Gigawatt

Gigawatt is an Autobot and former Decepticon from Back to the Future (via Collaborative).

More like "Great Watt", amirite?

A repentant ex-Decepticon from a doomed alternate future, the most surprising thing about Gigawatt is the fact that he didn't join the Autobots sooner. Kind-hearted and empathetic, if a little awkward and unsure of himself, Gigawatt was just a low-ranking Decepticon number-cruncher until a crisis of conscience pushed him out of the Decepticons and into the Autobot ranks, where he now does his best to redeem himself.

When it comes to fighting Decepticons across multiple time periods or preventing damage to the timestream, there are few other Autobots quite as up to the job as Gigawatt. His DeLorean time machine alternate mode gives him the potent ability to travel to any period in history, and he's augmented with future technology that allows him to hover in place or even fly at great speeds. Aided by his human companions Marty McFly and Doc Brown, Gigawatt might be the only 'bot who can prevent Decepticon domination over Earth's past, present, and future—but is he up to the task?

Fiction

Transformers/Back to the Future

Change a hawk to a little white dove, and roll out!

Gigawatt was one of the many dormant Decepticons who had been entombed aboard the Ark when it crash-landed on Earth millions of years in the past. In the year 1984, Teletraan-1 reactivated Megatron and the other Decepticons ahead of schedule thanks to a time-travelling Rumble, who had used Doc Brown's DeLorean to travel back in time from 2015 and bring his leader online. Reactivated along with his leader, Gigawatt watched Megatron execute the still-dormant Optimus Prime and the other Autobots, then destroy the temporal duplicate of Rumble who had masterminded the whole scheme in the first place.

Without the Autobots to mount an effective resistance, Megatron quickly conquered Earth and enslaved humanity. By the year 2015, Gigawatt received the task of extracting memories from Rumble's disembodied head and analyzing the DeLorean time machine, but soon became uncomfortable with Megatron's ruthless habit of executing under-performing human coordinators. When he raised the issue with his leader, he received a warning to focus on his work or face the consequences—but Gigawatt could no longer support his leader in good conscience and instead trans-scanned the DeLorean itself in the hopes that he could travel back in time and set things right. He nearly did so but took a blast from Megatron at the last moment that damaged his new alternate mode's flux capacitor. Undaunted, Gigawatt joined up with Rodimus Prime's Autobot resistance and attempted to use his unusual new ability to benefit his new allies by traveling back to the year 1974 and stopping Rumble. However, due to his malfunctioning capacitor, he undershot his destination and instead landed in a Decepticon-ruled 1985. Transformers/Back to the Future #2

Title drops? Where we're going, we don't need title drops.

By pure chance, Gigawatt bumped into Marty McFly in Hill Valley as the human attempted to escape Starscream, and materialized just in time to save the boy from execution. Gigawatt recognized Marty from the history files, and declared that he needed his help to save the future. Transformers/Back to the Future #1 Gigawatt proved unable to defeat Starscream on his own, but received some unexpected help from the disguised Autobot Skilz, and once Starscream had been incapacitated Gigawatt took his two allies back to 2015 to meet with the Autobot resistance, where he helped get Marty up to speed on how the Decepticons had altered the timeline. Transformers/Back to the Future #2

After receiving a distress call from Doc Brown, Gigawatt joined Marty and the other members of the Autobot resistance as they headed into the ruins of Hill Valley and discovered that he had been slated for execution. Thought the Autobots urged caution, Marty impulsively leaped into the town square to save Doc and his parents and attracted the ire of the Decepticons, necessitating a full-scale battle. After rescuing Marty's parents and vanquishing Starscream and the Constructicons, the Autobots believed they'd won until the entire courthouse transformed into the enormous Decepticon warrior Watchtower. Transformers/Back to the Future #3

"Now Doc, about that design decision which put a vital and irreplaceable component made of glass right in the middle of my chest..."

As the other Autobots fought to buy time, Doc was able to repair Gigawatt's flux capacitor, but the Autobot subsequently leaped to take a shot intended for the two humans and was badly injured. Only with a last-minute boost from Skilz and Doc was he able to accelerate to the requisite eighty-eight miles per hour required for time travel; once he and Marty arrived in the year 1984, they made it to Mount St. Hilary and successfully reactivated Optimus Prime and the other Autobots before Rumble arrived first. Once they'd laid their trap, the pair ambushed Rumble and Biff Tannen and successfully ran the Decepticon and his stolen time machine off the road, but Rumble was able to easily blast the already-injured Gigawatt in the chest and fatally wounded him.

After Rumble had been defeated for good, Marty reunited with Gigawatt but was unable to prevent him from going offline. Over the next thirty years, the Autobots took custody of his body and worked to repair him with the assistance of both Doc Brown and Biff. When Marty time-travelled to 2015 to return the original DeLorean time machine to its rightful owner, Gigawatt reunited with his friend. After returning him and Skilz to the original year 1985, Gigawatt assured the smaller Autobot that they would always keep an eye on Marty. Transformers/Back to the Future #4

Toys

Collaborative

You're out of touch, I'm OUTATIME...

