An odditiy in the evil Decepticons, Soundwave doesn’t conform to their regular standards of bumbling, treacherous failure of the Transformers villains. Competent and evidently completely loyal to Megatron, Soundwave was the most likely Decepticon to succeed at tasks handed to him – or, perhaps just the least likely to mess up in some immediately noticeable way. Not that this made him a good guy to hang out with – his loyalty was often confirmed by questionable means, most notably by ratting out the traitorous plans of his fellow Decepticons (especially Starscream).
Soundwave was perhaps just a little too competent. It wasn’t unusual for Soundwave to be giving a report in his creepy monotone synthesized voice about how the ship was about to crash into an alien planet or fall into a volcano, all while working calmly at the problem – probably things to get excited about.
Transforming into a tape player, Soundwave was unusual from a collectors perspective for the “cassette” Decepticons that fit in his chest. Though a 20ber of the other G1 toys were interconnectable to create a larger, more impressive toy (albeit with extremely weak joints), and later generations often featured toys that interacted with one another in some way, Soundwave was the first of the G1 line to sport this particular gimmick. Most people who collect Soundwave probably also should look around for one of his companion pieces as well, such as Buzzsaw or Ravage.
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