Windmill (G1)

Windmill is an Autobot Action Master Elite from the Generation 1 continuity family.

Hi, I don't look like anybody.

Windmill personally designed and implemented the radar systems in Autobot HQ. An air defense technology specialist, and apparently a bit of a tech-geek, he enjoys the challenge of turning scrap metal into new laser weapons in his spare time. He's equipped with "kinetic intelligence" that combined with his "cyber-optic perception modem implant" somehow lets him track enemy forces anywhere in the galaxy. He still holds a grudge against the Decepticons for destroying his laboratory back on Cybertron. Windmill is extremely emphatic about the quality of his radar systems.^[1]

Fiction

The Transformers cartoon continuity

3H comics

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Following the destruction of Unicron and the Autobots retaking Cybertron, Windmill was installed as the captain of the Sojourner's Passage, an exploration vessel with numerous scientists aboard tasked with establishing deep-space reconnaissance posts to keep an eye out for other threats, as well expanding the borders of Cybertronian science.

When the ship arrived at the planet Archa Nine, it was blasted out of orbit by a powerful burst of energy from the planet's surface. Windmill, like most of the crew, did not survive the crash. Betrayal

2005 IDW continuity

Windmill was part of the fight against the Ammonite army on Cybertron. Black Planet

Wings Universe

Windmill was hanging out at the Galadria Space Bridge Outpost in the Delta Prysmos Sector when a pirate ship appeared overhead and dropped a bomb on him and several other passersby. Dude can't catch a break. Hoist the Flag

Toys

The Transformers

Saddest helicopter ever.

• Windmill (Action Master Elite, 1991)

• Accessories: 2-part rotor blade
• Known designers: Takio Ejima (TakaraTomy), Masakatsu Saito (concept artist)

Released in the seventh year of the European-market Transformers toyline (the first year following the end of the US line), Windmill is an Action Master Elite, the only variety of Action Masters that could actually transform into an (admittedly tenuous) alternate mode; Windmill can become a "high-impact counterstrike helicopter". Pushing in the yellow chaingun on his torso spins the small yellow socket in his left shoulder via geared gimmickry, which is where his rotor blade is mounted in copter mode.

Aside from the spinning socket, Windmill's rotor blade can mount in the 3mm holes his hand, in the left forearm, or behind either shoulder on the back. The rotor blade itself can split in two for no discernable reason, but the resin prototype looks to have originally had 3mm posts on both blades instead of just one, which explains the two 3mm holes on Windmill's back instead of one. ^[2]

Like the other Action Master Elites, he was only released in Europe and Australasia. As such, he can command some pretty exorbitant prices for a complete, clean figure, even loose. Also like the other Elite figures, Windmill's gimmick is fragile and will break if used too often or just given enough time. So maybe don't use it.

• More information on Windmill at TFU.info

References