Fall of Cybertron Brawl is probably the weirdest of the Bruticus limbs.  Part of his weirdness I'm sure stems from him being one of the designs from the first game.  Unlike Swindle, Vortex, and Blast Off, Brawl already had a set robot mode and vehicle mode which they  had to incorporate into the design for Bruticus, instead of being able to start from scratch.  And I really liked the design from the first game!  ... but this isn't a particularly good toy of it.

The culprit is, obviously, him having to be both an arm and a leg in addition to the hovertank and robot modes already given him.  And for this to happen, apparently he's mostly backpack, with some dragging coattails.   Brawl's robot mode is small and spindly, which is very not like the giant massive titan seen in the first game.  His giantness probably took some influence from the live-action movie Brawl, who was a giant green guy with two barrels on his back, versus the original Brawl, who was a normal-sized green guy with one barrel on his back.  Incorporating new ideas into older characters, especially those who are as blank slate-y as Brawl, is something I enjoy, so I was happy to see that.  But most of that is lost in this toy's interpretation of the design.

It's an awkward robot mode.  Easily the worst robot mode of the set of five.  He's not good at standing, either.

Thankfully, his leg and arm modes are interesting enough to compensate a little!  His default limb is the left leg.  It's not quite just the tank mode stood on its ass like Swindle and Blast Off are.  There's some stuff to do with the turret and the rear-end of the tank, plus you gotta fold down a foot.  Mercifully, the foot pegs into notches on the robot arms.  Otherwise, the foot is too floppy to support his weight.

Like the foot mode, Brawl's arm mode is also not just the tank mode with a fist attached at the end.  In fact, most of the tank mode isn't used for the arm itself at all.  The legs of the robot fold down and out from the tank mode and form the arm itself.  Two sets of two fingers deploy from the sides of the super robot's wrist, and which sided arm you're making him into determines which of his feet you unfold as his thumb.  It's neat looking.  Though it does result in the double-barreled turret pointing at Bruticus' own head.

Whoops.

In G1, Blast Off's toy was a brownish-black shuttle with some purple.  The cartoon character model made him a lighter brown.  So I guess that's where Fall of Cybertron Blast Off gets his entirely-caramel coloration from, probably?    I'm not skewing more towards caramel than black was a great decision, 'cuz enough of Bruticus is beige already.

FOC Blast Off is still a shuttle, insomuch as a hunk of caramel sculpting detail with what could generously be called wings is a shuttle.  I think the shape of the wings are what makes him still feel like a shuttle versus some other kind of flying craft.  Otherwise, he's kind of out there.  He's really just a pile of shapes.

Stand up the shuttle mode on its ass and fold back the wings, and you have his leg mode.

Unlike Swindle, Blast Off's robot mode has a little more going on, transformation wise.  The body of the jet becomes his chest, the wings fold out and down to become his legs, and the thruster/tailfin area in the back become his massive shoulders, from under which come his arms.  It's a pretty good robot mode.   He comes with two rifles with little wings on them.  (When they're plugged into the tops of his wings in vehicle mode, they provide extra tailfins, because I guess the seven he has already aren't enough.)

It's the arm mode of Blast Off that causes all the headscratching, though!  His arm mode is suuuuuper long.  One half of each of his arm mode's fist are in each of his heels, with an optional thumb for either-handed mode tucked in next to them.  You extend Blast Off's robot mode legs, peg the halves of the fists together, and that whole leg assembly hangs off the entirety of the rest of Blast Off's shuttle mode.  It looks mistransformed.

And, sure, you can try to shorten him a little if you're okay with putting some terrible stress marks on him.  His lower legs double up on his thighs during transformation to shuttle mode, and you can try to do that in arm mode as well, but there will be complications.  Namely, you gotta connect the halves of the super robot's fist together, and this can only happen at an angle.  There's a hook in one leg and a place for the hook to grab onto, meaning you can force it and it mostly won't pull apart, but that's gonna, again, cause some structural damage.  So do that at your own risk.  I recommend not.

Blast Off also has a rotational joint in this mode in mid-fuselage.  Not sure exactly what it's for.  It seems irrelevant to everything, except maybe as a superfluous and mostly unnecessary bicep rotational joint for arm mode.  S'kinda weird.

Look, I have a lot of toys to talk about, but we have to get this little thing out of the way first.  In the "Are We Sure This Isn't A BotCon Exclusive Idea?" Department, Hasbro's retooling Fall of Cybertron Bruticus as, well, the Wreckers.  The torso is now Impactor, with a new Impactor head and a new handheld harpoon gun.  Impactor's never gotten a toy before.  He was a Marvel UK-only character that recently got new exposure in Last Stand of the Wreckers.  The limbs are the Jumpstarters and the Deluxe Autobots.  Topspin and Twintwist haven't gotten new toys since 1985.  Roadbuster and Whirl have had plenty of new toys since then, but none with their actual heads.

And the head of this combiner, dubbed Ruination, is based on Emirate Xaaron, another previously non-toy guy.

And and the chest of Ruination has the old BotCon Wreckers logo, the blue Autobot symbol with the hammer forehead.
Plus with a dark blue helicopter, a green jeep, a light blue tank, and a white shuttle, the toy seems to serve as an homage to Robots in Disguise Ruination as well, with the orange/golden chest of the Car Robots version seen in the animation.  This thing is an homage within an homage baked inside another  homage.  An homage turducken.

