I remember when I was a kid I had a friend who I would carpool with home from school and I remember one Christmas our families went all out giving each other stuff. If I remember I think my parents got them food while they also got my parents food but for me, they also got me Brawl and Vortex two members of the Decepticon combiner team the Combaticons, and an arm and a leg of Bruticus.

I remember the toy commercial for the Combaticons. How could I not? Considering how it had more of that really crude early ’90s CGI that made toy commercials seem way cooler than they should be.

It also had some really awesome rap/yelling

I’m not sure who came up with this decision but if you went off the Generation 2 toy commercial the Combaticons were being marketed as the rivals of the Aerialbots even though I believe according to the cartoon the Aerialbots’ rivals were supposed to be the Stunticons while the Combaticons’ rivals were the Protectobots.

When Hasbro started releasing updated versions of the old Generation 1 Transformers toys to coincide with the Prime Wars Trilogy as well as tie into the recent videogames and comicbooks from IDW Publishing I resisted buying them partly because I’m and adult and partly because toys are really expensive.

Now if anybody has been keeping up with my site or at least read my post about that SDCC Exclusive Devastator I picked up you’re probably asking “Well, what about that one?” Well the answer is: I partly bought that one because I really wanted a souvenir from Comic Con and I chose that one, also I justified buying it as an investment which is why it’s still sitting unopened.

Anyway, it took me a while to realize it but I figure with this website I could justify buying a whole lot of stupid stuff so now I have a crap ton of toys sitting in the corner of my parents’ living room.

When I started getting into collecting Transformers I was a little late to the party. Part 1 of the Prime Wars Trilogy, “Combiner Wars” had already ended and part 2, “Titans Return,” was gearing up to start but luckily thanks to the Internet and me knowing where to look I’ve managed to pick up most of the ones I’m really interested in and one of the first big ones I picked up was Bruticus.

In the original Transformers cartoon the Combaticons/Bruticus’s origin is this: After finally putting up with enough of Starscream’s crap Megatron has him kicked out of the Decepticons and exiled to an island somewhere in the South Pacific where Starscream finds a bunch of abandoned WWII vehicles. Starscream comes up with an idea to rebuild the vehicles into his own private army and get his revenge. So he heads back to Cybertron to steal the brains of some Decepticon prisoners and uses them and the vehicles he found to create the Combaticons. Starscream and the Combaticons start causing a ruckus and the Decepticons come at him with Devastator but that’s when Starscream reveals that when he built the Combaticons, he gave them combiner powers so they form Bruticus and beat the crap out of Devastator. It is only with the intervention of the Stunticons who form Menasor that Bruticus is defeated. At this point, the rest of the Decepticons are still pissed at Starscream so they dump him and the Combaticons on some asteroid in space. Starscream being Starscream ends up ditching the Combaticons by transforming to jet mode and flying off. The Combaticons deciding that they now want revenge on everybody fly their asteroid to Cybertron and take it over prompting the Autobots and the Decepticons to team up and Starscream getting back into Megatron’s good graces by revealing Bruticus’s weakness. They defeat Bruticus and Megatron has him reprogrammed to join the Decepticons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCnR03GUh20

A little Shockwave was also included in the Bruticus set even though he isn’t a Combaticon. This is probably a nod to the epsiode “The Revenge of Bruticus” where the Combaticons take over Cybertron. Shockwave tries to fight them off, but when he transforms to gun-mode Bruticus just uses him to shoot at his drones.

Before I get further into the Combaticons and Bruticus I do want to say that after the original ’80s cartoons the designs for the Combaticons and Bruticus would later be reused in 2001’s Transformers: Robots in Disguise (this is the anime not the recent series that was on Cartoon Network). In this series the main villains are the Predacons who have animal-based alternate modes who find a lost Autobot ship on Earth. The Predacons give the Autobot crew vehicular alt-modes and call them the Decepticons and have them combine to form Ruination who by contrast to Bruticus is actually, calculating and intelligent fighter while Bruticus is pretty much just a dumbass.

It might not be obvious right away due to the coloring and also because there’s a lot of mass shifting that the cartoons used to cheat when doing transformations but once you see it’s one of those things you can’t forget.

Here’s the box for Combiner Wars Bruticus. Notice how the Combaticons have the Generation 2 coloring. From what I’ve seen it looks like if you buy the Combaticons individually they come in Generation 1 coloring but unfortunately finding all the individual Combaticons is quite a challenge and what I’ve seen from the ones I’ve been able to find it would have been a lot more expensive.

The backside of the box. With a breakdown of who forms what.

The Combaticons out of the box. I was really surprised when I saw how each Combaticon got his own weapon.

Here’s the collectible poster card thing that came with it. It’s basically just the same as the box art minus most of the obstructions.

One side of the instruction manual displaying how to transform the individual Combaticons from vehicle to robot mode.

The other side of the manual just shows you how to form Bruticus.

Combaticons’ leader, Onslaught. Out of all the pieces he was probably the most difficult to transform.

Some gun double-fisting.

Blast Off. Originally he was space shuttle but for “Combiner Wars” they changed his alt-mode to i Harrier jet which I’m guessing is to make him better fit into the Combaticons’ military vehicle-theme.

Vortex. I didn’t realize how much he was updated compared to the Vortex I had as a kid until I started writing this. On both the original and Generation 2 Vortex the tail section separated into 2 pieces to form his arms which have no hands making him incapable of holding anything. While now, the tail section folds to become a backpack while some newly added hardpoints become the arms.

Swindel, like Blast Off he has been newly updated. Originally he was a Jeep but now he’s like some sort of futuristic SUV or something. I wonder why they didn’t make him a hummer instead.

Brawl, out of all the Combaticons I think he’s been updated or changed the least since his original incarnation. He really gives me flashbacks to the Generation 2 Megatron. I remember for whatever reason when they released a Megatron toy they made him a tank instead of a gun and he had the same green paintjob with purple tiger stripes that Brawl had.

Shockwave. He looks pretty cool but I wish there was a bigger version of him like a Voyager or Leader class instead of the dinky little Legend class that he is. Even though he’s small I’m surprised how many steps were involved in transforming him.

Here’s a group shot of all of them together.

Now that you saw the Combaticons in both vehicle and robot modes it’s time to form Bruticus.

First up is Onslaught as the head and torso.

Next I did Blast Off who will be the right arm.

Then Vortex who will be the left arm. I really don’t know how I should be positioning his propellers.

Swindle who forms the right leg.

And Brawl who forms the left leg.

And here they are all put together. Now if you’re wondering why I didn’t show Shockwave in his combiner form it’s because he doesn’t’ have 1. You put him in gun mode and he just hooks onto the back.

I really like how much more articulated this is compared to the old Generation 2 toys. I tried putting Bruticus in some more poses so I could get some photography practice. But I learned having Shockwave on his back plus that backpack thing where the guns and Shockwave are mounted make Bruticus really unbalanced so even with the extra articulation is a bit difficult to put him in different poses and still get him to stand up on his own.

Also I didn’t realize this till I saw them do this in Robots in Disguise but the arms and legs are interchangeable.

I hope you enjoyed my little post on the Combiner Wars Bruticus and I hope you’re ready for more because I have a lot more Transformers and other toys and I have yet to even begin to scratch the surface on them.