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Smarter than a race of multimillion-year-old robots. Using Brawl's brain.
"B.O.T."
Production code	#700-64
Season	2
No. in season	49
Production company	Sunbow Productions
Airdate	January 9, 1986
Written by	Earl Kress
Animation studio	Toei
Continuity	Generation 1 cartoon continuity
Watch this episode on YouTube

After Swindle sells the components of his fellow Combaticons, three kids get their hands on Brawl's brain, using it to make a robot.

Or...

Worst. Episode. Ever.

Synopsis

Here we come...drivin' down the street...

The Combaticons enter an unidentified city for no discernible reason, then all transform to vehicle mode for no discernible reason. While transforming, Swindle knocks over Brawl for no discernible reason. Brawl expresses his displeasure for an obvious reason. They then drive (yes, even the flyers drive) about ten feet down the street and form Bruticus for no discernible reason. He is immediately destroyed with a single shot by Defensor (who's there for no discernible reason). Defensor just leaves the pile of parts alone and unsupervised, apparently not bothering to alert the other Autobots or anything. This enables Swindle—who has somehow survived without a scratch the explosion that reduced all the other Combaticons to a pile of parts — to gather up the bits. No human authorities are involved either.

Swindle then visits the generically evil foreign guy "El Presidente" on his ship filled with weapons in order to buy parts to repair the Combaticons.

Meanwhile, Megatron is running a simulation of his new orbit disruptor cannon. After Starscream whines, Megatron explains that once the Moon is knocked from orbit, they will use Soundwave's new device to control the tides. They will then use this colossal power to flood a single canyon, creating "a limitless source of power". What?

At the Combaticons' headquarters, El Presidente's men load up the weapons and more advanced computer systems from the wrecked robots, as apparently Swindle forgot about that whole "repair" thing. Swindle then leaves to take the remaining parts to a dump. Shortly after they all leave, Skywarp arrives, noting no one seems to be home. He discovers a piece of one of the Combaticons, then notices there's a trail of them. Confused, he asks Megatron what to do. Megatron calmly replies that he should perchance follow the trail of wreckage in order to discover where it may lead.

Giant turtles out to get him, creepy crabs are right behind.

Swindle arrives in a junkyard, where he threatens a junkyard worker before he starts to dump the leftovers. Starscream and Skywarp discover him in the act and capture him as he tries to escape. Back at the Decepticon base, Soundwave installs a bomb in Swindle's head; he has 15 hours to reassemble the Combaticons before it goes off. Swindle takes the parts back from various mid-'80s evil foreign stereotypes and reassembles the team. However, they are unable to combine into Bruticus because Brawl's personality component is missing. Swindle is charged with getting the component back or the bomb will still go off.

Meanwhile, at Benjamin Franklin Pierce High School, Mr. Robbins's demonstration of a laser is sabotaged by two sociopathic students, Martin and Roland, who boost the laser's power output so high it instantly burns a hole through steel. Rather than involve the authorities, Mr. Robbins threatens them with an "F" in his class if they don't win a blue ribbon at the science fair, and assigns Elise Presser to assist them for no discernible reason.

Outside, the two assholes meet the meek and spineless Elise. They realize a high-rise is on fire across the street, and witness the Protectobots coming to the rescue (well, four of them; Blades blows two window-washers off their dangling rig with his downdraft—the bastard). This inspires them to build a robot for their project. The three rummage for parts in the same junkyard where Swindle dumped the Combaticons' leftover remains, and Elise discovers a random piece of machinery. They spend the night in the school's lab assembling their machine, and Martin dubs it "B.O.T.". After several failures, Elise installs the random piece of machinery, which turns out to be Brawl's personality component. Naturally, Brawl-B.O.T. goes postal and starts trashing the place.

Unbeknownst to all, the school was secretly funded by a hideously gargantuan Richie Rich.

Martin grabs the laser and fires, and B.O.T. runs off. The kids run to the school's preposterously-advanced computer lab, and use it to call the Protectobots. Teletraan I gets the SOS, and Optimus Prime sends Gears, Ironhide and Bumblebee to investigate.

Swindle re-threatens the junkyard worker, who says that maybe some kids took the part Swindle is after. Swindle mutters "you better hope so"... then proceeds to rummage through the trash, seemingly instantly forgetting that whole "kids" angle.

