Wildbreak

Wildbreak is a Decepticon Stunticon from the Robots in Disguise portion of the Aligned continuity family.

Has Breakdown's colors and complains about having a delicate constitution. We've found Knock Out and Breakdown's kid at last!

There are leaders and followers, and Wildbreak most definitely fits into the latter category. Wildbreak is not the brightest sparkplug in the engine, and mostly just goes along with his frequent partner-in-crime Drag Strip, whose grandiose schemes and bluster more than make up for Wildbreak's skittishness and lack of initiative. Even though Drag Strip sometimes gets frustrated with his lunkheaded partner, Wildbreak makes himself useful by projecting a field that can throw enemies right off their feet.

When the heat's on, the two of them can combine into Dragbreak; unsurprisingly, Wildbreak lets his partner do most of the talking when they're united. The two of them can combine further with their fellow Stunticons to form Menasor.

Fiction

2015 Robots in Disguise cartoon

Voice actor: Dave Wittenberg (English), Yvan Reekmans (French), Karlo Hackenberger (German), Massimo Di Benedetto (Italian), David Allende (Latin-American Spanish)

"Drag Strip! Remember your blood pressure, remember your cholesterol, remember the Alamo!"

Wildbreak joined Drag Strip in trying to track down some Cybertronian tech so they could get themselves into Motormaster's good graces. They were led to the human city of West Rock where they broke into a cache of Cybertronian loot. They were packing up the loot to leave when Bumblebee's team turned up and on hearing they had a Dinobot, Wildbreak immediately fled. The two Cons eventually managed to give the Autobots the slip, but discovered that Strongarm and Grimlock had shut off the only bridge accessing the city. The pair merged into Dragbreak to fight the Autobots atop a parking building — though initially successful, they were ultimately defeated when Bumblebee dropped the roof on them. When the damaged parking structure partially collapsed, they were able to make good their escape. Bee Cool

Wildbreak was hanging out at the abandoned base Motormaster was using as a hideout when Drag Strip returned with a pilfered Gravitic Adjuster. His overly-gleeful teammate used the weapon on him as a demonstration of its power, until Motormaster called him off. The Great Divide

Wildbreak, along with the other Stunticons (minus Motormaster), entered the Crown City Grand Prix, aiming for one of them to win and be crowned "Ruler of the Roads," as part of their campaign to conquer Earth’s highways. Drag Strip and Wildbreak worked together for the majority of the race, and were forced to fend off Strongarm (who was stuck in Bumblebee’s body). However, Drag Strip’s ambitions of winning the race with Wildbreak as his backup were thwarted when the Autobots redirected two of Heatseeker’s missiles back at the Stunticons, allowing Crasher Casey to remain undefeated. Disordered Personalities

After having some fun chasing off a human police car, Wildbreak and the other Stunticons were confronted by Motormaster, who accused them of taking too long to conquer Earth’s roads. The Golden Knight

Wildbreak was with the other Stunticons, pushing human cars off the highway, when they were passed by a maglev train. Wildbreak described the train as "beautiful," but Motormaster was outraged that a vehicle existed that was faster than him, and ordered the Stunticons to steal its power source. They broke into the trainyard to follow his orders, but while they were trying to remove the engine from one of the maglev trains, Grimlock accidentally ran into the control tower, causing the train to start moving at high speed with the Stunticons, Drift and Sideswipe along for the ride. During the ensuing battle, Wildbreak was eventually shoved overboard. Later, he tried to explain to Motormaster that they "gave it their best shot," earning him a hit from Drag Strip. Railroad Rage

Wildbreak and the other Stunticons were on the receiving end of an angry monologue from Motormaster on their team’s failure to defeat the Autobots. After they ran a tanker truck off the road to bait the Autobots to their location, Wildbreak joined the Stunticons in combining into Menasor, taking his spot as the combiner’s left arm. Knocking the Autobots off a cliff, Menasor went to attack a human military base, intending to turn its meteor deflection system on the Autobots. However, his plan was thwarted when the Autobots managed to form their own combiner, turning the meteor deflection dish on him instead and sending him flying into the distance. Combine and Conquer

