BRUTICUS

When Bruticus was released, he was composed of five Deluxe Class figures. However, this caused some proportion issues where the main body wound up looking too small (or the limbs were too big depending on how you want to look at it). To prevent that issue with these new figures, the torso/head/thigh section is now a Voyager Class figure. "Combiner Wars" gives Bruticus a second chance at being a cool Combiner. 

This time out, Bruticus is composed of five figures with one "optional" figure:

• Blast-Off
• Brawl
• Onslaught
• Shockwave (an additional weapon)
• Swindle
• Vortex

Using the "standard" configuration with Vortex and Blast-Off as arms and Swindle and Brawl as legs, Bruticus winds up measuring about 10.5 inches tall (about 26 cm) and 7.5 inches wide shoulder to shoulder (about 19 cm). If you decide to use Swindle and Brawl as the arms instead he winds up having skinnier legs and bulky arms, giving him a brutish appearance (pun intended). This effect is enhanced by the rather thick looking palm sections of his hand accessories. To me the preference is to keep him in his "classic" configuration but I enjoy the idea that depending on who is an arm or leg he has different functionality. This mode has a lot of design elements that were found on G1 Bruticus. The head design has G1 Bruticus' distinct thin central crest and flat panels on either side of the head. His mouthplate has a distinct chin piece on the bottom and two separate eyes above it. The torso armor panel is a wing shaped piece that looks like it could belong to an aerial vehicle complete with "wings" on the sides of the chest and vertical "fins" closer to the center of the chest. Onslaught's rifles attach to the back in this form, a call back to G1 Bruticus who also had cannons on his back (thanks to Onslaught). Other design elements carried over from G1 include Blast-Off's nosecone pointing up (if he is an arm), rotor blades on the sides (if Vortex is an arm) and Brawl's tank turret sticking out in the front (if he is in leg mode). Overall "Combiner Wars" Bruticus has many of the major design elements of G1 Bruticus and is instantly recognizable as the Combaticon giant. From a color standpoint the Combaticon figures leaned towards the colors used for the G1 Combaticon toys. While many of the colors on the characters are not the same (beige on Swindle versus dark blue on Onslaught versus brown on Blast-Off and so on) because they are all pretty dark in tone the colors come together very nicely. Bruticus' head has a gorgeous gunmetal color on the helmet with silver on the face and mouthplate.