The Autobots arrive at the school. The kids seem disappointed that they didn't get the Protectobots, but quickly lead them to their runaway creation in the school's cafeteria. Brawl-B.O.T. knocks all three Autobots over with a single serving pan of corn on the cob (That high-school food, I tell ya, huh? Huh?), then deflects Gears's blaster-fire with a pot lid. Ironhide shoots molten lead at Brawl-B.O.T., but he leaps to grab a light fixture, avoiding the attack, and the now-weakened floor collapses under Ironhide. Brawl-B.O.T. runs for it, barricading the door out with remarkable speed, and heads for a seemingly abandoned building... as Swindle watches.

The Autobots follow, telling the kids to stay put. They enter the building, and find that Brawl-B.O.T. has taken an elevator thirty floors up. Ironhide wedges a stick into the doors, and the trio run up the stairs. Outside, the future serial killers grow instantly impatient, and drag Elise inside the building. They remove the stick, enter the elevator and head up.

A blast erupts behind the Autobots, and Ironhide orders them to shoot up. They shoot at absolutely nothing, Ironhide declares they hit whatever it was, and they run right into Swindle. Meanwhile, the elevator has stopped. Roland is lifted up so he can open the emergency hatch, and discovers B.O.T. is trying to break the elevator cables.

My force field's only good for 10 seconds — you've got a plan for after that, right Prime? ...Prime?

Sadly, B.O.T. is prevented from snapping the cables by an energy blast to the back. The Autobots pick themselves up, seemingly having been soundly thrashed by Swindle all by himself. They all run outside to witness Swindle driving away. Back at Decepticon headquarters, Brawl is restored and the bomb removed, and Bruticus is formed again.

At the school, Elise inspects the remnants of B.O.T. to find that the "funny component" is gone. Martin decides to hunt it down by reworking the machine that read B.O.T.'s "brain response" so it can track the signal. The three drive to the ocean, and Elise rewires B.O.T.'s speech synthesizer so it receives and decodes signals rather than creating them, letting them hear what Brawl hears. Megatron insists on a test-run of the cannon, and picks Autobot headquarters as the target. (Because it's in orbit, you see. Wait, no, it isn't.) The kids rush off to warn the Autobots, who send a signal to the Protectobots' headquarters.

Having been properly forewarned, the Autobots apparently just sit around and wait for Megatron to set up his giant cannon, get his troops into position just outside their base, and for the Combaticons to assemble Bruticus before starting to defend themselves. Bruticus basically stumbles around until he falls apart. The Protectobots arrive and random fighting ensues.

This is the light-hearted, end-of-episode comedy beat. No, seriously.

Inside the base, the kids think they need to help, and Elise has a rare moment of spine. Using Teletraan I, she sends B.O.T. out into the battlefield on a beeline to the disruptor cannon. The Protectobots combine into Defensor and generate a force field, protecting about four other Autobots. The Decepticons wait until the force field wears off, then one shot blasts Defensor to pieces. Bruticus re-forms and tries to fire the cannon, but it turns and blasts Starscream and Soundwave instead. B.O.T. is working the cannon using a conveniently-placed control panel at the base, and causes it to explode by hitting the clearly-marked "overload" button, sending Bruticus flying away and forcing a Decepticon retreat.

Back inside, the Autobots thank the kids for their help and offer their apologies for the loss of their robot. Elise asks if they have any spare parts so they can try again... and Roland and Martin duct-tape her mouth shut and drag her away while the Autobots just watch... argh argh argh...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

Until you can tell me what you mean by "brain" and "head", even you can't be trusted.

"Call sanitation. There's junk all over the street!"

—Defensor, leaving his mess for the humans to clean up. He's humanity's defender, not their maid.

"Megatron, I-I-I couldn't find Brawl's personality component! I didn't think it would matter…"

—Swindle's high opinion of his teammate.

You are so right.

"Here, munch a little lead!"

—Ironhide just before spraying something that's not lead at B.O.T.

"This is so degrading."

—Gears on being beaten by Brawl-B.O.T. Or he was talking about the episode itself?

"We should've just taken the 'F' in Science."

—Martin, not knowing that if they did, we probably would have been spared this horrendous episode.

"If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I'll melt you down for scrap tutonium!"

—Megatron threatens Swindle with gibberish

Notes

Continuity notes

E Cola. The cool, refreshing taste of uncooked pork.

