Studio Series #80 Brawn

I have to confess a certain favouritism when it comes to Brawn. The original G1 toy was likely my fourth purchase in the TransFormers line, and I've always loved its blocky awkwardness, long legs, short arms, and utilitarian claw/hook 'hands'. To this day, one of my favourite stories in the 1980s Marvel Comics series is The Enemy Within, in which Brawn goes bonkers after an electric shock, and ends up in a trial by combat with Starscream.

To say that I dislike his animation model from the cartoon would be an understatement, since he became too generic among the other blocky, poorly drawn robots. While the approximate shape of his head remained, its simplistic, almost featureless mask was replaced by a more expressive, humanoid face, even though he was never a particularly prominent character in the show.

I wasn't at all surprised that he didn't appear in any of the first five live action movies - if anything, I was surprised that he did appear - albeit briefly - in the Cybertron sequence in the Bumblebee solo movie... There was a toy named Brawn in the extended Revenge of the Fallen toyline (and which was repainted into a rather more mold-appropriate Outback analogue) but, much as I liked it, it wasn't quite the update to the G1 character I was hoping for. I quite liked what I saw in the Bumblebee movie, though, and so was excited when he was announced as being part of the first wave of Hasbro's 2022 selection in the Studio Series line. Was this excitement justified..?

Vehicle Mode:

Considering the only Cybertronian vehicle modes clearly shown in the Bumblebee movie were those of Bumblebee himself and the Seekers/Coneheads, I was very interested to see what Hasbro's concept people would come up with for a vehicle mode. After all, it's highly unlikely that the staff at ILM who actually worked on the movie had time to produce concept art, let alone 3D models for things that weren't actually going to appear on-screen... and it's not as if Hasbro have recently tried to make a whole line of TransFormers with Cybertronic vehicle modes...

...Oh, right, there was Siege. Which was largely shit.

But I digress.

What we have with Brawn is certainly very... original. There's something endearingly retro-futuristic about this vehicle mode. It's a kind of bubble car, but formatted as a pickup truck with a curiously egg-shaped cargo pod. It feels like a vehicle you'd see on a farm or other agricultural setting in a sci-fi movie, possibly as a driverless 'robot' transport truck. The way the front wheels are only partially enclosed reminds me a little of the Spinners from Blade Runner, though the fully exposed rear wheels make this vehicle look far less elegant. Because of this weird sense of familiarity of function, it's a believable vehicle mode despite being clearly alien in origin. The deliberate alien-ness of it also goes some way toward mitigating the effects of some obvious robot parts left fully exposed. Where some TransFormers toys attempt to hide the robot inside a vehicle shell, Studio Series Brawn proudly wears his legs, in their entirety, across his base, has his upper arms exposed on the sides, and the outer shell of the vehicle itself is the robot's chest (at the back) and back (forming the cockpit). But more on that later.

The basic vehicle looks pretty decent, even though the only vehicle-specific sculpted detail is a grille on the box between his front wheels and some raised panels around the 'cockpit' section. What's really frustrating is that these details include panels that were plainly intended to be painted green and recessed parts that are equally clearly identifiable as headlights, yet the only paint applications on this entire section are gunmetal, appearing on the front central section, with one on either side highlighting some tech detail. This decision looks even more bizarre when you realise the small patch of green just behind the cockpit - for the most part almost invisible in robot mode - and the rear wheels feature largely unnecessary applications of green paint. I'm in two minds about the plastic colours used on this toy. Brawn, to me, needs to have dark green as his most prominent colour in vehicle mode... While I like the shade of yellow they've used, the green is essentially a pale 'olive drab' that ends up looking too light, hovering somewhere between a macha green and a minty green. The colour matching with the green paint seems good, but that's not exactly a recommendation under the circumstances. The wheels, joints, weapons and front grille chunk are molded in two different shades of ugly brownish-grey, the lighter of which is anaemic, while the darker looks like it's intended to blend in with the gunmetal paint over the yellow plastic of the canopy... but this only barely works, and only from certain angles. Both are similar the sort of colour Hasbro have previously used for 'desert dusty' tyres instead of paint on standard black/grey tyres.

