War for Cybertron Trilogy Centurion Drone

Something I wasn't aware of when I wrote about Brunt was that his design had been based on the Centurion droids from the IDW comics, as a massive improvement on the crummy, seemingly Fantasy-influenced design of the green, dome-headed droids from the G1 cartoon. It seemed only logical, then, that a repaint should be in the works, since the figure seemed to be very much geared toward those who like to build armies of identical figures, like the Vehicons from TransFormers Prime.

Leave it to Hasbro, then, to re-release the figure only as part of a limited edition boxed set, along with a set of accessories missing from their individual toys. And, typically, it was long sold out by the time Hasbro Pulse reached the UK.

Since Brunt was - for my money - about the best toy in the entire Siege line, I was keen to get hold of the repaint, even if troop-building was out of the question (had been desirable to me in the first place, which it... wasn't... honest). The set was re-released by Takara Tomy earlier this year, but that set was equally hard to find. Thankfully, the repaint figure was the only part of the boxed set that I wanted, so I figured it was only a matter of time before someone put it up on eBay having bought the set for the accessories. Back over the summer, that's exactly what happened, so I snapped him up.

Vehicle Mode:

So, obviously, this really is just a grey version of the Brunt mold... but it's primarily a pale and pearlescent or metallic grey rather than plain. It's a great choice, to be honest as, while Brunt had a certain visual impact thanks to his vibrant purple base colour, this version has a genuine sheen, and catches the light in a way that suggests shades of plastic colour that aren't actually present. That said, it does seem that there are two slightly different shades of the pearlescent plastic, one slightly cooler than the other, which possible helps to increase this effect by way of their subtle contrast.

A flat, glossy grey paint has been applied to certain details, which seems like an odd choice on a toy made of predominantly grey plastic. The effect is quite subtle, but does give those few parts a very different appearance. Additional highlights are applied in silver and a nice, vibrant red, with the treads painted glossy black. It's curious to note that the two attachments to the cannon are virtually identical to those on Brunt - the side-mounted cylinder might be a few shades lighter, but it has the same silver patch, while the tip of the gun features the same metallic orange paint. The presentation emphasises that this is a production line unit, and Brunt earned his custom paint job simply because of his close association with Trypticon.

The sculpted detail stands out well and I'm reminded again of how great Brunt looked in comparison to other Siege figures. The level of detailing here is perfect, communicating that this is a heavy-duty mobile weapon platform - and nothing looks out of place or excessive. The design is functional, absolutely not intended to be pretty, and its cannon is basically the same length as the vehicle it's mounted on. The red highlights look great - particularly the strip of red that's the robot's optics, peeking out over the front of the vehicle.

Robot Mode:

Whether intentional or not, the design of this figure coupled with the largely neutral colourscheme and the red strip visor makes this figure look like a heavy-duty Cylon from Battlestar Galactica - even the name fits, since the individual armoured humanoid Cylons were referred to as 'Centurions', as a nod to the show's Romans vs. Egyptians aesthetic. Obviously, this thing looks far more bulky that those from the original series, let alone the curiously skeletal robots from the reboot, but perhaps resembling a form of vehicular Cylon from the reboot - like the Raiders, only ground-based.

Only a little bit more of his paintwork is visible in robot mode, the black and grey details on the fronts of his thighs having been concealed in vehicle mode. Pretty much everything else was visible in vehicle mode, though things like the grey-painted bottle-like details at his shoulders and the blocks of red below them were less so due to the bulky treads surrounding them. It's odd that, while he's technically plainer than Brunt - having fewer and less extensive paint applications in less contrasting colours - he still looks fantastic due to the way the two shades of unpainted pearlescent grey plastic catch the light.

Something I only noticed while writing this post is that, not only did I neglect to fold away his knee pegs in vehicle mode, but his hip joints are the wrong way round, with the less detailed side - featuring the joints' flat pin heads - facing forward. It doesn't look too bad, though, and almost makes him look like a slightly simpler, generic model of tank drone than Brunt... Which is exactly what he's supposed to be.

