Name: Carnivac
Allegiance: Decepticons
Function: Hunter / Tracker
Sub-group: Pretender,
Mayhem Attack Squad,
Survivor
Timeline: Generation 1
A cunning smile is more devastating than the fiercest weapon.
Profile:
Among the Decepticons, Carnivac has a reputation as a growling, howling, mad dog destroyer. He's always smiling, his jovial nature frequently catching friends and foes off guard, lulling them into a false sense of security. But Carnivac's smile hides a sinister edge - he'll quite happily be exchanging jokes with a victim before suddenly turning and tearing out their fuel pump, before going right back to smiling and making jokes, seemingly oblivious to the abominable act he just committed. In truth, Carnivac has no ability to distinguish what is appropriate from what is inappropriate. He's got no conscience and no restraint to prevent him acting on whatever dark, violent impulse crosses his mind. Carnivac's fellow Decepticon, Snarler, is one of the few who knows why Carnivac is like this - he's partly responsible. Long ago, Carnivac was a noble warrior with an unrivalled sense of ethics. His reputation for ethical conduct, in fact, was so great that even Autobot lawmen like Ultra Magnus respected Carnivac. After a mission gone wrong, Carnivac was stranded on a distant world, together with Catilla, who at the time was a Decepticon, and a squadron of Autobots. Realising their only hopes of survival lay in working together, and owing a warrior's debt to the leader of the Autobot squadron, Carnivac, Catilla, and the Autobots set aside their differences, and Catilla joined the Autobots. For fraternising with the enemy, Carnivac was marked as a traitor, which led to several confrontations between Carnivac and Decepticons who were formerly Carnivac's brothers-in-arms. Although Carnivac weathered many Decepticon assaults, he eventually found himself in the crosshairs of Vos and Kaon of the Decepticon Justice Division. Rather than allow Carnivac to be executed, Snarler proposed an alternative punishment: lobotomization. His cerebral circuitry permanently and irrevocably damaged, Carnivac now acts with complete, reckless, violent abandon - his noble past and ethics long forgotten. Some might look on Carnivac's fate and feel pity, but Carnivac doesn't care; he's happy as he is.
Pretender shell:
Wolf mode:
Author notes:
Writing Carnivac, I wanted to square off the two competing versions of the character: the G1 profile that made Carnivac a monster who'll kill you as soon as look at you, and the noble Decepticon-turned-Survior who teamed up with Springer and the Wreckers. The way I wrote Carnivac was to expand on a line in the Dreamwave profile that suggests Carnivac suffered some kind of brain damage in the past. In my mind, the noble wolf Carnivac is the character's past, and the damage to the cerebral circuits mentioned in Dreamwave is his punishment for deserting the Decepticons. I even chose to work in the Decepticon Justice Division as the bad guys responsible for Carnivac's condition - specifically Vos and Kaon, since their talents would lend themselves to a lobotomy.
It does make me wonder what kind of pull Snarler has in the Decepticon army to call off the DJD when they're on a death hunt, though! He probably convinced them that leaving Carnivac alive as a shadow of his former self would be a more effective warning to the rest of the Decepticons than killing him.
Toys of Transformers Generation 1 Carnivac
Transformers Generation 1 Carnivac
Generation 1 Carnivac is so far the only version of the character. He's a Pretender beast, versions of the Pretenders which used animals instead of humans or bipedal monsters for the shells. It's a really cool concept, and I like the sculpt on Carnivac's wolf shell. No doubt about it, if there were an updated Carnivac, I would want the alternate mode to be based on the pretender shell, maybe with a few tweaks inspired by the inner robot.
The inner robot is of the time, it's very simplistic and doesn't have a huge amount of sculpted detail, but the design with the robot head inside of the wolf's mouth is quirky and gives him a bit of an identity. Again, I could see an update of the design having a bit more movement in this area, potentially having the top of the wolf head sliding down a bit to make the robot head a bit distinct from the rest of the body. A Beast Wars styled update would be ideal. But if that never happens, it doesn't matter - the original toy does a great job.
More information on Transformers Generation 1 Carnivac at TFW2005
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Transformers Generation 1 toys in my collection.
