You know, to disambiguate him from adorable friendly Blades from Rescue Bots.
The Protectobots are mostly a friendly group, at least when they're not hired by Grimlock to hunt down Blaster and Goldbug to bring them back to him for trial and execution. One of them's a pacifist, even, though which one depends on continuity. (Groove most places but in the cartoon it was First Aid.)
But Blades was always the jackhole of the group. As I've been reblogging photos of the new Combiner Wars Protectobots these past few months, a common response has been "dude, that rescue helicopter is covered in missiles, wtf." Well, that's Blades! He's kinda missiley! He just wants to kill, kill, kill. You know how it is.
Combiner Wars Blades ain't got a whole lot to talk about. He's Alpha Bravo with a new head. Unlike Streetwise and First Aid, the 90% of the rest of him isn't reshelled with new sculpting. The new head's all there is. I like Alpha Bravo, though, so Blades isn't unwelcome or anything. There's just less new to talk about versus the other Protectobots.
His blue face makes me happy.