ok, so i remember some of the scramble city combiners appearing in pre-movie g1 cartoons, yet if you look at the catalouge scans at unicron.com, you'll notice that the first scramble city toys don't appear until the 1986 catalouge, which was the year the movie was out.

so does this mean that the scramble city gestalts first appeared in the cartoon in season 2(1985) but the toys weren't availble until 1986?

Superion and Menasor were available first...the combaticons and protectobots weren't available till post movie. Their comercials were paird with the bases actually...the combaticons attacking metroplex and the P bots attacking Trypticon.
Scramble City was supposed to tie in the movie, season 2 and season 3 all toghtether...hence Ultra Magnus.