Pothole
From Transformers Wiki
- Pothole was to have been an Autobot from the Generation 2 portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Pothole (or possibly Belzone or Light Speed) was to have been an Autobot from Cybertron, possibly with very fast wheels. Dare we say... superfast?
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Fiction
Animated cartoon continuity
Rosanna's song "The Iron Baron", a tribute to Grandus, described him as "seeking answers, like Belzone in the Void". Transformers Animated: The AllSpark Almanac II
Ask Vector Prime
Vector Prime stated that he was unaware of any Cybertronian named Belzone, and while he was familiar with versions of Pothole and Lightspeed from various realities, none resembled the yellow-and-blue 'bot he was being shown, who he identified as simply an early deco of Ironhide. Ask Vector Prime, 21 September 1995
Notes
- "Pothole" appeared as a packaging mock-up featuring a yellow and blue Power Master Ironhide with the subgroup "Superfast Wheels" (actually an early working name for the Go-Bots) during the Hasbro presentation at BotCon 1994. His existence was captured on an unofficial fan film (seen at right) documenting the 1994 and 1995 conventions, where he was rediscovered years later.
- Aside from Pothole, a packaging mock-up featuring a yellow and blue Power Master Ironhide also exists bearing the name "Belzone", while a mock-up for a Real Action Pop-Ups 3-D Transformer Trading Card featuring the same art has the name "Light Speed".
- In 2014, an isolated view of the packaging artwork for Pothole/Belzone/Light Speed/whoever was printed in Legacy: The Art of Transformers Packaging (seen at top of this page).
- Ask Vector Prime consulted with Hasbro to uncover the mystery behind this figure. Mock packaging such as seen here is created for "sales meetings, hallway displays, and scale mock-ups prior to copy being ready. We have a long hallway that is set like store shelves. It's a sales display. All products are comp [handmade] packages. We swap it out twice a year. We sell to retail partners well in advance of [the] final toys being ready and before final packages are ready. To overcome that we make hundreds of dummy packages. They look right from a distance but copy details are Greeked in often." This would indicate there was never any intention to release a toy named Pothole at the time.
