It's my last limb to talk about!  Vortex is #4.  And as the title of today's blog reminds us, that helicopter blade is basically Bruticus' raison d'etre.  Historically all the other guys are pretty much blocks with vehicle details sculpted into them, but Vortex brings propellers!  It's how you know Bruticus is Bruticus!  (Except for when he's Defensor.)

Vortex isn't terribly interesting to talk about.  It's not like he has a terrible robot mode or a terrible copter mode or a terrible arm mode or a terrible leg mode.  He does those all well enough!  Sufficiently, even!  Not memorably, no, but sufficiently!  And that's his deal.

The only sticking point about his robot mode is where his propellers end up.  On the original Vortex and in the video game model for FOC Vortex, the propellers end up out of the way on his back.  But on the toy, due to the transformation, the propellers end up on his forearm.  It's not a terrible place for propellers to be -- they could be sweet arm blades or something.  But they're not placed on his forearm with any amount of grace, and so they just look kind of awkward.  Also, they make his dual swords feel kind of redundant.  Why carry a sword when the damn blades embedded in your arm eclipse them?

He's a pretty good arm.  He's not a great hand.  I generally like open-palmed hand sculpts, but that's because they tend to look more natural than a fist.  But a hand sculpted straight open so that you can waffle the thumb to one side or the other so it can serve as either a right or left hand... that doesn't look terribly natural.  So Vortex is, by default, the "Kung Fu Chop" hand.  That's what it looks like it's for.  Not exactly something I imagine to be one of Bruticus' signature moves, but hey.

He also makes a pretty good leg.

Not sure why he's green.

(Note: I was dumb and mixed up Brawl and Swindle's guns.  I'll fix it in the TFwiki photos, but fixing it here will be a chore and I'm just that lazy enough, so just imagine them being swapped.)