On the upside, and despite the lack of paintwork, while the majority of the sculpted detail on show is really intended to be robot mode detailing, what's there actually looks pretty good in vehicle mode as well. Most of the vehicle is covered with large, mostly featureless panels, but the exposed mechanical parts are nicely sculpted and of such nebulous purpose that they could easily be engine parts or, in the case of the gunmetal-painted details on either side at the back, hinting at the inner workings of the vehicle's rear section. Of course, the main advantage to Cybertronian vehicle modes is that they don't even need to function as disguise, so it could simply be that this is just as it appears to be: a robot in a yoga position that puts its integrated wheels on the ground for locomotion. The most glaring downside to this approach in designing both the vehicle mode and its transformation is that Brawn's head remains clearly visible thanks to the same gaping hole through which it pops for robot mode. One other item of detail that warrants mention is the subtle tech detailing on the inside of the cockpit canopy. It feels as though it might have looked better with some paintwork backing it up, but it works well enough without, due to the way the ridges catch the light.

Somewhat surprisingly, Brawn comes with two accessories. The first is a gun which, while remarkably similar to the weapon included with his wavemates Ratchet and Wheeljack, is actually a unique mold, tailored specifically to this vehicle. It pegs (somewhat loosely) to the roof of the 'cockpit' section, thanks to a peg on the roof and a socket on the underside of the gun's extensive barrel section. This allows the rear of the weapon to partially conceal the unsightly hole in the top at the rear of the vehicle, thus improving the concealment of the robot's head. The peg allows the gun to rotate, but the 5mm grip poking down over the robot's head butts up against the rim of the rear section. This limits its range to about 30°, and both peg and socket are so shallow, the gun is as inclined to slip off its mounting as it is to turn. The second accessory - while very welcome in these days of reduced parts counts, reduced paint budgets and generally shrinking toys coupled with increasing costs - is little more than a playful nod to the animated TV series from the 1980s... more specifically the episode The Ultimate Doom: Part 1, in which Brawn unaccountably sprouts a drill from the front of his vehicle mode and starts tunnelling into the ground... A trick which is never referred to, let alone used again, at any point in the series. For storage purposes, this can be attached either to the peg on the roof, instead of the gun, or to the peg on top of the gun. For more 'active' use, the vehicle's front grille can be rotated back to expose a 5mm port. The 'drill' then plugs into that... and looks just as ineffectual as the more traditional drill in that episode of the TV show. I mean, it's described as a drill, but it's three tapered blades - mounted dead straight, at 120° from each other - that couldn't possibly function as a drill. Given that this accessory also features a generous coating of silver paint, one can't help but wonder how much better Brawn might have looked if they'd not included the drill, and instead used that section of the budget to better decorate the main figure.

Robot Mode:

I'd be curious to know what the design brief was for the Cybertron scenes in the Bumblebee movie, not least because I gather these were late additions, tacked on toward the end of the movie's production. Whatever it was, though, it resulted in a small selection of robots - both Autobot and Decepticon - who were instantly recognisable, both as individual robots and, more importantly, as specific characters the long-term fans would know... which just wasn't the case for many of the robots in the Michael Bay movies. They may have had very little screen time, but one was never confused as to what was happening, or to whom... and, while the former could equally be said about all of the robots in Bay's instalments, the latter most certainly could not.