• This episode establishes that the Combaticons have their own separate base, as do the Protectobots. As this was the last episode before the jump to 2005, this is never touched on again.
• The billboard over the Protectobots' urban headquarters seems to be advertising for E Cola. Mmmmmmm. Another advertisement for the beverage would appear years later in the Japanese series, Super-God Masterforce, in the episode "Heroism!! The Birth of Super Ginrai".
• Skywarp lives up to a little-used note in his bio, which states that he would be "useless without Megatron's supervision."
• Personality components make a second appearance. Unlike in "The Revenge of Bruticus", they're a physical piece of metal hardware.
• "Soundwave's new device" is never seen, and aside from Megatron's indirect "soon we'll control the oceans" boast, is never referenced again after its original mention at the start of the episode.
• Gadgets and powers:
  • Bruticus lives up to his bio's assertion that he has "a tendency to stand still if he is not told what to do," and as Megatron promised at the end of "The Revenge of Bruticus", Bruticus is reprogrammed to obey only him.
  • Starscream somehow snatches Jeep mode Swindle into the air while in jet mode.
  • Groove can retract his wrist and fire liquid nitrogen out of it. It's a foamy pink stuff this time.
  • Ironhide shoots some brown goopy stuff that he claims is lead out of his retracted wrist.
  • Wheeljack's gyro-inhibitor is now an energy beam that can blow up missiles.

Real-world references

• "Benjamin Franklin Pierce High School" is a reference to Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, the character from M*A*S*H (who was also the inspiration for the Mini-Con Hawkeye's bio).
• "We'll let the computer do the walking" refers to an ad slogan for the Yellow Pages — "Let your fingers do the walking!"
• Star Wars sound effects:
  • Sparking and clashing lightsabers as Swindle zaps Brawl-B.O.T., and again as Soundwave restores Brawl's brain.

Animation and technical errors

• Argh.

Either Bumblebee's shrunk to the size of a human, or that's one humongous coffee pot on the counter to his left.

• The scenery in this episode is always huge. In the opening scene, the five Combaticons are driving down a downtown street in a row (yes, even the fliers are driving on the ground) with plenty of room. Humans are drawn tiny compared to the doors of their own buildings, and the Autobots fit easily inside human structures.
• The Combaticons get the wrong transformation sound effect (ascending pitch) when transforming to their vehicle modes.
• Swindle's vehicle mode is missing its Decepticon symbol as he gets stuck against Brawl.
• It's inherent to their color models, but the combination sequence makes it really obvious that Onslaught completely changes color from blue to white while transforming into Bruticus.
• The Bruticus scrap pile changes between shots; first it's a few scattered parts on the street, then it's a solid pile of them.
• Swindle pops out of the junk pile from beneath a yellow rectangle with wheels. The only yellow component on Bruticus is... Swindle.
• As Swindle drives past the guy with the radio on the docks, he's layered too far to the left and appears to be hovering above the road.
• When Swindle transforms to meet with El Presidente, his gun attaches to the side of his right arm. In the next shot, it's attached to the front of his arm (its usual, correct location.) Then in the next shot, it's on the left arm.
• In Megatron's simulation, Astrotrain is completely off-model — he's got no cockpit, his sides are purple instead of gray, he's got some kind of side vents that shouldn't be there, and his nosecone covers the entire front of his shuttle mode.
• Skywarp's voice is a bit off — much more nasally than usual.
• There is no indication as to what jet mode Starscream uses to capture jeep mode Swindle.
• Swindle's eyes aren't colored as he apologizes to the Russians. In the same shot, we suddenly hear the ticking-clock sound of the bomb in his head, when it has been silent till now. It will continue to pop up randomly until Swindle completes his mission.
• In the lineup shot of the Combaticons, Onslaught is the same height as everybody else, instead of being taller. Swindle's cannon is missing.
• When the teacher addresses Martin and Roland, his desk is visible behind him. The books that were on it — which were prominently burned through by the laser a moment earlier — have vanished.
• Roland's mouth moves when Martin says "Aw, come on" — especially noticeable since Roland then goes on to speak his own line in the same shot.
• As the Protectobots rush to the aid of a burning building, a voice is heard to say "Stay calm! We're coming up for you!" The staging of scene makes it appear that it's one of the vehicle-mode Protectobots who speaks the line, but it doesn't match any of the characters; the episode's script explains it's actually supposed to be coming from a fireman. The script calls for the line to be amplified by a bullhorn, but it is missing the necessary audio effects.
• While the kids are constructing B.O.T in the lab, Elise's glasses are clear instead of blue in one of the shots.

