Jazz

Jazz is Optimus Prime's right-hand man and head of Special Operations, and the counterweight to Prowl's rigidity: where Prowl plans, Jazz improvises. He is the Autobot the ranks actually like, an unapologetic enthusiast for Earth music, slang and pop culture who works human idiom into his speech more fluently than any of his colleagues. His bio quote, "Do it with style or don't bother doing it," is both the appeal and the problem.

He is competent from the first frame. In "More than Meets the Eye, Part 1" Jazz pilots the Ark, is thrown from his seat by asteroid turbulence during the Decepticon attack, and after the 1984 reawakening is the lieutenant who assembles and calls out the task force sent to the burning oil rig. Later episodes lean on his arsenal of showman's weapons rather than raw force, which is exactly where the character's flaw shows. In "Enter the Nightbird" his sound-and-light display fails when Nightbird destroys his speakers with throwing stars. In "Kremzeek!" he is the energy creature's very first victim, circuits scrambled before the Autobots even understand what they are dealing with. Style is a real tactic for Jazz, and it fails him about as often as it works.

His late-series treatment is one of G1's odder production stories. Jazz survives the 1986 film aboard Moonbase One and inside Unicron, then drifts through season three appearing repeatedly with essentially nothing to do and no lines, an unusual position for a character whose whole appeal was his voice.

Special Operations lead: infiltration, improvisation and command of a task force at short notice. His loadout is built around disorientation rather than damage - a photon rifle, a full-spectrum flash and an onboard sound-and-light system loud and bright enough to stun opponents - and he is a superb driver in his Porsche 935 alternate mode. Limits: he is not heavily armoured or especially powerful, his showpiece equipment is fragile (Nightbird disabled his speakers with thrown blades), and he is as susceptible to exotic attacks as anyone, being the first Autobot dropped by Kremzeek.

• Optimus Prime: his commander, who uses Jazz as second-in-command and troubleshooter rather than a line officer.
• Prowl: the deliberate contrast - Prime's military strategist versus Prime's improviser.
• Cliffjumper: his companion on Moonbase One and inside Unicron in the 1986 film.
• Blaster: the other Autobot who takes Earth music seriously; in "Blaster Blues" Jazz is the only one who thinks the heavy metal blasting through headquarters has a good beat.

Marvel's Jazz gets far more substantial material, including the Man of Iron adventure and a mission to break Optimus Prime out of Decepticon custody, and he is taken offline by the Underbase-empowered Starscream rather than surviving intact. He is later rebuilt in a Pretender shell and fights through the Matrix Quest and the final battle with Unicron, a whole second career the cartoon never gives him.

Survives the 1986 film, escaping Unicron's interior, and continues into season three, defending Cybertron alongside Rodimus Prime in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 5" - but appears only sporadically and silently thereafter.

• Bob Budiansky's preliminary spelling of the name was 'Jazzz', with three z's; his early character profile also gave him the nickname 'Coolsville', which was cut before publication.
• Voiced by Scatman Crothers, who is widely credited with popularising 'ginormous' by using it to describe Unicron in the 1986 film - although the word predates him by decades in British informal use.
• Jazz appears several times in season three despite having no toy on shelves at the time, something otherwise true only of Optimus Prime and a handful of probable animation errors. He is given no lines in those appearances.
• Porsche refused to license the 935 for the Alternators line, reportedly on the grounds that Transformers are war machines that do not represent the Porsche lifestyle; the slot was eventually filled by a Mazda RX-8 released under Jazz's Japanese name, Meister.
• The original 1984 toy's stickers deliberately misspell his real-world sponsor as 'Martinii', and the mould was later reused for the Japan-exclusive Stepper, reissued by Hasbro as Ricochet.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• Fans often claim Jazz's reduced, wordless season three presence was a role cut short by Scatman Crothers's death; TFWiki notes no real evidence supports this, and the Japanese-produced Headmasters gave him lines and screen time regardless.
• Marvel takes him offline during the Underbase event and rebuilds him as a Pretender; the cartoon has him survive 1986 unchanged.