing the cool alternate modes of their crew-mates, and entered into a wager to see who could be the first to solve the longstanding mystery of what Rung turned into. Tailgate tried to trick Rung into transforming by holding an "alt mode party", claiming they were all the rage back in his day, but since Rung hailed from the same time as him, it proved an unconvincing gambit. Interviewed by Rewind for a documentary movie about life on the ship not long thereafter, Tailgate continued making up accolades for himself, but openly admitted to never having been happier than he was on the ship, and looking to the future with glee. Little Victories
Tailgate and Cyclonus remained close after their experiences on Hedonia; Tailgate was in the ship's workshop crafting a new horn to replace Cyclonus's missing one when the 'bot in question angrily came storming in after learning that their quarters were to play host to "Movie Night". Under Cold Blue Stars That concern melted away in the face of Overlord's subsequent rampage through the ship; Cyclonus and Tailgate sat together during the funeral for the crewmembers who lost their lives in the chaos. After the ceremony, Tailgate went to help Ratchet to care for the dying Ultra Magnus, but accidentally scanned himself with Ratchet's "death clock", which announced that Tailgate had only three days to live. The Gloaming
An examination by Ratchet revealed that he had a terminal case of cybercrosis, and Tailgate elected to trust only Cyclonus with the news, though Cyclonus seemed almost disinterested in the tragic announcement. Tailgate went to Swerve's Bar to drink away his sorrows, oblivious to the massive portal that the Lost Light was about to travel through. When Luna 1 was discovered to lie on the other side of the portal, an evidently distressed Cyclonus made up for his behavior by inviting Tailgate onto the team who would explore the moon. He insisted it was just for the experience, with the caveat that despite Luna 1's reputation as a "Miracle Moon", Tailgate must not hope for a cure. The Fecund Moon
On arrival on Luna 1, Tailgate was captured and imprisoned with most of the Lost Light away team, becoming separated from Cyclonus, remained free. As none of the others knew he had less than three days to live, Tailgate's claims of impatience and panic at being in captivity were dismissed. House of Ambus Things looked brighter once their co-prisoner Minimus Ambus revealed that he was really a healed Ultra Magnus; when Tailgate asked how he could have cheated his impending death, Minimus declared that the Chief Justice Tyrest, who has using the moon as a base, had doctors that could apparently work miracles. The Divided Self
Tailgate's clock was down to one day and twelve hours by the time Getaway sprang the group from the cell, by which time he could no longer walk and had to be carried by Rodimus, though he played off his paralysis as seized-up servos. Reuniting with Ratchet, Tailgate told him of the moons' "miracle medibay", but Ratchet solemnly informed him that only Tyrest's medical minion Pharma could really use the tools within it. The group proceeded to confront Tyrest and were all apparently immobilized by a "thought weapon" that paralyzed their bodies. Arm the Lonely Tailgate's cybercrosis, however, had rendered him deaf to the frequency of the suggestion weapon. He managed to jump Tyrest and jab him in the head through the "cleansing" hole Tyrest drilled in his own brow. Tailgate deactivated the weapon while Tyrest was distracted, only to be taken hostage by the Chief Justice. Though he urged Rodimus to open fire, admitting his terminal condition, Tailgate was saved moments later by Minimus Ambus. As the room was swarmed by Legislators responding to Tyrest's distress call, Tailgate put his knowledge of the Autobot Code to good use, using Tyrest's computer to amend and repeal the law in its totality. He barely had time to celebrate his achievement before collapsing.
The next day, back on the Lost Light, Tailgate asked Cyclonus to spare him a lingering death by terminating him, but Cyclonus refused. Though a cure was subsequently found, thanks to Tyrest's collection of esoteric medical equipment, Tailgate's spark had faded to a point where the process would no longer be viable. However, on Whirl's suggestion, Cyclonus used his Great Sword to directly transfuse energy into Tailgate's spark, boosting it to a condition that allowed the small 'bot's life to be saved. This Calamitous Life Tailgate underwent a period of recovery. The Sound of Breaking Glass
After about six months, Tailgate was fully recovered from his cybercrosis, and could even fully transform again. He playfully charged Cyclonus when he first got out of the medbay, demonstrating his new signature move of "finger to the head". Tailgate was surprised by all that had gone on in his absence, including the new captain Megatron and Swerve's using one of the Legislators as a bouncer. Words Hang in the Air
BotCon 2014 "Revengeance" script reading
- Voice actor: Susan Blu
Toys
Generation 1
- Tailgate (Mini Vehicle, 1986)
- Japanese ID number: C-61
- Tailgate is a white-and-blue retooling of the 1984 Autobot, Windcharger, transforming into a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am sports car. His head sculpt is much more elaborate than the earlier toy's (which shared the Microchange sculpt), and his chest sticker bears an odd resemblance to a portable radio.
- The original version of this mold was used by Camaro and Rook, as well as the Mexican versions (yes, plural) of Tailgate, which were only redecos of Windcharger. Tailgate's toy was also used as the non-toy comic model for Wipe-Out.
Encore
- Bumble & Minibots (Multi-pack, 2008)
- Encore number: 10
- In 2008, Tailgate was reissued in the Encore line, bundled with Bumblebee, Pipes, Swerve, and Outback. This version of Tailgate has extra paint details on his face.
Generations
- Autobot Tailgate & Groundbuster (Legends Class, 2014)
- Series / Number: 02 / #008
- Part of the sixth wave of 2012-onwards Generations Legends Class toys, Thrilling 30 "Autobot Tailgate" is a new mold that's roughly the size of a Cyberverse Commander Class toy. He transforms from a white muscle car into a robot mode largely based on Nick Roche's design for IDW's More than Meets the Eye comic, with some blue flame-decals on his hood likely inspired by his Prime counterpart. He comes with Groundbuster (based on the Micromaster Neutro), who transforms into a robot, a bomb disposal skid loader,[1] and an extended claw for Tailgate to wield via its 5mm post, or mount onto the peg-hole on Tailgate's hood in vehicle mode.
Notes
- In the pre-Toy Fair 1986 catalog, Tailgate is featured with a yellow car body, a black chest/torso, and a red face. Fellow 1986 Mini Vehicle Hubcap is featured with a white car body. Hmmmmm.
- While Tailgate did not appear himself in the Marvel US comics, Wipe-Out's character model was based on Tailgate's toy.
- Fan speculation about Tailgate's gender—always presented as male—broke out across Tumbler when a More than Meets the Eye promo called him "The Ingenue", a term for a female stock character. [2] While there is a male equivalent which is spelt almost exactly the same, this was the writer who canonised homosexual Transformers, made Autobots guilty of war crimes, and has Megatron in an Autobrand: with Roberts, it could happen even if it's not on the Hub.
Foreign names
- French: Hayon (Canada)