Brawl's brain. Brawl is apparently operated by a tiny dude who sits inside his head.

• Brawl's personality component changes design several times between shots. In its main establishing shot, it's drawn as some sort of real-world electrical monitoring device, complete with gauges and buttons.
• When Elise says "Maybe I wired the box in wrong," one of her legs is drawn way too short, almost as if she's missing her right thigh.
• When Mr. Robbins turned on the laser, it shot a continuous beam. When Martin uses it on B.O.T., it fires bolts.
• The first two times we see the Ark, it has two engines rather than three.
• The "SOS" Gears receives is written in numbers rather than letters and isn't aligned to match the angle of Teletraan I's screen. Also, Gears is sitting in a human-looking chair we've never seen before.
• After threatening the dude at the junkyard, Swindle turns to leave, walking toward... the fence. He starts to clear some junk out of his way, but then the scene ends and we never find out if he realizes he's not walking toward the exit.
• The kids create and lose B.O.T. in the middle of the night. When the Autobots reach the school, it's bright and sunny outside. If this isn't an animation error, then we are forced to assume that Brawl-B.O.T. spent several hours not doing much at all, staying inside the school the whole time, while the kids waited for the Autobots to arrive.
• Gears' mouth isn't moving for the end of his "hunk of junk" line.
• Ironhide towers over the door to the kitchen, yet he fits inside a moment later. Three Autobots fit in the stairwell of the condemned building.
• As he delivers the line, "Well if that don't fry my circuits," Ironhide's left shoulder is missing.
• As everyone runs out of the kitchen, Ironhide clips through the door frame.

• The first shot of the front of the school shows it with two arches, but when the group chases after B.O.T., it's one big rectangular opening. On a similar note, Gears describes the high school as a "one-level structure", but it's pretty clearly two stories.
• The design of the weapon Gears is using changes with every shot it's in, even though by this point, the generic Autobot laser pistol exists (and Ironhide uses it later in the episode).
• The empty building is, presumably, the burnt-out skyscraper from before.... but it's totally changed its appearance when B.O.T. takes refuge in it.
• The elevator in the condemned building has two rows of lights above it, but in the close-ups there's only one row (with 12 lights, far fewer than the thirty needed for the number of floors Bumblebee says are in the building).
• The top of Ironhide's torso is all red as he runs up the stairs, and again as he gives the order to stop firing. Most of it should be gray. (The same error happens again at Autobot Headquarters when the kids warn the Autobots about the disruptor attack.)
• The "shooting at nothing upstairs" bit might be attributed to animation/script mismatch. The animation puts the Autobots in a circular staircase so they are plainly shooting at the clearly-lit curved wall directly ahead of them. It's possible the writer intended them to be shooting up a straight staircase into darkness... but that's pure conjecture.
• "Boost me up" — Martin (or Roland, who can tell)'s mouth isn't moving.
• Starscream has blue eyes (instead of red) as Brawl's brain is restored.
• Swindle's cannon is back on the side of his arm (instead of the front) as Megatron throttles him.
• When Swindle stumbles back alongside the other Combaticons, Onslaught's forehead is colored yellow, like his visor.
• After he forms in Decepticon Headquarters, Bruticus's nose is colored the same red as his eyes, giving the effect of a visor.
• During a close-up, Elise's red VW Beetle becomes Swindle-colored (including a purple hood!), then changes back and remains red through the rest of the scene.
• As Ironhide is contacting the Protectobots, he turns away from the screen, at which point the top of his shoulder suddenly turns partially red.
• When the Protectobots receive the signal, the lit-up part appears off to the side of the rest of the display.
• In a long, slow zoom-in on Protectobot headquarters, we have plenty of time to see that the front facade has a central hallway carved into it. Then when it lifts up for them to drive out, the entrance is a normal door.
• When the Combaticons combine at the beginning of the final battle, the footage from their combination inside Decepticon Headquarters a few minutes before is reused, but flipped, so Vortex and Blast Off appear on the wrong sides.
• Optimus and the Autobots attack from a cliff, but a few seconds later Optimus is standing in front of the Ark.
• Wheeljack's gyro-inhibitor appears to fire out of the air next to his left ear. (Also, it's animated as some kind of energy wave instead of a shell-launched weapon; also also, it's not for shooting down missiles, but for destabilizing a robot's sense of balance.)
• It's not real clear who fired the missiles, either. Onslaught was the last guy we saw shooting, but he was shooting laser beams.
• As Megatron transforms into gun mode, his shoulder rest appears and disappears — as does Soundwave's Decepticon symbol.
• Hot Spot's guns use the Decepticon laser sound effect.
• Hot Spot shoots Soundwave (carrying gun mode Megatron), knocking him backwards into Brawl. In the next shot, Megatron transforms and lands nearby — and Brawl, who has already collapsed under Soundwave, comes flying in and lands on Megatron, with Soundwave nowhere to be seen.
• As the Protectobots transform to Defensor, a huge wave of energy is shown (for no real reason).
• Bruticus's gun disappears from his hand between shots as he runs to the cannon.
• As Megatron orders Bruticus to fire the disruptor, his waist controls are colored in reverse (blue on the left and red on the right). This is corrected a few seconds later.
• As B.O.T. gains control of the disruptor, Megatron is far to the right of the other Decepticons, but a few shots later Soundwave and Ramjet are right behind him.
• Just before Soundwave is hit, he randomly lifts his left leg in the air.
• When the kids are watching B.O.T. on Teletraan's screen, the disruptor is no longer pointing to the left as it was before, and B.O.T. — who is supposed to be working the controls behind it — is now visible in front of it.

