Transformers: Combiner Wars Combaticon Brawl

Brawl is the final Deluxe class Combaticon, and the first and only entirely new mold on the team. He has a bad waist that I’m sure you’ve heard about online already.

This is a strangely stumpy figure, with short forearms that don’t offer much poseability or range of motion. He does have ankle rockers, but the waist makes posing him kind of tough. His weapon is a bit on the lame side as well, being the tank barrel that he just holds in his hand. The hand foot gun does attach to the figures’ back, providing that over the back weapon silhouette that Brawls/tank Transformers are practically required to have, and that looks decent. The large shoulder treads make arm movement an issue. Standing stock still, Brawl is a fair looking robot, but that’s about all he can do, honestly.

Tank mode is solid looking, much in the same ways that the Leader class Megatrons look. It looks sturdy and heavy the way a tank should. The turret does not turn, which is kind of a head scratcher, but when you hold the figure in hand, you can kind of understand why it doesn’t. The turret is designed to move upwards towards the front of the tank/combiner peg, elongating the shape for Bruticus leg mode, presenting the illusion that the toy is longer than it actually is while compensating for the robot feet, which must be moved out of the way so as to shorten the tank mode when serving as a leg; think of Combiner Wars Drag Strip as a leg, he has to do the same thing. The hand foot gun attaches to the top of the tank via a pretty neat flip out peg, and then that hand foot gun can turn around, but still, the turret remains fixed. 

With the recent images of Computron and Liokaiser showing up online, as well as the crappy Botcon repaint coming, it is pretty certain that the Brawl mold is going to get some more use, most notably as a drill tank. The way the turret moves makes sense in light of that, as it will allow for the drill to be extended further out in front of the vehicle, and that would certainly make it a more effective accessory. But I’m not sure what to make of Brawl. As part of a team that is 4/5 repaints or retools, the single new mold should be the one that shines, but with the Combaticons –minus Onslaught at the moment, but still- the best ones are the ones that are simply repaints. I usually like Combaticons in general and, they being the team we’ve gotten over the last, oh, fifteen years if we haven’t gotten some type of Constructicons, I’ve had a large number of chances to like Combaticons. I generally like tank Transformers as well, as they’re usually tough looking in both modes. Brawl here is not a bad toy, but is perhaps the first glaring example that, even in the age of Combiner Wars and modern toy engineering applied to a team of merging, transforming robots, the end result is still the combined form, and individual robots may suffer on account of this. Thanks to his robust chunkiness, Brawl looks excellent as a leg, and that is what Bruticus really needs; the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the individual, and in the case of this figure, that is completely accurate.