"Thrilling 30" Springer (2013)

It has often been said that The Transformers: The Movie cribbed liberally from concepts used in Star Wars. Although it's not the case that everything can be connected one-to-one between the two movies, it's really not a huge stretch. For some examples, Unicron is the Death Star, Hot Rod is Luke Skywalker, and Arcee is Princess Leia. By this analogy, Springer is pretty obviously Han Solo. At the very least, scriptwriter Ron Friedman had one of actor Harrison Ford's roles explicitly in mind. A draft of the movie script actually calls Springer "a very muscular and bantering 'Indiana Jones' type" (go to page 14, bottom of the page, to see the quote).

In theory, Springer gets his name from having powerful legs that enable him to jump farther and higher than other Autobots, but if that ability was ever used even once in either the movie or in the third season of the cartoon that followed it, it didn't make an impression (I think he did use his jumping ability in the comics of the era, but those were published by Marvel UK, and not available to me to read until I was an adult). Indeed, having watched the movie during its 40th anniversary theatrical screening last month, I felt that they missed an opportunity in the scene where Springer holds the shuttle's door open while Arcee scrambles to get on board before it takes off to escape the attacking Decepticons. Just think how much more dynamic that scene would have been if Springer jumped out of the shuttle, bounced on his springy legs, grabbed Arcee, and then bounced them both safely into the shuttle! Alas, what might have been....

Like other characters that originated in The Transformers: The Movie, Springer's basic character design was created before his original toy was designed, which was extremely unusual at the time, but the practice is decidedly more commonplace these days as toys are frequently designed to homage existing characters. This toy was created for the "Thrilling 30" celebration that led up to the 30th anniversary of the Transformers franchise in 2014 (although the toy was released the previous year). While it does differ significantly from the original Springer toy (this toy being based most directly on Nick Roche's interpretation of the character for the then-current comics published by IDW), it nonetheless is recognizable as being the same character as the design created for the movie almost 30 years earlier.

Somewhere along the line, it was decided that Springer would be a "triple changer," a feature most commonly associated with the Decepticons back in the 1980s, although this seems to have taken place somewhat late in the design process (this bio, for example, doesn't even mention Springer's helicopter mode, which is arguably the better-known of his two vehicle forms). Although there are two other Autobot triple-changer toys that came out at the same time as Springer did, Springer is the only one to feature in The Transformers: The Movie. Springer's armored car mode barely appears in The Transformers: The Movie at all, despite being the highlighted form in that early bio. 

The documentation for this "Thrilling 30" toy is a bit inconsistent as to how the stabilizers from Springer's helicopter mode should be configured in armored car mode. Should they be vertical, as seen above, or horizontal, more befitting a vehicle mode's rear spoiler, as seen here to the left? Ultimately, neither looks quite right, so I'm showing both. With instructions occasionally being incorrect, and with them definitely being harder to interpret since multi-lingual requirements have required them to use minimal textual notation, I figure this particular choice can safely be left to the consumer.