From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Voyager Wave 4

Combaticon Brawl (tank)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/VBrawl

The other two in the wave are Amalgamous Prime (to be reviewed
separately) and Wreck-Gar (a retool of Trashmaster, no plans to get it).
We're into the 2026 figures, and there's no subline change the way Legacy
went to United and so forth...so maybe it's just going to be three years of
Age of the Primes with no subtitles to break up the years.


CAPSULE

$43 on HasbroPulse.

Combaticon Brawl: There is a common assembly problem that can cause
issues with Bruticus, but I was lucky enough not to get stuck with one that
had the problem. Good robot and tank modes, and the limb mode put in significantly more effort than most of the current crop of "attach to the skeleton" limb bots. Recommended.


RANT

Packaging: as noted, no change from 2025 Voyagers. They might have switched away from tissue bundles and back to plastic bags like Studio Series did, but this toy has all of its accessories individually attached to the
inner tray.

Bruticus notes: Unlike the Menasor and Superion sets, they're going with Voyagers for the legs. While Vortex can be placed on Superion's arms, Brawl will use a totally different method of connection than the Superiorn or
Menasor style, since the animation model put him and Swindle on the fronts of the boots rather than the backs. This is a smallish Voyager, much like Devastator's legs (and like them, has a waist joint that is an ankle tilt for Bruticus), although they may be trying to make up for it with weight and part count.
As usual, the instructions for combiner mode are going to be with Onslaught, leaving me to guess about the transformation based on pictures of Bruticus. They do seem to be sticking to the "Bruticus doesn't NEED any of
the non-core members" design, but the boots are basically just some flat
plates that form a C-shaped box for Brawl and Swindle to fill in, presumably with an ankle tilt hinge that will line up with Brawl's waist joint. (I am told that there's some serious QC issues with that joint, hopefully it's something I can fix if my copy suffers from this.)


DECEPTICON: COMBATICON BRAWL
Assortment: G1997
Bruticus Component: 3 of 5
Altmode: Tank, boot
Transformation Difficulty: 23 steps
Previous Name Use: None with "Combaticon" on it, it's usually been
Decepticon Brawl lately.
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: G1

Packaging: Two double ties (chest and legs), two single ties (arms) hold the robot to the tray, although the turret is such a tight fit to get through the tray it'd probably have stayed put fine without the chest straps. The pistol is in the lower right fold held by one tie and the cardboard flap, the two bigger guns (a reference to how the G1 toy had an extra double barrelled cannon to mount on the back of vehicle mode) each have a flap and a single
tie along the left edge.
The instructions have the usual "get it into actual robot mode" step,
but it's just to turn the turret to point up. The instructions also show a
few ways to store or deploy the extra cannons in both modes, and there's even more ways than shown depending on your tastes.

Robot Mode: The usual direction for toy to animation was for simplification, but Brawl got a lot of details added to his robot mode in the cartoon that weren't really present in the toy, and they did a very good job
of getting as close to the animation design as physically possible for something below the Masterpiece level. The main concession to the G1 toy is the addition of the twin sonic cannons, which are provided as two separate pieces rather than a single chunk. A bit leggy and short-torsoed, but some concessions need to be made for a transformation that actually WORKS.
Despite being only 5.5" (14cm) tall at the head (6.5"/16.5cm to the top
of the cannon sticking up in back), there's definitely a Voyager's worth of parts in this toy, so I'm okay with the price point. Almost entirely olive drab and a dark cool gray with a few bits of lighter gray, the paint on the head is the main splash of color here. Cool dark gray is used for the head, abdomen front, pelvis front, thighs, pistol, and the barrels of the secondary cannons. A more medium gray is used for the shoulder roots, bicep treads, hips, pelvis back, tilt hinge on the left side of the abdomen, boot cores,
main cannon barrel, secondary cannon roots, and some hinges inside the backpack. Everything else is olive green plastic.
The faceplate is dark red, while the visor and forehead pattern are
gloss orange. Dark gray paint is used for the fingers/thumbs and the vents
in the lower shins. The tops of the forearms and the fronts of the toes are painted gunmetal. A Decepticon symbol is printed on the top of the left forearm, although the seam through it does tend to mar the effect. The
vision slits on the collarbone area are not painted (and they're not the
right size to be slots for the sonic cannons, so they're purely meant to be decorative).
The neck is a restricted ball joint, the waist is a swivel. There's
also a combiner mode hinge in the abdomen, but that's in addition to a proper waist, not instead. The shoulders are hinge and swivel universal joints,
with the hinge at the top of the shoulder noticeably above the axis of the swivel. Additionally, there's some transformation hinges that let the arms
be held out a little away from the torso, with a bit more range in terms of arms spreading out or crossing. Swivel just above the hinge elbow (90 degree bend), but due to how the forearms transform there's no wrist articulation. Pinned hinge and swivel hips the have the outer thirds of the pelvis piece attached to the hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees (90 degree bend),
instep hinges on the ankles. The turret has the same range of motion as in vehicle mode, but it doesn't have the range to let the cannon point forwards over the shoulder or under an armpit.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, and there's 5mm sockets on the outer faces
of the forearms, and one off-center on the turret top on back. The soles of the feet only have the 1/4" by 1/8" (yeah, not millimeters) slots used by the sonic cannons...I guess he could use them as rocket skates or something? There's also tabs that shape and size on the back of the turret and the sides of the turret, to give additional storage options for the sonic cannons in robot mode, more on that below. There's also a smaller 4mm by 2mm slot on
the turret top on the side opposite the 5mm socket, which is for pistol
storage in this mode (this is an undocumented feature). The muzzle of the
main cannon is a 3mm socket, if kinda shallow, if you have any 3mm peg fire blasts (such as from RED toys) they'll work there. More use for the fire blasts I commissioned from Trent Troop.
The pistol is a single piece of dark gray plastic with some vaguely
"Luger meets machine gun cooling jacket" design elements, with a short 5mm
peg grip at the back and a 3mm tip barrel with iron sights that stop anything from plugging on too deeply. There's also a 2mm by 4mm tab just ahead of the grip that looks like a small ammo clip, and goes into that turret slot mentioned above. The whole thing is just under 1.75" (4.5cm) long.
As noted above, the original toy had a double cannon that was only meant to go on vehicle mode, in the same way the original Stunticons did. Rather than present a single chunk, though, they split the sonic cannons into two identical pieces, so you can mount them symmetrically if you wish, or asymmetrically if you feel like it. The base pieces have 1/4" by 1/8" tabs
on the front and the underside, so they can mount in multiple ways. The
cannon barrels themselves have hinges that go from bent double to opened up
60 degrees. The barrels are about 2.75" (a little over 6.5cm) long and they end in 3mm socket barrels. Their default storage in this mode has them
hooked onto the back of the turret (underside of the backpack) pointing upwards, although the fit is a bit loose. An alternate storage turns the
main tank gun pointed downwards and and puts the sonic cannons on the turret back to point forwards or elevate up to 60 degrees. The instructions do not use the slots on the sides of the turret, although that might be for leg
mode.

