It’s time again where I’m between new releases and therefore must dip into the Bottomless Totes of Convertobots to come up with something to talk about on Transformers Thursdays. This serves a double purpose as I’m really looking to downsize my TF collection, so looking at some of these figures again helps me to decide whether to keep them, ship them off to my nephew, or try to get a couple bucks for them on Ebay. Today I dropped my hand into that copious pit of plastic and pulled out a baggie containing these two little Scout Class figures from the 2005 Cybertron series. Let’s start with Brakedown, and then check out his repainted form as Brakedown GTS!

Brakedown’s alt mode is a bitchin’ Cybertronian racer and it beautifully reflects some of the wonderful and imaginative alt modes that came out of a line where the designers weren’t constrained to just Earth vehicles. This thing is absolutely packed with detail and the brown and gold deco mixed with the translucent yellow pieces looks so good, it’s kind of a shame they went with just a light gray plastic for the rest of the trim. The big translucent yellow wheels gives me a warm and fuzzy Tron vibe too, which is always a good thing. What’s also cool about this car is the fact that when I first got it, I had no idea how it was going to transform, something that was not too common for the smaller Scout Class toys.

Of course, part of the mystery of Brakedown’s transformation comes from the removal of a size-able piece to form his gun. Some may cry foul at parts-forming, but the idea of taking out what could be the car’s engine to form a gun makes for a nice Targetmaster/Powermaster mash up to me.

Brakedown’s robot mode is all in all quite good with just a few blemishes to get in the way of greatness. I’m not a fan of the way the car’s front frame extends up over his back and he’s got tiny little forearms. Neither of these are dealbreakers for me, but that backpack does make him a bit back heavy and the ankle hinges on my figure have become a bit loose with age and those two things do not make for a happy combination. The head sculpt on this guy is pretty cool. I like the design of his “helmet” and those eyes feature some truly great light piping.

The gun can be held in either hand and it can be activated with the use of a CyberKey, which just flips out the bayonet. Not one of the more spectacular or dynamic CyberKey conversions, but neat nonetheless.

The repaint, Brakedown GTS, uses the same gray plastic parts, but updates the brown and gold to an aqua blue with red and yellow accents. Also, the yellow translucent plastic is replaced with regular black. In robot mode, you also get some sharp gold paint apps on the legs and arms and the “helmet” is painted silver. On the downside there’s no light piping in the eyes, just some tiny red painted peepers. The ankles on my GTS version are even looser than on the regular release, making this one a real challenge to stand up without his gun in hand to counterbalance his weight.

It’s hard to believe these figures are ten years old already. Where has the time gone? Looking back, I’ve found Cybertron to be a rather hit and miss line with me, but this pair definitely falls into the hit column. I love their alt modes and while the robots could have used a few simple tweaks, I still dig them a lot. My only other gripe here would have been to change them up as different characters, as I’m not a fan of having a repaint of the same character. Indeed, if I had my choice, I would have made regular Brakedown a Decepticon and kept the GTS version as an Autobot.