Seeker (body-type)

The term Seeker refers to Decepticon jet troopers who share Starscream's body-type but with different colors or minor variations in wing and head shapes. This is most clearly and commonly known from Generation 1, but any franchise with a Starscream is almost inevitably going to feature a similar "family" of redecoed jet-formers.

The word "Seeker" hovered a long time in a strange gray area between official and fan-coined terms. It seems to have originated in extremely obscure official or semi-official writing, but somehow became widely used among fans. (See below.) In 2002, the term appeared in dialog from the first issue of The War Within from Dreamwave Productions, making it truly official after years of controversy. It has subsequently appeared in many other places such as on toy packaging, books, and in other stories.

Originals
In Generation 1, there were six Seekers originally given names and characterization: Starscream, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Thrust, Dirge, and Ramjet. The first three, the season one Seekers, had animation designs done primarily by Shōhei Kohara.

Coneheads
The last three Generation 1 Seekers are usually designated as "Conehead" Seekers by fans for their distinctive transformation that leaves the jet nosecone pointing up. The animation models for the Conehead Seekers were designed by Floro Dery.

And all the rest
In the Generation 1 cartoon there were large numbers of generic, unnamed Seekers in addition to the named characters. They came in a wide variety of colors, from extra duplicates of Starscream or one of the other named guys, to original and distinct looks all their own. They seem to have formed the bulk of the Decepticon forces on Cybertron, as well as among Megatron's initial troops on Earth. They gradually became less common, perhaps as a result of casualties... or the cartoon's production team becoming more careful, or more-likely having more "actual" Decepticons to work with as the toy line expanded. (Extra Reflector units and alternate color cassettes were also used along with these Seekers, early on, to fill out the comparatively thin Decepticon ranks.)

These unsung Seekers would be recognized years later in Heroes of Cybertron toy form as the Air Warriors (all using the common lavender/white color scheme). Soon afterward, the Dreamwave Generation One comic series introduced an army of similarly-colored Seeker drones.



Around the same time, another background Seeker was also given a new life through toys and Dreamwave comics: Sunstorm. This yellow-orange Seeker was a nameless background character in the first episode of the Transformers cartoon, until e-Hobby turned him into an exclusive toy (available with an Autobot also based on a first-episode cameo). Now Hasbro can't get enough of him. Another generic Seeker was given attention: Acid Storm. Like Sunstorm before him, he was based on one of the background Seekers from the original cartoon, in this case the episode "Divide and Conquer" (see below).

Unnamed Seekers with their own distinct color schemes appear in the following episodes as noted below:


 * "More than Meets the Eye, Part 1"
 * In the "return to Iacon" scene on Cybertron, five to seven Seekers appear (wide shots depict a group of five, but the close-ups give us seven distinct color schemes.) The first three are (as far as colors are concerned) Skywarp, Starscream (with a deeper voice), and Thundercracker. In a following shot, we see a lavender Seeker with a flamethrower pack, a medium-blue Seeker with white trim, holding his arm gun like a rifle, a yellow/orange Seeker who would become Sunstorm... and lurking in the back, a very dark-blue Seeker with white trim barely visible, but there if you look.


 * "More than Meets the Eye, Part 2" and "Part 3"
 * The mother lode of unnamed Seekers. Especially if you like variations of blue and lavender. Crowds of them appear at the start of the final battle. At least six different Seekers of various shades and decos of blue and at least four of various shades and decos of lavender (two with black tail fins in jet mode, two with white). Also, a blue variant (seen in the picture above) missing his wings and shoulder vents appears in "Part 3".


 * "Divide and Conquer"
 * Avert your eyes! One deep blue, one eye-burning bright green, and one garishly bright yellow. This trio is often referred to by fans as "the Rainmakers" because they started an acid rain shower to irritate a group of Autobots. The green jet in this grouping was made into the Universe Acid Storm character, whose name was initially supposed to be "Rainmaker", then "Acid Rain".


 * "The Ultimate Doom, Part 3"
 * Two blue variants and one really nice looking pine-green Seeker appear as part of Shockwave's forces trying to prevent the rescue of Sparkplug on Cybertron.

Shattered Glass
The term is taken to refer to a group of evil Autobots with car alternate modes who share the same color of black.

Alternate terms


The most obvious alternate name for these Transformers—and the one generally used by toy pack-in catalogs—is Decepticon Planes. While usually clear enough from context, this term has the weakness that there are many Decepticon planes who do not share this body-type. Also, the term is rarely, if ever, used outside of toy-specific contexts. The first UK toy pack-in catalog referred to the group as strike planes. In Japan, they were called Jetrons.

Within the fiction, the cartoon episode "Atlantis, Arise!" features Brawn calling Thundercracker a Deceptijet. And the 1985 audio book "Sun Raid" has Megatron ordering the Deceptiplanes (Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker) to break off an attack. The audio book "Jaws of Terror" referred to them as "Decepticon superjets."



For a long time, it has been common among fans to refer to the Seekers' cartoon Cybertronian forms (from the episode "More than Meets the Eye, Part 1" among others) as tetrajets because their shape resembles a tetrahedron, a pyramid with a triangular base.

If there was ever an official term that could've given "Seeker" a run for its money, it was the one used on the European Generation 2 packaging of Starscream and Ramjet: Skyraiders. That term also appeared in those characters' profiles in the UK Generation 2 comic. When the modern fandom dug this information up, "Seeker" was still considered a fan-generated term, so there was a push to supplant it with "Skyraider". But Furman's use of "Seeker" in the then-current Dreamwave comics, coupled with the rediscovery of the J.C. Penney wishbook, put a damper on that movement. Some years later, the term "Skyraider" was officially resurrected to describe the jet warriors in the BotCon 2009 set "Wings of Honor" (based on the Energon Starscream mold). Skyquake was indicated as the body-type's developer.