Rhino DVD release

The Kid Rhino release of this episode has the following differences from the original broadcast version, due to their use of incomplete film masters:

• When asking Mr. Robbins about lasers, Martin is visible on-screen speaking his question. The original broadcast master instead used an alternate take where we don't see Martin asking his question, the shot instead cutting to and remaining on the teacher for the duration of Martin's line, possibly in an attempt to reduce the screentime of the students' recycled character designs (further details in The surreal world of "B.O.T."). This short sequence was not replaced with the as-broadcast footage for the Shout! Factory DVD release.
• During the final battle, there is a shot that shows a wall behind Megatron and Soundwave as they face down Hot Spot in the middle of the desert. For the broadcast episode, the error was removed by deleting the entire shot and replacing it with reused footage of Gears and Wheeljack taken from about twenty seconds earlier in the episode (when Gears instructs Wheeljack to use his gyro-inhibitor). The end result is that it appears Gears is shouting the line Hot Spot delivers from offscreen. This short sequence was also not replaced with the as-broadcast footage for the Shout! Factory DVD release.

Continuity errors

The Combaticons unveil their new routine as the Polyhex Cowbots cheerleaders.

Megatron? Did you just build yet another giant immobile cannon? Seriously dude?

"I assure you, there is zero chance of this coming back to bite us!"

