Monday, April 17, 2017

A to Z Challenge: Nightbeat vs Needlenose


Nightbeat is one of those Autobots who had a pretty neat function: private detective. Does your army really need a private detective? Maybe more than a “theoretician” like Skids or the various other science-y characters. So that makes him kind of cool, right? He was part of the second series of Headmaster toys and turned into a race car, because most PIs drive race cars, right? Well, Magnum PI did have a Ferrari.

He came in too late to be featured on the cartoon series, but he did have a spotlight issue of the Marvel comic that was written to be sort of like a noir story with Nightbeat as the detective of course as he searched for the lost Autobot Matrix. 



In the IDW Dark Cybertron arc, Nightbeat was part of the “dead universe” and guided Optimus and Rodimus Prime to find the bad guys in there and helped them escape, which also gave him a new lease on life.

His original toy was reissued a year or two ago and he might have had his name reissued once or twice. Otherwise not a huge impact.


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Far less impact was Needlenose. He was part of the second line of Targetmasters that were a little smaller but had two guns that turned into guys. He does turn into an F-16XL, which is pretty sweet. 


Otherwise there’s really not much notable about him, so go read this:
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Needlenose_(G1)

2 comments:

Christopher Dilloway said...

I figured out last night it was probably Needlenose lol. I would love to see a reissued version of him as an F-16XL or similar type shape so as not to incur licensing costs lol. I saw they redid him as a recolor of Fireflight but since it was through the Collector's Club subscription service, and he was in their last set before they folded, there aren't many out there. It's a shame because he looks pretty cool, but I haven't seen any for sale yet on the secondary market.

Side note: the Collector's Club sucked and was a total scam...they had crappy security on their records and got hacked and I got a call one day that someone in New York state was trying to use my credit card info to buy computers and printers and ship them to places across the country. Their reply was: shrug...sucks to be you. Plus their figures were always way too expensive :(

Arion said...

This was quite interesting especially because I wasn't familiar with the character.

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