In Brawn's case, he doesn't exactly look like G1 Brawn - a lanky yet boxy toy with tiny arms and shoulder wings, or a squat, bulky, nondescript box of an animation model - but there are sufficient visual cues to give this design enough inherent Brawn-ishness that he should satisfy all but the most die-hard G1 animation zealots. For starters, well, just look at him. One could show this figure to someone who'd never encountered TransFormers - in any form - and they wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that his name is 'Brawn'. In terms of build - and overall shape - he reminds me a little of some interpretations of the X-Men villain Juggernaut, and in particular, the ultra-bulked up version from the Capcom fighting games. Additionally, the proportionally long arms and short legs evoke the G1 cartoon aesthetic, even though the shape of him is so much more rounded. While he only has one set of wheels on his legs - up on his hips - that's one set more than the animation model managed. Some folks seemed to have complaints about the lack of variation in foot shape in the Bumblebee movie robots, and Brawn's are certainly very similar to Beetle Bumblee's, but they're definitely not identical.

Colour-wise, the balance and distribution is largely true to the G1 toy, but with a definite bias to the animation model. It's nice to see that they've taken advantage of the mold layouts to give him two different colours of plastic for his feet, and then gunmetal paint on the toe caps (a detail omitted from two of the three SS releases of that Bumblebee mold). The upper legs have applications of green paint on the larger, outer thigh armour panel, with silver on the smaller, inner thigh panel, though this application is only on the front of the thighs, so bare metallic grey plastic is visible on the continuation of the panels on the back of his thighs. As far as I can tell, the only other paint applications are the small silver blobs on his kneecaps, a recessed panel at the top of his pelvis, and a strip on his groin. This is a bit disappointing given the amount of sculpted detail on the legs and feet, but it's not surprising these days.

Since the G1 toy's torso was a largely flat panel with a few raised details, this version keeps it simple but, where the original had a raised, ridged section running down most of the front, this just has a gunmetal section wedged in between the two halves of his main torso shell, and it's this part that develops some mechanical detail - similar to what's now under his arms - at the collar. While the construction is quite straightforward, the design of the body and the sparing use of metallic paint really do make it look like Brawn is wearing a huge yellow armoured lifejacket over a less-bulky internal robotic structure. The arms follow the G1 animation model in terms of colouration - green at the upper arm, metallic grey for the forearms - but, again, they're more rounded, and the minimal sculpted detail coupled with the construction of the arms gives the impression of bulky armour. The stripes of silver on the upper arms look as if they may be references to the toy's chrome, and they help to give the armour a layered appearance, almost as if the silver panels are fastening the outer and inner sections of green armour together.

For the most part, there's no obvious use for Brawn's 'drill' weapon in robot mode, though he can of course wield it as a hand-held weapon (which looks daft), or attached to the front of his rifle, at which point it looks like mining equipment. The gun itself is nicely detailed, but the used of the brownish-grey plastic makes it look a little dull. It can be stowed on his back (at the rakish angle of your preference) via the same peg that's used for mounting the gun in vehicle mode, but it plugs in via a socket on the righthand side of the barrel, rather than the one on the underside. Brawn can wield it via the standard 5mm grip in either hand, and the arms have enough range that he can do a fair approximation of supporting the gun barrel with one hand while holding it with the other.

I mentioned earlier a certain similarity to Juggernaut, and this is particularly apparent with the head sculpt. The sad thing here being that it's most similar to the terrible Vinnie Jones version from the third live-action X-Men movie. Granted, Brawn has always been represented as having a dome-like helmet, and this version isn't completely hopeless, but it's another interpretation of Brawn's head that's too much helmet, not enough face. The cut-out section is not much wider than the crest over the top of the helmet, and the wider section at eye level is barely wider again. This wouldn't necessarily be so bad, but the designers created an utterly nightmarish, indecipherable mess for Brawn's face. That's fine when you only see it for a fraction of a second on-screen in the movie, but it really doesn't make for a toy with the right sort of character, and it's difficult enough to identify an expression, let alone specific facial features. Making matters worse, the face ends up looking too long within that thin sliver of helmet opening, and Brawn has the smallest, squintiest eyes I've yet seen on a Studio Series figure. I get that the G1 toy has a bland face - nothing more than a black visor and a battlemask painted the same colour as the helmet - but this is one of the few designs from the Bumblebee movie that feels closer to those from the Bay movies and, in my opinion, just doesn't do Brawn justice, even if he did only have a brief appearance that ended with him getting shot. If fact, one wonders why they went to so much trouble, given the circumstances - a visor and a plain battlemask would have worked just as well, and required less work. One cool feature of this head, though, is that it looks as though it's been painted with both gunmetal (most of the helmet) and silver (helmet trim and robot face), which really brings that massive dome to life.