• Argh.
• In the opening scene, why didn't the Combaticons just combine into Bruticus right away, rather than transforming to vehicles, driving down the street for like two seconds, and then combining?
• Did Defensor really not see Swindle struggling out of the wreckage right in front of him?
• Swindle goes to El Presidente to buy parts to repair the other Combaticons. The next time we see them, he's sold the Combaticon parts. We can only presume that El Presidente made him a better offer than his original plan.
• As much fuss as Megatron makes over how much he wants Bruticus back, he sure doesn't act like it:
  • Why does Megatron put a bomb in Swindle's head? If it goes off, he loses Bruticus for good.
  • Why does Megatron have only Swindle go looking for the lost personality component?
  • Fifteen hours seems like an impossibly tight deadline to track down dozens or hundreds of parts scattered all over the world (including the Middle East and Russia), retrieve them, reassemble them into complex high-tech robots, AND still have time left over to track down Brawl-B.O.T.
• How did Swindle know exactly where to find each and every Combaticon component across the globe once he sold them to El Presidente?
• Why was Brawl’s personality component in the “leftover” pile deposited at the junkyard? You’d think unscrupulous foreign General guys would want to pay top dollar for the brain of one of the most sophisticated war machines Earth has ever seen, if only to reverse-engineer it.
• When Swindle goes to the Soviet Army base to get the parts back, the Red Army soldiers shooting at him have PPS submachine guns, which were fazed out by the 1960s. They should instead have either AK47 Assault Rifles (Caliber 7.62 x39mm) or the lighter caliber version they fielded the 1970s onward the AK74 Assault Rifle (Caliber 5.45 x 39mm).
• Just because Brawl is out of commission, the Combaticons have to form a robot-pyramid before becoming Bruticus. Why can't the other four just float up to their correct spots, like usual?
• The kids don't seem to recognize what Transformers are, but by this point in the series, they're internationally recognized, there are holidays and tributes to them, etc. Despite this, they seem to instantly accept the existence of Transformers.
• Superhuman Elise:
  • When B.O.T. is first activated, Elise is forcefully flung off the ladder by its arm. Somehow, she lands with only a soft thud and no real injuries.
• The Autobots seem to initially not understand what a high school is. This is in spite of the fact that they have been on Earth for a couple of years now and are friends with 3 school-aged humans, at least two of which (Carly and Chip) we know have a formal education.
• How did Swindle get above the Autobots on the way up? And how'd he get past them on the way down again?
• "Only Defensor can stand against Bruticus," says Optimus Prime... apparently forgetting that Superion did quite well against him just a few episodes back. And there's Omega Supreme, too.
• Why did the Autobots do nothing while the Decepticons set up a gigantic cannon right outside their headquarters? They don't pop up and start shooting until the cannon is in place and Bruticus is assembled.
• The Autobots basically give up trying to beat the Decepticons, choosing to hide behind Defensor's force field. When the force field gives out, it would have been game over for the 'bots, if it weren't for Elise and the psycho twins.
• It's never really specified why Megatron specifically needs Bruticus to fire the cannon. If it's a size thing, he also has Devastator and Menasor. The size thing is debatable because the cannon has a human-scaled control panel on it. Oy.
• On that note, the human-level control panel has a great big button clearly marked "Over Load" in English. Why did he install that?
  • No, really, why?
• The disruptor cannon is supposed to be powerful enough to obliterate Autobot Headquarters and knock Earth's moon out of its orbit. When it hits several of the Decepticons, it just knocks them into the air.
• Bruticus didn't notice B.O.T. fiddling with the controls right there in front of him?
• This episode was made.

The surreal world of "B.O.T."

• Argh.

Me an' my friends are Jem girls, especially Jimmy "The Legbreaker" Cianciulli!

"The medals? This one is for being evil. This one is for having an accent. This one, for beard-growing. This one, a reward for having the most medals."

• Mr. Robbins's class is made up of a very odd collection of students. The least odd are the two women who are just recolored character models of Jerrica and Kimber Benton from Jem, Hasbro's then-current cartoon-advertised foray into girls' fashion dolls. To the left of "Jerrica" is the recoloured character model of Ernie Sly, the henchman from the short-lived Sunbow series Bigfoot And The Muscle Machines. Towards the back, however, appear to be thugs in business suits.
• The classroom itself appears to be huge in the initial shot. And why don't the desks have table tops? Only one girl is taking notes, holding a bunch of paper in her lap. There are no backpacks to be seen. And as Roland and Martin walk out, there's only an arch in front of them (with no actual doors attached to it!).
• The class, by the way, lasts for about two minutes before the bell rings.
• "El Presidente" apparently just holds court on a docked ship in a port somewhere, selling missiles to whoever walks in the door.
• The teens completely fail to notice a hundred-story building that is almost completely engulfed in flames and surrounded by emergency vehicles until they hear somebody fifty stories up call for help.
• Groove claims to use liquid nitrogen to put out the fire. Liquid nitrogen evaporates at -198 °C (-320 °F), so it would completely boil away the second it hits the atmosphere.^[2] On top of that, liquid nitrogen is not pink. (In fairness, virtually no episode of the cartoon portrayed this accurately — see also "Divide and Conquer", "Quest for Survival", and "Triple Takeover".)
• Streetwise catches the two falling window-washers with his metal arms after they've fallen about fifty stories, and somehow they're not splattered all over him. Remember, kids: If anything besides the ground breaks your fall, you'll be just fine!
• Three high school kids can build a walking, fully articulated robot out of junk bits and Brawl's brain overnight that is stronger and smarter than the Autobots. (The latter would be a little more believable if it weren't for the "Brawl's brain" part.)
• "B.O.T." stands for Biotronic Operational Telecommunicator, as Martin spends several long minutes explaining to us. Even though this is supposed to describe what it does, at no point in the episode does B.O.T. ever communicate anything remotely, nor is he biomechanical.
• The high school's computer is astounding. It is exceedingly and hugely sci-fi in design, plus, how the kids were able to use it to send an SOS to the Autobots over the phone is... magic or something.
• Autobots are weaker than kitchenware: Gears carries a blaster that was made to injure or kill alien beings made entirely of metal, but it can't shoot through a pot lid.
• Similarly, B.O.T. somehow knocks over Gears, Ironhide and Bumblebee with a tray full of corn!
• Benjamin Franklin Pierce High School packs its hallways with some seriously heavy furniture — somehow it's heavy enough that Gears can't break through a stack of it.
• There is a fully functional elevator within a building that just suffered a massive fire. Shouldn't the power be shut off? Speaking of which, a wrecked building next to a high school seems like trouble. Shouldn't it be boarded up, surrounded by security tape and guarded?
• The fully functional elevator appears to function well despite having a broken cable or two. Martin also spends an awfully long time just watching B.O.T. tearing up the cables.
• The speech synthesizer is "rewired" so that instead of "synthesizing and transmitting," it "receives and decodes". And this somehow lets the kids listen in on a conversation being held in the undersea Decepticon base... yeah, when this can almost be considered one of the episode's more plausible elements, something is very, very wrong.
• The entire front of the Protectobots' headquarters just rotates up to let them depart. Wouldn't a simple garage door have sufficed? What if someone's walking down the sidewalk when this happens? Smack!
• Apparently Roland and Martin carry duct tape around with them. Here, they use it to tape a girl's mouth shut. Who knows what they use it for the rest of the time!

