Perceptor/Cartoon continuity

If you don't remember the gun guy or the two boombox guys from the 80s cartoon who had impossibly small transformations, then you might remember Perceptor, the scientist guy who turned into a microscope.

The Transformers cartoon
Perceptor appeared on Earth during a period of time occurring after the initial impact of the Ark into the planet. It is unknown exactly when he had arrived, but the malfunctions he suffered during the Cybertonium depletion crisis would lead one to conclude that he had been present when the Ark crashed onto prehistoric Earth during the encounter with the Decepticon starship. When the humans Spike Witwicky and Chip Chase were investigating the chronal anomalies which plagued the Autobots with visitors from various eras of Earth's past, Perceptor introduced himself to them and offered his expertise as a "true scientist." And then he transformed into a microscope.

During his period of habitation on that planetary body, he experienced a myriad of adventures. Included in that scope were incidents such as reconfiguring his mass ratio to a microscopic scale using the transmat reduction beam in order to sever the connection of the Heart of Cybertron to Megatron's body. Upon doing so, he proceeded to dispose of the object by having Brawn throw the volatile energy source approximately two thousand feet into the sky and shooting it with his mobile cannon mode.

When Megatron perpetrated an egregious assault on the Autobots' reputation and had them forcibly expelled from their residency on Earth, Perceptor was indubitably among their number. A fortuitous sequence of events allowed the Autobots to return to their former planetary location and extradict the Decepticons from their dominion over the humans. During another adventure, a series of aberrant mechanical malfunctions began afflicting the Autobots. Perceptor was incapable of altering from his microscope configuration, and expeditiously determined that the complication was a depletion of Cybertonium.

During a constitutional along a seaboard, Perceptor, Beachcomber, Warpath, Powerglide and Seaspray were assailed by an assortment of Decepticons. Remarkably, Thrust appeared impervious to damage, and both Perceptor and Seaspray were captured and escorted to the submerged Decepticon headquarters. With the inclusion of Beachcomber, the three Autobots were able to effect an adequate escape and rejoin their cohorts in time to confront the Electrum-coated Decepticons.

In an endeavor to assist Cosmos, who had run into difficulty on Titan, one of Saturn's attendant moons, Perceptor and Jazz traversed space in Omega Supreme. Although Omega's energy was depleted by the journey, Perceptor was able to locate a prodigious accumulation of energy crystals, with which he subsequently reenergized Omega, allowing them to repel the Decepticon invaders and effect a peregrination back to Earth.

On another occasion, Perceptor and an assemblage of Autobots and Decepticons were propelled across the interstellar void by the space bridge, landing on an unexplored world in which Cybertronian lifeforms were minuscule in relation to the immense indigenous population. After a series of alarming endangerments, Perceptor determined that a toy rocket ship possessed by the boy Aron, whose abode they had happened into, could be modified to return the Autobots home. Calamitously, their mode of transport was intercepted by an alien named Bosch, who utilised a mechanism to place the Autobots in a submissive state, intending to barter them for energon. Smokescreen was eventually able to emancipate Perceptor and his fellows with the assistance of the bounty hunter Devcon.

Examining a sample of extraterrestrial matter transported to Earth on Bumblebee's back, Perceptor was able to ascertain that Cosmos had inadvertently imported Morphobots, a genus of robotic flora which consumed mechanical life. His exhortation was sufficient to save Cosmos and the Morphobots were soon dispatched to a more suitable biosphere; however, the sample he had acquired had also propagated to the point where it threatened to consume him along with his laboratory.

Perceptor's spectrographic analysis of an ore sample determined that the asteroid from which it originated was, in fact, alive. In an unfortunate turn of events, Optimus Prime had just commanded Omega Supreme to obliterate said asteroid. Yet another enterprise took Perceptor to a world inhabited by transforming organic creatures who had been enslaved by the Decepticons. He assisted in liberating the Tlalakans, and was subsequently bemused by Bumblebee's notion that they should make a wish on the first stellar object they sighted.

He also synthesized a panacea to remedy all corrosion, with the appellation corrostop, and was decorated by the humans for his ingenuity. Megatron also coveted his assistance, but for a dire emergency — the Decepticon had become afflicted by Cosmic Rust and it transpired that corrostop was the only counteragent. Not content with merely being ameliorated, Megatron exploited Perceptor in a machination to infect the Autobots with Cosmic Rust, and all sources of Ingredient X, an imperative component of corrostop, had been exhausted. Perceptor and Wheeljack labored to make the matter duplicator operational so that more corrostop could be constituted and the Autobots saved.

Perceptor and Spike Witwicky discovered a disquieting fact — that an aberrant disruption emanating from Cybertron was causing a shift in Earth's orbit, resulting in the planet's imminent collision with the nearest stellar body! The Autobots and Decepticons were forced to collaborate to avoid destruction in the Sun; however, the Insecticons masticated the space bridge controls, rendering the possibility of its use dubious. With donated components, Perceptor repaired the space bridge and dispatched the amalgamated force to Cybertron to subjugate the Combaticons.