Phil's
Bruticus,
Operation Combination Battle Gaea,
Generation 2 Bruticus,
Car Robots Baldigus
and
Robots In Disguise, Wal-Mart & Universe Wal-Mart Ruination Review
Like all Scramble City/Special Teams combiners Onslaught can be connected
together with each of the smaller vehicles serving as an arm or a leg.
Therefore I'll include TF instructions for both along with comments as to
which is the preferred mode for what part and the pluses and minuses of
using them in either way.
Brawl
Leg Mode: Fold down the front of the tank and plug a foot into the back of
the tank. This is Brawl's proffered mode for combination. I've seen Brawl
attached with the tank barrel facing out or behind the leg, I'd go for on
the front of the leg.
Arm Mode: Fold the peg out from the underside of the tank. Plug a fist into
the bottom of the tank. Quite good as an arm as it mounts the rotating tank turret on the outside of the arm.
Blast Off
Leg Mode: Fold the nose of the shuttle down to the sides and turn them round
so they're flush with the body. Plug a foot into the engines at the back of
the shuttle.
Arm Mode: Fold the peg out from the top of the shuttle. Fold down the tail fin. Remove the weapons, fold the wings up and plug the weapons onto the wings. Plug a fist into
the engines at the back of the shuttle. This is the proffered mode but I
think it looks a little odd as the underside of the shuttle faces out which
is coloured significantly differently. I'd have had the tail fin side facing out.
Vortex
Leg Mode. Form the robot mode by removing the cockpit gun, folding the tail down to the sides of the
vehicle and flipping the cockpit over to form legs. Plug a foot into the
underside of the cockpit.
Arm Mode: Just flip the cab over and plug a fist into the underside of the
cab. This is it's preferred combination mode which I quite like because it
mounts Vortex's cannons on the shoulders.
Swindle
Leg Mode: Fold the front of the jeep & back of the jeep back and attach a
foot to the back of the jeep. Again like Brawl this is the preferred mode
for combination, and again I've seen Swindle connected either way round
though in this case it's probably best to have to robot chest facing out as
then you don't get the hollow back of his robot legs.
Arm Mode: Fold the front & the back of the jeep up, fold out the post from
the underside and fold the front of the jeep back. Plug a fist into the
back of the jeep. Doesn't work so well for me due to the hollow sides of
the legs being visible.
Onslaught
Fold The cab halves apart and back along the sides of the
vehicle. Turn so the cab halves are facing up. Fold the back of the
vehicle up. Pull back on the back of the vehicle lengthen in. . Separate
the back of the vehicle in two. Fold out to the sides at the robot hip and
then back in at the robot knee.
Look at the underside of Onslaught: Plug the legs into the bottom of the
folded up back of the truck and the arms into the exposed inside parts of
the cab. Plug the large chest plate into his chest. Place the helmet over
Onslaught's head. Place Onslaught's gun into the robot's hand.
The resulting combined robot is better proportioned than the earlier two
combiners using this combination system (Superion was too tall and thin, Menasor was too
blocky on his torso) Personally I still prefer Defensor to him when
combined but Bruticus does look like he works as a combined form.
Battle Gaea was sold only as a giftset numbered TF-10 in the Operation Combination series. The packaging shows off the limb swapping idea by displaying all four limbs in all four combinations - in particular it has Brawl with tank barrel to the back when in leg mode. Although three of the limbs are sensible colours and the armour is nicely coloured in black, the blue from Great Cannon and the red from Leland do rather draw your eye towards them and effect the balance of the toy.
See here for pictures
Although brightly mutli coloured Bruticus is united by the purple camouflage I was so rude about in all the reviews of the limbs. However it's missing from the front of Onslaught's legs resulting in large areas of really bright yellow. Fix that and maybe colour Onslaught more sensibly then I reckon you'd have a better toy.
There is no G2 Bruticus Giftset - he could only be formed by buying the five individual toys, none of which were released in the UK.
In 2000 I wrote "Baldigus: I think most of us have probably played with a bruticus toy in our time. Nice redeco, and the slight remolds to allow the ramp to be held and the guns to combine are great additions."
The colours on this toy work well together and are brought together by the gold combined robot armour.
The individual robot weapons combine for the first time on this toy: Hepter & Shuttler wear their vehicle mode weapons, but Dollrailer's gun has Shuttler's and Danger's pegged into it. Grejeber's two gun are combined with Hepter's cockpit cannon and the dual cannon for Danger to from a second hand weapon. This continues to be the case for all subsequent versions.
Ruination is spoilt by making all the combined robot pieces silver. Where the gold unites it the silver breaks it apart.
There is no Ruination giftset - he could only be formed by buying the five individual toys - but the basic limbs were never available at the same time as the deluxe main body who was a Woolworths Exclusive. Way to go Hasbro UK !
This Ruination is the first time the Combaticons have had a real unified colour scheme - described widely as Artic Camouflage it's probably more appropriately termed Urban Camouflage. It's maybe a little plain all in grey camo with grey armour though. Not sure who decided to make the feet purple though, that doesn't work and detracts from the rest of the toy.
Ruination was available solely in the Ruination giftset in only available at Wal-Mart - there are no individual parts sold separately. The packaging was an Armada style rounded front box with the Robots In Disguise name on it.
This time Ruination comes in a Desert camouflage scheme - a sandy colour on which is a pattern in two shades of brown. The gold is back for the add on robot parts and armour and works well with the sandy colour scheme - Ruination fans - buy the RID version and this and use the armour from this with the RID version to make a more Baldigus Ruination !
I don't like the individual toy colours in this set, and when combined there's lots of red exposed on Ro-Tor which pulls the eye to that limb - especially if it's the one holding Mega-Octane's gun.
Ruination was available solely in the Ruination giftset only available at Wal-Mart - there are no individual parts sold seperately. The packaing was Transformers Universe.
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