Transformers: Combiner Wars Onslaught and Bruticus

Finally, after all these years. I finally, thanks to Amazon, finally got an Onslaught, and so my Combiner Wars Combaticons are complete. I want to do two things in this entry: talk about Onslaught, and then talk about Bruticus. But, thanks to a C2E2 buy, there will be more Bruticus talk later, but I can’t write about that part until I get this part out. Heavy lies the head, right?

The "Right" Way

The "Also OK" Way

Onslaught is a repaint/mold of Hot Spot, and in vehicle mode is some kind of military truck. The entire central part of the truck is the Bruticus chestplate and head. Hot Spot, being a fire truck, worked a little bit better in terms of incorporating the combiner elements into vehicle mode, but


Onslaught doesn’t do a horrible job of it. I had been mistransforming the chestplate part, and so truck mode was basically a flat truck carrying a folded up mass in the middle, but actually doing it right makes for a better looking, yet still very simple, vehicle. The guns mount on the central part but do not rotate, giving the truck more of that G1 Onslaught truck look but sacrificing a turret. Oh well. You can slightly transform the turret part differently and have it function as a turret, so I think it’s really just a matter of your own preference. I think it looks fine either way, to be honest. Functional turret mode may be a little blockier and not as smooth looking as the “correct” way, but hey. Enjoy your toys however you like. The general thing with combining figures is that they are being asked to be three things: an individual robot, an individual vehicle, and then a part of a whole. In the Scramble City arrangement, the part of the whole is actually two parts, as a figure can be an arm or a leg. Something will inevitably suffer for needing to do so much. Such is Onslaught’s vehicle mode, but it has always been a pretty bland vehicle mode. It looks nice, but it doesn’t look like much. 

Robot mode is a nice one, as Onslaught has his chest piece all painted up and he looks just like the G1 figure, which in Onslaught’s case isn’t much to emulate either. But this is a nice mold to begin with, and it does make a tall, lanky robot who is not slender and weak looking but not overly beefy, and that as a general profile fits this character rather well. The only thing that’s a bit strange about the robot mode is that it’s basically flat. The truck is a rectangle that changes into a rectangular robot, but flattens everything out. The depth of the figure comes from wearing the Bruticus chestplate as a backpack. From certain angles, it looks odd, but it is not a detriment to the overall toy. The head is an Onslaught head, but just as with the Bruticus head, Onslaught has had the same head for thirty years. Who could mess it up? The weapons plug together to form a larger weapon for the combined mode, but I don’t care for it. It’s too long and slight but that is 100% my opinion. Held in a combined mode hand, it looks like two smaller guns stuck together, and it just does not work the same way as the Superion weapon does. That one looks like a good combined weapon. It’s ok though, because Bruticus gets a weapons upgrade from the Legends class………..

Not sure if that pause there was ominous enough.

Team Photo. Everyone look at the camera!

The Combaticons looks good together as a team, which is important despite the standard display configuration being that of combined mode. If you voice complaints about individual figures or individual modes in certain corners of the fandom, you get scolded with replies of “how often are you going to take them apart anyway?” Like you’re wrong for liking things to look good in more than one form. But that’s a topic of graver consideration, coming soon. Anyway, as a team, the Combaticons look like a team, as their color schemes are much more unified than the other early G1 teams save the Constructicons. Even back in G1, Bruticus was the combiner where it seems like people had figured it out, whatever that ‘it’ was, the things that kept G1 Menasor and Superion and even to some degrees Devestator from really being solid. Bruticus would pass lessons down to Computron and Predaking and Piranhacon that would make them better combined robots. Because the team is done up in military color schemes, there is a visual unity; and while some people may find this blasphemous, Blast Off being a regular jet makes the team seem more legitimate in vehicle mode. I have no problems with space shuttle Blast Off, but jet Blast Off rounds out this set pretty nicely. 

A better looking weapon, on loan.

Bruticus combined looks big and tough, so, so, so much better than other attempts. Onslaught’s weapons plug into the backpack, so you have those over the shoulder Bruticus cannons. The head is right on, but once again, thirty years of the same head doesn’t give you a lot of things to mess up. The head could have been the G1 head stuck on the Combiner Wars body. The combined mode shoulder work a little differently than they do on Defensor: the Onslaught arms fold together and then flip up, parallel to the ground, whereas the Defensor ones lay flat against the side of the torso. This gives Bruticus a different silhouette, and that is awesome. It looks like a totally different robot instead of just a differently colored one with different limbs. The chestplate then plugs in to the shoulders, covering the combiner ports, so that the arms are locked in to place a little better than on Defensor. 

"Bruticus, you will help me attain that which I desire!"

And man, that chestplate. It takes up so much of the vehicle mode, but wow does it work terrifically in combined form. It’s strange because I kind of want to say that the only thing that Onslaught does is turn into this chestplate, but it really does look great. I think that G1 Bruticus is also the first figure that in combined mode had a real distinct visual feature. If you remember back to the G1 cartoon, both Menasor and Superion looked like big guys who had cars and planes stuck on to him; Devastator more or less the same, but with less definition for the vehicles modes of his components. I know, 80s animation, right? Sure, but even the G1 toys of Menasor and Superion at least didn’t do much to change that perception. It’s not really until Bruticus came along that there was something to really fix your eye on, and it was that chest piece. While Bruticus also has the benefit of being comprised of limbs that have some visual distinctiveness as well (a tank is a lot more distinct than ‘car’ or ‘jet’), the chest part gives the central mass of the figure a defining feature as well; something that draws the eye to the middle of the chest. The chestplate on Combiner Wars Bruticus does the same thing, which is good because Onslaught and company don’t have a Legends class Groove or Blackjack to take up that middle. 

"Bruticus confused and ashamed...."

Overall, Bruticus is a pretty good way to end the Combiner Wars line, at least in terms of full, retail available teams. I’m still on the hunt for Sky Lynx, but the “Sky Reign” team doesn’t interest me at all. We’ve gotten, within the last month, back of box shots for Computron, so we know that he’s coming, and as a set, so he’ll probably be a Toys R Us or online exclusive. Never say never, but the chances of Seacons or Terrorcons look to be more on the none side than slim, but I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised if they did show up in the future. 

*Note: I kept making mention of Defensor in this review, but I’ve never written on Defensor. Just yesterday, I got a preorder in for the Asian exclusive Deluxe class Groove, and when he arrives, I’m planning to do a whole Defensor thing.