Transformation: Other than the bits on the biceps, the tank treads are
all folded up inside the boots, along with some little triangular panels that aren't used in vehicle mode, so don't flip them out yet. Transformation is easiest if you lift the arms up to the sides and unfold the forearms while lifting the biceps out all the way, then open the chest to fold the head in
and lift the closed-up chest up 90 degrees. Now rotate the waist 180 degrees and unfold the boots, with the treads tabbing onto spots on the flanks and chest. The arms snap into place over this and the shoulders can be massaged into place, then snap the bicep tread bits down into place. Close the back
end up with the rest of the folded boots, position the turret properly, and attach the sonic cannons to taste. The pistol should go in the 5mm socket on the turret, as that's the usual place for a close defense machine gun on a
tank turret.
Folding the boots back up can be a little tricky for the robot and combiner modes, since the joints are pretty stiff.

Altmode: This is a tank, but not strongly any one particular model.
It's a bit taller and chunkier than modern main battle tanks and the turret
is a bit smaller than some as well, they definitely did not try to copy the Leopard tank of the G1 toy. TFWiki has no guess at specific models being referenced.
The chassis is 4.5" (11.5cm) long, but the main cannon can stick about a centimeter (less than half an inch) past the front end. The color is overwhelmingly olive green now. The treads, main gun, and roots of the sonic cannons are medium gray, while the sonic cannon barrels and pistol are the
only dark gray visible in this mode. There is no paint in this mode, not
even a Decepticon symbol.
The turret rotates about 120 degrees to either side before the rear deck blocks further motion. The main cannon can depress maybe 15 degrees and elevate to about 70 to 75 degrees up. There's little wheels under the
treads, but at least on mine they don't roll very well, possibly due to sprue flash on the interiors where the axle pins go.
There's 5mm sockets on the side fenders from the forearms, and one on
top of the turret on the right side. The turret has all the 1/4" by 1/8" sockets previously mentioned, plus there's a pair on the rear deck.

Leg Mode: I was able to figure this out from a picture of the assembled combiner on TFWiki, it's not really closer to either of the other modes. The bent arms just stick out the back, although they might clamp onto the boot skeleton for stability. Those extra panels inside the feet that didn't get used in the other modes fold out to fill in the sides of the toes. It did
take me some effort to get the knee joints to bend that last click into
place, though, I think 2026 may be the year of the really stiff joints. You gotta...horse...em into position. I will say that going from this mode back
to robot mode was pretty quick and easy.
Anyway, it does look like a tank on the shin, if you kindly ignore the robot arms. The secondary cannons do not seem intended for this mode, but my reference pic doesn't include them anywhere that I can see, so maybe they go
on the back and are out of view. And unlike the recent crop of combiner
limbs, it isn't just "bend the vehicle mode" or "split the vehicle mode in two," I appreciate the extra effort that went into this one, even if they stopped short of finding something better to do with the arms.
The ankle hinge means it can only be a left leg, no Scramble City here. Several people have reported stress marks at the screwed-together hinge, possibly a legacy of Tight Joint 2026, but mine does not seem to have that particular problem, at least.

Overall: Other than the stress mark issue some have had with this mold, it's a decent design executed competently. While Voyager prices have really skyrocketed in recent years, at least they didn't go the lazy route here.
Worth picking up on its own, not just to assemble Bruticus.


Dave Van Domelen, probably doing Amalgamous Prime next for at-home reviewing.

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2