Transformers: Mosaic #440 - "The Meals Of Sin"
Originally posted on December 17th, 2009
Story - Matt Marshall, Mark Kuggeleijn Art - Andrew Turnbull
deviantART | Seibertron | TFW2005 | BotTalk
wada sez: A riff on Sin City featuring Beast Wars fast food toys, with black-white-and-red art style homaging the comic by Frank Miller. The thing about the first McDonalds toys is that none of them had actual names, just descriptions on the packets: our protagonist is Under-3, a big yellow lion head that unfolds into Optimus’s robot mode, given out to children under three years of age. Older kids received one of four toys whose designs similarly stemmed from original concepts for the series, which at that point was based around the idea of returning G1 characters: Optimus Prime as a manta ray, Megatron as a beetle, Prowl as a panther (which ultimately saw release as Cheetor), and an early version of Rhinox. Blackarachnia’s Transmetal toy was exclusively available in a later McDonalds promotion (together with fellow show cast members Dinobot and Scorponok), inspiring her appearance here. “Rallnox” is a fandom name for a goofy-looking heavily-simplified Transmetal Rhinox given out at Rally’s and Checkers restaurants. Per Marshall on TFW2005: “We had the McDonalds milkshake Transformer in the first draft too, but he was cut for space :( That is Beetle getting his head kicked off in the first panel, for those of you keeping score! Also I believe that this is the first Mosaic that opens with someone getting their head kicked off.” Marshall’s remastered version of this strip from his Tales From The Matrix Keeper zine is included below.