Seriously, what in the hell.  Mind, this is a good "what in the hell," but what in the hell regardless.

My only reservations are that Xaaron is not the best head choice for a giant combiner thingy of murder.  He was a politician at worst and a resistance movement figurehead at best.  But still.  Xaaron head.  It's hard to complain.  (Plus no matter what continuity we're talking about, at least two of these guys are dead.)

But, yeah.  I will buy this.  I will lick it.  It makes no sense, but I don't care.  Rule of Cool overrides all else.  Why is it not next spring yet, I put to you folks.  I think TFWiki needs a new category for "Things That Should Not Be Normal Retail Releases Yet Somehow Are."

How ridiculous is it that I'm gonna have to disambiguate this guy as Prime Prime.  Well, at least there's no Prime Primal Prime yet.

I didn't go to San Diego Comic-Con!  But Emerald Beacon did.  He's a guy who's done some artwork for Fun Publications and he's the mastermind behind those Bat-Con t-shirts.  I have one!  I wore it to the Dark of the Moon premiere.  It's a swank shirt.  And since he's a swank guy,  he picked me up some SDCC swag.  Among them was this FIRST EDITION MATRIX OF LEADERSHIP OPTIMUS PRIME.  I think that's its name, anyway.

It's the first Transformers Prime toy, unless you want to count the War for Cybertron stuff.  And it's gonna be the only Transformers Prime stuff until November or December, so even though I'm gonna be owning this toy again when I get the "Entertainment Pack" that comes with the three PVC human kids, it's worth it to me to have this guy five months early.

Plus, dude, his packaging.  He comes inside a Matrix, which you can wear, which comes inside a box that looks like Optimus Prime's chest, sealed with a magnet.  And  you can remove the toy no problem from the Matrix without wrecking it.  You just pop the plastic part, sort through some layers, and voila.  Removeable, returnable Optimus Prime toy.  So when my next convention comes along (Wizard World Chicago, is it?) I can put him back in and wear him around like a dork.  You know, versus shilling my webcomic at a table like a dork.

The toy is more complicated than I was expecting.  I'm not sure why I was expecting simpler.  It's not, like, insanely complicated, it's just more complicated than I thought it looked, apparently.  The thing explodes to transform from one mode to another.   And I'm increasingly used to Optimus Prime toys having fake robot mode windshields, but it feels a little crazier to have his fake robot mode windshield to fold up and cover his real truck windshield.  That feels like a whole new level of absurdity.  But I understand why.  His robot mode windows don't actually look like his truck mode windows, so whatcha gonna do.  Damn those character designers.

Another thing that weirds me out are his shoulders.  They look for all the world like they're supposed to become the truck's air foil, and it's kind of frustrating that they don't.  In both this Deluxe Class toy and the upcoming Voyager Class toy, the air foil instead becomes the heels.  Again, I understand why, what with the placement of the parts in each mode and the designed hinging in the front of the shins, but it rankles my brain a little.

In conclusion, this guy comes with a wearable Matrix, within which is a toy which won't be out for several months.  How much either of those two details tickle you should determine how dedicated you are to hunting him down.

First off, I will not be attending San Diego Comic-Con this year.  I apologize!  But we're moving out of our house to a new apartment across town that same week, so also doing a convention on the other side of the country is kind of a non starter.  Some time after we move into our new apartment at the beginning of August, Shortpacked! Book 4 will arrive.   You don't want to have to move a ton of books twice, that's for sure!  So they're arriving after our move and not before.  Meaning, most importantly to us all, that they wouldn't have been there to buy at SDCC anyway.

Of course, my Blank Label Compatriots, Spike and Kel, will still be there, and will be happy to sell you their things.

(Anybody want to pick me up a 20-inch Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?)

Next, BotCon!  They've just put their schedule up, so now I have a general idea of when I will be at my table:

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Thanks to everyone who came to see me at San Diego Comic-Con and didn't stab me in the eye!  You are the true heroes.

See those sketch cards?  Those were a huge hit.  I'll probably keep doing them.  Every time a character's card was bought, I'd redraw them on another one, and so I musta gone through like 15 Ambers.  She, Mike, Robin, and Ethan were the most-bought, for the record.  I also sold a lot of Batmen and SG Ravages!

Next up: The Canadian GIJoe Convention in Toronto!  That's the weekend after next.  See you there!

Tomorrow night: Why Beast Wars is awesome.

I'm home!  Let me drone on about one of my convention purchases, a reissued Blaster and some of his cassettes deployers.  Why the hell would I buy a toy I already have in still-great condition?

I guess it might be the three little dudes he comes with who I don't have.  I have no Steeljaw, no Ramhorn, no Eject.  That might be an incentive.

I guess it might also be his awesome-as-hell packaging, with the metallic slip-cover over the book-box deal.  And the lengthy bio on the back is less icing on the cake than it is a cake made entirely of icing, perhaps as a side dish.  It doesn't only flesh out Blaster's character, but it provides all sorts of nerdy little things about Cybertron's history and pre-war culture.  Oh, and Blaster's still a boom-box because cassette tapes are great for bootlegging music.

But no, the real dealbreaker is that Blaster's legs are a slightly different color.  Instead of silver, they're a metal-flaked beige.  That really got my attention, for reasons I should probably be ashamed.  Is that all it takes?  Is that really it?  One slightly different color?  Sure, his legs are sometimes brownish in the original comics, but...

Yeah, it was the warmer leg color.

I think I need an intervention.