• Gigawatt (2020)
  • Accessories, Lighting rod/whip, "Mr. Fusion" generator, rifle

The third figure released in the Collaborative line, Gigawatt is an extensive retooling of Siege Deluxe Class Sideswipe that transforms into a heavily customized DMC DeLorean, representing the iconic vehicle from the Back to the Future film trilogy. In his vehicle mode, his gull-wing doors can open and close, plus a "lightning rod" can be added to the back to replicate the climax of the first film. He can also be converted to the hovercar mode from the first film's ending (and how it appeared in much of the second film) by adding the "Mr. Fusion" generator to the back and folding his wheels down. Being a retool of Sideswipe, he has C.O.M.B.A.T. System compatible ports on his arms, the soles of his feet, and oddly on the inside of his doors. These last two ports appear mainly to be as a way to store the lightning rod when not in use, as few other things can easily be attached there. In an undocumented feature, the upper portion of the Mr. Fusion accessory is just wide enough to fit into the ports on Gigawatt's forearms, allowing for it to be pegged in upside-down and used as a sort of watch.

Initial stock photography specimens depicted the windshield and windows as clear plastic, but the final product had these pieces in translucent dark blue; the official Transformers Facebook page said that this change had been made in response to fan complaints.^[1] The toy's license plate reads, of course, "OUTATIME," but the artwork on the back of the standard version's packaging features a license plate that says "BK2FUT2" instead. (The Walmart exclusive version features different artwork on the back of the packaging that features a regular "OUTATIME" license plate.) His license plate as drawn in Transformers/Back to the Future issue 4 reads "GIGS".

In robot mode Gigawatt displays a chest-mounted flux capacitor, as well as time circuits which display three dates, each corresponding to the time periods Doc and Marty visited in the first two movies; specifically, the time circuits read that Gigawatt is currently in 2015, has just returned from 1955, and is going to 1985, suggesting that Gigawatt's "present" is after the elderly Biff Tannen delivered the sports almanac to his younger self and before Doc and Marty visit the corrupted alternate reality where Biff is all-powerful. His knees also feature molded-in (and unpainted) flux capacitors to boot (ha ha). The lightning rod becomes a whip weapon, and the Mr. Fusion can be plugged into the back or the top of his rifle, which bears a distinct resemblance to Siege Optimus Prime's rifle, but is an all-new sculpt.

Unfortunately, opening Gigawatt's doors can chip the painted black stripe that crosses them. Additionally, during transformation the back of Gigawatt's head can erase from existence rub away the paint on the lowermost set of time circuit dates. Some units also have the issue of the Mr. Fusion not pegging firmly into place in vehicle mode after a few times due to a combination of the short peg and hole used to attach it as well as the silver paint on the peg wearing off, making it loosen.

Gigawatt is packaged in a nostalgic Generation 1-styled box in vehicle mode, much like the contemporaneous Vintage G1 line and Ectotron. Gigawatt's robot-mode package art matches Marty McFly's pose from the film's iconic poster, which is carried further by the toy itself standing in for the DeLorean from the poster (albeit oriented differently). The figure was released in two separate versions; the first, a Walmart-exclusive numbered edition, was put up for preorder on July 2, 2020 (and seemingly sold out within mere minutes) with added graphics on the box identifying the figure as one of a limited run of 1,985. Despite the lightning-quick sellout, this version began appearing at discount store Ross in late 2021.

A standard non-numbered version was made available through Hasbro Pulse and other "select retailers" on October 1. While the figure itself was identical to the exclusive edition, the packaging was altered beyond the omission of the number plate graphic, with a different color transition for the grid pattern on the front of the box and a completely different background image on the back of the box, and the Back to the Future 35 and Transformers logos having traded places. In July, TakaraTomy announced that they would be releasing Gigawatt as well, making it the first Collaborative product to be released in Japan. There, Gigawatt was a joint exclusive between in-house storefront TakaraTomy Mall and participating Cybertron Satellite stores. Gigawatt was released in Italy initially as a Gamestop-exclusive and then on Amazon starting from January 2021. On September 27, 2021, Gigawatt was sold exclusively through Mighty Ape in New Zealand.^[2]

Gigawatt, like many of the toy and illustrated depictions of the Back to the Future time machine to have appeared over the years, does not appear to be officially licensed by the DeLorean Motor Company, as his front grille lacks the car's iconic (and trademarked) "DMC" logo.

Notes

• Gigawatt isn't the first Transformer that turns into an unlicensed DeLorean; that honor belongs to Swindler.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Gigawatt (GIGAWATT)^[3]

References

External links

• Gigawatt at Futurepedia