Trivia

You think high school teachers get paid too much? This poor guy proves that you are so, so wrong.

And on that jovial note, we end Season 2. See you in the theaters this summer, kids, where we'll all die abrupt, violent deaths!

• Argh.
• This episode introduces the most loathsome Transformers characters ever, Roland and Martin. Boosting a laser to a level that could grievously injure or kill someone as a prank, the misogynistic duct-taping of Elise's mouth and constantly dragging her places against her will, and a general smarmy smugness level that makes Starscream seem humble.
• This episode was lampooned at the BotCon 2006 MSTF presentation, and as far as the writers are concerned, it is the single dumbest episode in the entirety of Transformers animation.
• It is also possibly the worst advertisement for the combiner teams possible. Bruticus is destroyed with a single shot from Defensor, and later stumbles around like a concussed baby as the Autobots shoot at him. Defensor's force field is rendered utterly pointless as the Decepticons just wait for it to run out (no more than 20 seconds), then he too is blasted to bits with ease.
  • That being said, the early part of the episode is a great advertisement for Swindle individually and features some excellent character moments for him (including his rather humorous line about Brawl's missing personality component). Every cloud has a silver lining, eh?
• This is one of the most device-laden episodes, featuring no less than the orbit disruptor cannon, "Soundwave's new device", the school's overpowered laser, a brain-bomb, Brawl's personality doohickey, the eponymous human-built robot, the kids' locator device, and the speech synthesizer.
• Production-wise, it seems a bit odd to have three Season One Autobots respond to the kids' SOS, rather than showcasing the brand-new combiner team who would otherwise seem to be the spotlight buy-my-toy characters of the episode (this is even flagged up in the episode itself, when the kids try to CALL the Protectobots for help!) The cause is presumably the same last-minute shoehorning that got the Protectobots into "The Revenge of Bruticus".
• The original script's cast list for the episode notes that the "junkyard operator" is a spy, and that the only other thing we learn about him is that he gets taken away by the "Federal Authorities". Oh, and he has no lines.^[3] This bizarre plot twist obviously didn't make it into the final draft, but really, what's one more wad of nonsense at this point?
• This was the last episode of season two. Can you imagine if this was the last episode of The Transformers ever?
• Good God, I need a stiff drink.

Foreign localization

French

• Title (European French broadcast): "Les derniers exploits" ("The Latest Exploits")
• Title (European French DVD release): "B.O.T"
• Title (Canadian French broadcast): "Le B.O.T"
• Original airdate: ?