Wildbreak went with Slashmark to search for Cybertronian technology, and ended up stumbling upon the Autobots’ base. The two of them observed the Autobots departing into space, and reported this to Motormaster, who decided the Stunticons should follow them up there. After a brief space battle, the Stunticons’ tech detector led them to the same cache the Autobots were after, on the surface of the moon. Once there, Motormaster ordered Wildbreak and the other Stunticons to finish off the Autobots while he investigated the cache, but they were too curious to find out what was in it and followed him instead. They promptly combined into Menasor, broke into the cache, and claimed the plasma thermal accelerator module therein. With the help of this upgrade, Menasor knocked the Autobots back and attempted to destroy Prime Force One, but they combined into Ultra Bee and destroyed the plasma module, allowing them to defeat him. The five Decepticons were then put into stasis pods and taken by Optimus Prime back to Cybertron. Moon Breaker

Toys

Robots in Disguise (2015)

He loved to do the Wildbreak.

• Menasor (Team Combiner, 2017)

Released as part of the Team Combiner set along with Motormaster, Dragstrip, Heatseeker, and Slashmark, Wildbreak is a Scout-sized figure that transforms from vehicle to robot in just a few simple steps, sharing a similar transformation with Sideswipe. In robot mode, he has very limited articulation. He can convert into an arm (either left or right thanks to his pivoting thumb) for any Team Combiner set, although he usually forms Menasor's left arm. Unlike his mold mate Dragstrip, his vehicle spoiler is not glued, making the piece easily removable.

Unlike the Crash Combiner toy below, Wildbreak features the correct design from his appearance in the TV show.

"Watch me trick Dragstrip out of his Pebbles!"

• Decepticon Dragstrip & Wildbreak (Crash Combiner, 2017)

Released as part of the third wave of the Combiner Force Crash Combiners subline, Wildbreak is a roughly Scout-class sized figure that changes from his futuristic F1 race car with a combiner chest that doubles as his spoiler into a robot in 5 simple steps, sharing the same transformation scheme with Bumblebee. His individual robot mode only has limited articulation on his shoulders. He also has a little green arrow above the connector on the vehicle back indicating where to crash him to combine with other figures. A 5mm post hole on top of his vehicle mode can accommodate a compatible accessory or Weaponizer Minicon, though he cannot use it in his individual robot mode. Wildbreak cannot convert back into vehicle mode in a very straightforward manner without adjusting the front wings first.

Wildbreak comes with his partner-in-crime Drag Strip and is intended to combine with him to form Dragbreak's upper torso. Connecting them to each other will activate Wildbreak's automatic transformation, but Drag Strip must be converted manually. He can also combine with any other Crash Combiner figure to form a random Combiner. Due to how the pieces are molded, Dragbreak can flip out Wildbreak's arms as a switchblade longer sub-arm.

There appears to have been an error at some point in the development of this two-pack wherein Dragstrip and Wildbreak's colors have been swapped, giving Wildbreak not only Dragstrip's body and show-innacurate role of torso in their combined form, but also the more 'traditional' Dragstrip vehicle mode (which is still inaccurate to Dragstrip's vehicle mode in the show).

Notes

• With Drag Strip being a broad spoof of Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden character from The Honeymooners, Wildbreak's characterization is inspired by Ralph Kramden's friend Ed Norton, played by Art Carney. If that doesn't mean anything to you, then the two sitcom characters were also the inspiration for Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble from The Flintstones.
• Wildbreak's name makes him seem like a stand-in for classic Generation 1 Stunticon Wildrider, given the way it amalgamates Wildrider's original moniker with his trademark-mandated alternate name "Brake-Neck." In all other respects, though, he's really more of an expy for Generation 1 Breakdown (whose name has already been taken by another "Aligned" continuity character), sharing his skittish personality, and his power to generate disruptive vibrational fields.