Brawn's transformation is nice and simple, but nevertheless quite clever. The cockpit canopy unpegs from his back and folds back, with the front wheels folding out from inside and the head hinging down into the space left behind in the torso. The arms swing back, with the forearms nudging forward on the double-jointed elbow so they can peg in to the underside of the canopy. The lower body rotates 180°, the lower legs unpeg at the knee and rotate 180°, allowing the feet to peg into what had been the calves. The legs then need to be rotated almost 90° at the joint above the knee, such that the feet are facing outward. At this point the legs can be swung up to meet the upper body, with the pegs on the insides of the kneecaps pegging into slots on the front wheels at the same time as tabs on the rim of the cockpit canopy slot into sockets on the sides of the lower legs, completing the 90° rotation of the lower legs in the process. It all fits together very well in both modes, and I'm particularly keen on the way the upper shell of the vehicle closes up to form the robot's torso, with the cockpit canopy making for one of the smallest, smoothest, most seamless TransFormers toy backpacks I've seen in a long while. The way the collar piece connects to the sculpted detail on the upper body is a little weak, relying rather too much on the folded-up front wheel chunk for support (pro tip: the grille is folded away, exposing the 5mm port, when transforming back to robot mode, so that an extended block on the back of the wheel chunk ensures the head stays almost perfectly in place), but it's otherwise pretty solid.

As we've all come to expect from Studio Series toys - and particularly those from the Bumblebee movie - Brawn's articulation is excellent. Due to his transformation, the 'toe' section can tilt down 90°, with the ankle tilting to about 60°. The knees bend to about 110° and have unrestricted rotation. The hips aren't the best I've seen, swinging a little over 90° forward, but only about 70° back before the sculpted detail starts butting up against the upper body. They can get very close to 90° by making use of the unrestricted waist rotation to move the upper body out of the way. The shoulders are ball joints attached to mushroom pegs in the upper arm, so they can swing around a full 360°, but there's very little in the way of bicep rotation thanks to the shape of the shoulder armour (the cutout notch isn't aligned with the joint for some reason) and, on mine, the left arm twists more smoothly than the right. The double-jointed elbows manage about 140° of bend, and the wrists can rotate freely. The head is pinned in place, and only manages about 40° turn before the back of the chin gets stuck on the protruding neck detail, and there's no tilt at all.

The fact that it's taken me about four months to get round to writing about this toy (and, hopefully, soon, the rest of the first wave of Bumblebee toys) would generally be a bad sign... but, in this case, there's nothing wrong with Brawn beyond the typically miserly paint job. The delay has been down to a fundamental loss of impetus regarding all things TransFormers. If anything, these toys - if not the whole Studio Series line - are about the only things maintaining my interest in a brand Hasbro seems intent on draining of all its former innovation, and I regret not getting to this Studio Series set sooner. Brawn is a particularly fun toy, with a simple, but perfectly enjoyable transformation. The design overall is full of personality, and faithful the feel of the G1 character while being wholly original in appearance. I'd have preferred a head sculpt - and particularly a face - that skewed more toward the simplicity of the G1 toy, but there's certainly no mistaking who this is. Slightly more paint - especially on the sculpted tech detailing on the legs and feet - would have been appreciated, but the metallic grey plastic, at least, is surprisingly effective without. It's also a hell of a lot better than the Titans Return toy, despite similarly squat proportions and the use of a comparatively anaemic green.

...And I have to admit I'm somewhat curious as to whether Hasbro would recolour this mold to create a movieverse Outback, with a unique head sculpt... I'd probably end up getting that, as well.