• For some reason, Defensor's line "Call sanitation... There's junk all over the street" is replaced by him telling the civilans "What is all this junk cluttering the streets? Did you see that?". Moreover, he uses "tu", meaning he is talking to one particular person.
• While dubbing the middle eastern men group, we can hear Francis Lax among them, making a well-known French joke ("Quand je vois ça, jerrycan", pun with jerrycan/je ricane, "When I see this, I chuckle").
• Martin explains that the robot will be called "Télécommunicator Opérationnel Biotronique", and that the three first letters T.O.B. make B.O.T. if we reverse them, and that BOT is the second syllable of "Robot".
• After the conversation in the Ark between Optimus Prime, Gears and Ironhide, the logo transition does not show. We hear it, but we only see the frozen shot of Optimus Prime's face.
• For the first time, Brawl's name is pronounced in the dub. Swindle makes us this honor.
• For some reason, Ironhide adds "My battery is in the water" after B.O.T. made him pass through the ground.
• Megatron's line "I'll melt you down for scrap tutonium!" is dubbed by "I'll melt you down tonight and you'll end your career as a teaspoon!".
• Name-dodging:

• Swindle's line "Watch it, Brawl!" is replaced by "Watch it, buddy!".
• Roland's phrase "We've never seen that one before, have we?" is replaced by "That is becoming a trending question", answering Elise's "What was that?". Then, instead of naming Swindle, Bumblebee simply says that he's a Combaticon, an accomplice of the Decepticons.
• Optimus Prime does not name Ironhide but simply asks him to contact the Protectobots. That is strange since Ironhide used to have a custom name in previous episodes, "Irok".
• Optimus Prime's line "Gears, Wheeljack, take the left flank!" is dubbed by "You will attack them from the left flank!".

• Missing lines:

• Hot Spot's line is missing as he waters the building.
• The dialogue between Starscream and Streetwise is missing as they fight.
• Roland's line "Okay, you got him there, but can you make him do what we want?" is missing. Elise starts the conversation with her next line.

Italian

• Title (dub 1): "Giovani inventori" ("Young Inventors")
• Original airdate: ?

• "Biotronic Operational Telecommunicator" is translated as "Telecomunicatore Biotronico Operativo", but Martin still says that the first letters spells "B.O.T.", while it should be "T.B.O." (which would obviously loose the similarity to "bot").
• Megatron's line: «Get off of me!» (talking to Brawl) is not present in this dub, so you can see him moving his mouth without saying anything.

• Title (dub 2): "B.O.T."
• Original airdate: ?

Japanese

• Title: "Bruticus no Fukkatsu" (ブルーティカスの復活, "The Revival of Bruticus")
• Original airdate: September 5, 1986

Mandarin

• Title: "Pàng Wá " (胖娃, "Fat Boy")
• Original airdate: ?

Brazilian Portuguese

• Title: "Fuga do Perigo" ("Escape from the Danger")
• Original airdate: ?

Home video releases

LaserDisc

1995 — Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers — Megatron Set (Takara) — Japanese audio only.
1999 — The Transformers — Decepticon Edition (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.

DVD

2001 — The Transformers — DVD Box 2 (Pioneer LDC) — Japanese audio only.
2003 — The Original Transformers — Season 2 Part 2 (Rhino Entertainment)
2003 — The Original Transformers — Season 2 Part 2: Vol. 8 (Rhino Entertainment)
2004 — Transformers — Season 2 Part 2 (Metrodome)
2004 — Transformers — Collection 3: Series 2.2 (Madman Entertainment)
2004 — Transformers — Volume 15 (Déclic Images) — European French audio only.
2006 — Transformers — The Complete Generation One Collection (Metrodome)
2007 — The Transformers — Complete Collection (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — Transformers — Volume 06: Stagione Due Parte Quarta (Medianetwork Communication) — English and Italian audio.
2009 — Transformers — Season Two: Part Two (Metrodome)
2009 — The Transformers — Complete Collection: Decepticon Edition (Madman Entertainment)
2009 — The Transformers — The Complete Series: 25th Anniversary "Matrix of Leadership" Collection (Shout! Factory)
2009 — The Transformers — Season Two, Volume Two: 25th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)
2011 — The Transformers — The Complete Original Series (Shout! Factory)
2014 — The Transformers — Season Two, Volume Two: 30th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)
2014 — Transformers — The Classic Animated Series (Metrodome)

External links

• Movie Dossier at The Cybertron Chronicle
• Episode dialogue script
• Episode model sheets

References