Barricade is a sort of wheeled missile launcher - a cab with a big rotating missile array (sadly moulded) mounted on top. The Godzilla theme to the Energon toys continues..... (See Signal Flare & Energon Kickback) The missile array features a Minicon port on either side. The vehicle mode is a mix of grey and sea blue/green (mainly on the missile array) The missile array can be folded out the back to extend the vehicle mode and in turn give a reasonable impersonation of the original version of Onslaught.
The missile array folds backwards & separates to form the legs, the sides of the cab become the arms and the cab folds back to become a large backpack.
Onslaught's Barricades's robot mode is nice & solid. Like the robot modes for the other Energon combiner leaders it's a bit blocky but it doesn't seem to matter so much here. The grey confines itself to the body & backpack leaving the limbs as mainly the sea blue/green colour and additional robot parts mainly as black. Articulation is top draw - turning head & shoulder, arms that raise to the sides & have bicep & elbow joints, a waist, universal hips & bending knees. The head's got a great sculpt based round a moulded winch mechanism, which can just about be seen behind the cab in robot mode, and comes lightpiped. The hands have the familiar 5mm peg hole but Barricade, again like the other Energon combiner leaders, doesn't have a hand held weapon, or an Energon star like all the limbs. His Minicon ports have ended up on the front of each knee plus an extra one on his left shoulder.
Barricade forms the core of the Bruticus Maximus combined robot: the arms peg - solidly - into the body and the legs retract exposing the connecter pins. The backpack (the cab upside down) is the chest, and the large robot head folds up from it. He forms a good solid chest piece - the best of the 3 combiners - lends itself to a much better combiner. It works well with Destruction team limbs, but I found it was even better with FOUR Sledges attached (my favorite of the Energon Limbs)
Barricade was released in the US as an Energon toy and was later available in the US on a Universe card. Barricade didn't make it to the UK which made buying the Destruction team basics that serve as limbs a bit pointless.
Barricade was released in Japan as Onslaught which was part of SD-21 Bruticus Giftset.
What you don't see until you get to combined mode is that there's been some remoulding on the toy - he has a new combined mode head.
At the time of writing the (17/12/2009) the Bruticus set is yet to appear in the UK even though it's companion repaint of Energon Superion is widely available.