One of the strangest things about the boxed set this figure originally came in was that it didn't include any additional armament specifically for this figure. Alongside a couple of perfunctory Energon Cubes, the set contained weapons omitted from various other Deluxe class toys - everything from Roller for Earthrise Optimus Prime's trailer, to a replacement for that figure's handgun and the energy weapons used by Prime and Megatron in the G1 cartoon's pilot episode. There are also dinky non-transforming, alternate mode toys of Megatron, Soundwave and Reflector, as well as things like Sideswipe's jetpack, Trailbreaker's radar dish and Ironhide's drill, even a cage for Siege or Earthrise Ravage, all for use as accessories for the full-size figures. Certainly, some of these could be wielded by the Centurion Drone, but the set includes nothing intended for him. Thus, the Centurion Drone is stuck with the spare weapon components that are normally attached behind one of his shoulders. I mean, I get that the whole game with the Weaponisers is that they are the weapons... but it still strikes me as a little daft not to include something new - or even a repurposed weapon from an existing toy - for the Drone to call his own and further differentiate him from Brunt.

Naturally the head sculpt is identical to the standard Brunt figure, just with the more contrasting colourscheme, making him look like a cross between a Cylon and Robocop. It's not immediately apparent, since the red visor draws the eye so powerfully, but the area of the 'face' behind the raised collar panels has been painted grey, flattening it out somewhat. I had thought that the grille area - the sort of combination nose/mouth-analogue - was painted silver, but its sheen is entirely down to the quality of the plastic used. One strange thing to note about the design of the head is that the 'face' is a separate part, glued into place, almost as if there may have been tentative plans for another version with a slightly different head.

Much as I like Brunt, the Centurion Drone repaint transcends its theoretically quite bland colourscheme to become the superior iteration of the mold... Which is surely the very least one would tend to expect from a premium-priced, limited edition version of a figure first released without fanfare, as part of a mass-release toyline. Brunt is a great toy, and almost makes me want a Titans Return Trypticon just so I can try to partner them up and find ways to effectively use Brunt's weaponiser parts on the larger toy's base mode. However, where he might have been considered a risk - the G1 toy having been a partsformer tank accessory without a robot mode - this feels like an insane gamble that, to a degree, paid off spectacularly... Far better, at least, than some of Hasbro's later 'drone'-type toys, like the awful Sparkless Seeker, Sparkless Bot or the Deseeus Army Drone, none of which were of any interest to me.

The more I look at this figure, the more I wish it was based on accessories from a repaint of G1 Trypticon, where perhaps both Brunt and Full Tilt had been molded in grey... While there was a reworking of Trypticon as Beast Wars II Gigastorm, the colourscheme remained much the same - predominantly grey and purple - but all the accessories other than Full Tilt were omitted from the set, so there's no easy reference point there.

In a lot of ways, though, I think that the War for Cybertron Trilogy Centurion Drone - and, to a slightly lesser extent, Brunt - is another symptom of the wider malaise affecting the TransFormers brand in recent years. It's difficult to know for certain when this mold was developed, but a new Trypticon was released as part of the Titans Return line in 2017, and included a Deluxe class Full Tilt figure, this time a Titan Master in his own right. It then took two years for Brunt to arrive, in a toyline completely unconnected with the Prime Wars Trilogy, and without any clear indication of if or how he could accessorise with TR Trypticon. But, even if he could, Brunt's parts played a key role in the motorised features of G1 Trypticon's base mode... on the Titans Return version, the best you could hope for is that Siege Brunt's Weaponiser components are compatible with whatever 5mm ports were closest to the locations of the G1 tank's parts.

But if the Siege Brunt figure came along a couple of years too late to be truly relevant and to fit properly in his toyline, the very concept of a generic Centurion Drone feels like a massive missed opportunity for a Titans Return troopbuilder. Even as a potential troopbuilder in Siege it could have made sense - let's face it, the Netflix show tried very hard to make a virtue of reusing the same models ad infinitum, for nameless cannon fodder - but Hasbro chose to chuck it into a limited edition boxed set with a slew of accessories that, frankly, could and should have been packaged with the appropriate Deluxe and/or Voyager class toys in the first place.

You really have to wonder what they're thinking...

Or if they're thinking.