Brawn’s vehicle form is a military style pick-up truck. Keep in mind that the figures being released now are focusing on the NEST teams, that is to say the Autobots working with humans to hunt down Decepticons, and as such, Brawn’s alt mode really fits the bill perfectly. The truck’s body is brown with a little black and green trim and the windows and windshield are all clear. There is some excellent detailing on the mold and the seams are pretty well placed so as not to be too ugly or too obvious. Each side of the truck bears the NEST emblem, and there’s an articulated black machine gun mounted on the top. As an homage, to G1 Brawn, its not too obvious, but it is close enough. I think the colors are actually a little closer to G1 Outback, although granted he was a repaint of Brawn. Overall, the truck mode is solid and unless you pick it up and peak underneath, there’s no obvious signs of there being more than meets the eye here.

Transforming this guy isn’t too bad, but there are a lot of plates to move out of the way and a few double hinged pieces to deal with. His transformation is definitely unique and while he does have a fair amount of truck kibble, most of it gets tucked off to the back and out of the way. I do have a problem with his upper leg ball joints wanting to pop out during transformation. Its a big pet peeve of mine with these toys. It’s been an issue with a lot of the RotF figures, so its not fair to single out Brawn here for it. Besides, better they are designed to pop off than break off.

In bot form, Brawn is just plain awesome. His primary color goes from brown to green, with a substantial amount of gold in his chest and upper arms. Its a little closer to G1 Brawn’s coloring, especially if you are substituting gold for yellow. He has two cutouts in his chest, which are supposed to show off the “mech alive” gears that are connected to his arms, but they are sunken pretty deep and aren’t easy to make out. I absolutely love Brawn’s head sculpt, which can be best described as Autobot meets Cylon and it is quite reminscent of the head on the G1 toy.

Another cool and unique thing about Brawn is that he comes with two pistols that are actually in his hands when you transform him. They can both be removed if you wish, but this is the first Transformer I can think of that had detachable hand guns that were already in place when he was transformed. This design would be right at home in the movie, transforming to bot mode, doing a roll and coming up with both guns blazing.

Brawn’s articulation is quite good. He has the aforementioned ball joints in the upper legs, hinged knees and ankles, and hinged heel spurs. He can turn at the waist and at the neck. His shoulders are ball jointed and his elbows are hinged. Despite all the truck parts hanging off of him, none of them really deter his articulation, making him a pretty fun figure. The machine gun from his truck mode can also be positioned over his head. He can be a bit back heavy, though, if you don’t get his kibble positioned just right.

I really tried to be picky about the ROTF toys I buy, but Brawn is yet another reason why I have so many. He’s a really well designed figure with great coloring and sculpting. For a while I was bitching a lot about Hasbro upping the price on the Deluxes to about $12 now, but I don’t seem to mind so much when I’m buying figures like Brawn where the investment in details and complex engineering is so apparent. He’s a quality piece, its obvious a lot of work went into him, and I highly recommend adding him to your Autobot army.