Kickback

Illegal, secret, payments by contractors to those who have the power to make contracts for the purchase or building of things. This money comes out of the contract itself.

Often these are elected public officials, and the discovery of their wrongdoing leads to scandal.

Transforms from insect to robot and back!

INSECTICON: KICKBACK

FUNCTION: ESPIONAGE
"Friend is another word for fool."

Charming, but cruelly clever... makes friends so he can influence them to do his bidding by digging up facts he can hold against them. Humans particularly susceptible to this Insecticon. In insect mode can jump 40 ft. for a distance of .1 miles...kick a hole in 1/4 inch steel. In robot mode can fly 30 mph up to 100 miles. Sub-machine gun fires 300 rounds per minute. Very vulnerable as insect and flying in high winds.

• Strength: 3
• Intelligence: 9
• Speed: 4
• Endurance: 4
• Rank: 7
• Courage: 6
• Firepower: 5
• Skill: 8

Transformers Tech Specs

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Kickback was a grasshopper, or possibly a locust, and looked the most "human" in robot mode of all the Insecticons despite having antennae on his head and claws instead of hands. He usually sat silent in the cartoon while Shrapnel and Bombshell got all the speaking parts, which never really made sense to me. I guess that he looked a little effeminate because he was so skinny (not to mention those sexy antennae), and the writers wanted to avoid giving him too much screen time.

A kickback is return of a percentage of a sum of money that has been received. In the business world, these are often illegal, or at least frowned upon. Typically they are the result of coercion, threats or a secret deal.