Skullcruncher



Skullcruncher is both slow on his feet and slow witted. He has a nasty habit of grinding his teeth before attacking his foes, making a noise so loud and obnoxious it tips the enemy off to his whereabouts instantly. Because of this personality defect, few Decepticons wish to be partnered with him.

What Skullcruncher does do efficiently is eat. While he thinks they taste rather yucky, Skullcruncher will gleefully scarf down as many Autobots as he can during battle, often ceasing to fight until he's finished chewing his meal. He wouldn't want to choke or anything.

Skullcruncher is binary bonded to the Nebulan Grax.

Fiction
Skullcruncher was one of Scorponok's soldiers on Cybertron. He was first seen eagerly driving a group of Autobot prisoners towards the smelting pool. Fortress Maximus and his band of interlopers jumped them, however, and the Decepticons were forced to retreat. Ring of Hate! After Maximus's unit abandoned Cybertron, Scorponok received word they had come to the planet called Nebulos, and brought a strike team to that world in order to exact revenge. Skullcruncher joined his leader in assaulting the planet's capitol, Koraja, and demonstrated a little-seen fire-breathing ability as the Decepticons tried to penetrate the city's walls. Later he transformed to robot mode and issued the Decepticon rallying cry. The Decepticons' forward momentum was halted, however, by the arrival of the new Autobot Headmasters. Fortress Maximus and several of his crew members had binary bonded with their Nebulan allies, creating two-in-one warriors. The increased skill and accuracy gained from this combination sent Skullcruncher and the other Decepticons fleeing into the night. Broken Glass! In the remote Plains of Thok, Scorponok's Decepticons made camp at the industrial complex whose hyper-galactic tranceiver had first alerted them to the Autobots' presence. Forced to admit the value of the Headmaster process, Scorponok allowed himself, Skullcruncher, and several other Decepticons to undergo the process, binary bonding with Lord Zarak—political rival of Fortress Maximus's Nebulan partner—and his entourage. Skullcruncher was binary bonded with Grax, the industrialist who owned the communications complex, and had modified it to accommodate the hyper-galactic transmitter. Joining with such a refined businessman did little to boost Skullcruncher's fighting style at first, as Fortress Maximus still managed to fight off both him and Weirdwolf at once, and then used Skullcruncher as a club to knock Scorponok around. Only by threatening civilian hostages were Scorponok and his men able to get the drop on the Autobots. Love and Steel! Skullcruncher and the Decepticon Headmasters had another brief battle with their counterparts but, as the war continued to escalate on Nebulos, both sides decided to quit the planet and moved on to planet Earth after receiving a distress signal.

Once they arrived on Earth, the Decepticons raced the Autobots to Mount St. Hilary, former landing site of the Ark and location of the distress signal. The two Headmaster teams did battle in the volcano caverns. Skullcruncher was heard mocking Weirdwolf's bizarre Yoda-esque speech pattern during the fight, but to be fair he also demonstrated an odd quirk of "grrr"ing before each sentence. Do alligators growl?

''After the Autobot named Highbrow got the drop on Scorponok and stole his head, leaving the Decepticon leader incapacitated, Skullcruncher and his comrades hunted down Highbrow until he reached an Autobot shuttle parked in nearby canyons. They recovered the stunned Lord Zarak and reconnected him with Scorponok, restoring their leader. Moments after they did so, however, Skullcruncher and five of his teammates were shunted into Limbo thanks to the time-traveling arrival of Soundwave and the Terrorcons from 2009. They remained out of action until the war with Galvatron ended, and the time storm was abated.''

When Scorponok's army made first contact with Ratbat and the other Decepticons active on Earth, Skullcruncher and the Headmasters went with their leader as his entourage. A breakdown in negotiations led to combat, as Skullcruncher and the group began fighting with the Predacons, and later Ratbat's entire base. Cold War! The Decepticons stopped their civil war and teamed up with the Autobots when it was discovered that Starscream had orchestrated the whole affair to distract from his pursuit of the legendary Transformers knowledge database, the Underbase. In the wake of this event, Scorponok assumed command of all Decepticons and, with Skullcruncher's help, placed a new headquarters, including an Energon converter, under a swamp near New York City. King Con! Sometime later, Skullcruncher responded with a team of Decepticons to MacDill Airforce Base when the Air Strike Patrol got into trouble with the Autobots. The Resurrection Gambit! The whole event was orchestrated from afar by Megatron to eliminate Optimus Prime and his rivals in the Decepticons. Skullcruncher didn't know any of this, but that didn't keep him from getting beaten up a lot, first by Optimus Prime All the Familiar Faces! and later by a reconstructed version of Starscream.

Skullcruncher was brought to Cybertron by Primus, along with all of the other Earth-bound Autobots, and stood in the far back as Primus spoke to the Transformers through Emirate Xaaron. The Void Once Unicron attacked, he was seen running in panic with many other Autobots and Decepticons. On the Edge of Extinction! Later, he was on the planet Klo when Optimus Prime first arrived with the Last Autobot to rescue the besieged Autobot forces.