While I was annoyed with the Bumblebee movie having everyone redesigned to be Geewun-inspired, I wasn't as bothered by Brawn since apart from having a kibbly toy, he was not an on-screen character until 2018. Even then, he was brought in for an obligated G1 reference where he gets shot in the shoulder, and everyone laughed at that scene in my theater. Even then, he had problems of his own, between being like a mix between a Ninja Turtle and Juggernaut, and his face being non-descript compared to the lower-tier Decepticons in prior movies. But that doesn't mean Brawn can't suck as an action figure, so let's see how they can make a figure of him before we even get a WFC Trilogy figure.
Here is Brawn in his robot mode, since the main point is to see how the characters who weren't designed to transform in the Bumblebee movie would fare when given altmodes. The robot mode design certainly was made to homage the G1 guy in mind, but I must commend them for working on the subtle hint of his alt mode pieces like the cockpit on the back and the wheels on the hips. The robot mode was so plain as it was that having the addition of those two is pretty good if you ask me. The olive green and custard yellow go well with the gunmetal gray of the toy, and I think that he's got the best feet out of the Beewun feet designs that we got for Bumblebee...and it's not even from Bumblebee! His arms do hang low, though it may have to do with the type of character designn that he has.
Head sculpt is pretty hilarious when it comes to how featureless it looks; I get that it's the G1 face with the Movieverse detailing, but it looks worse than any Movieverse Transformer head since those were at least able to be easier to pick out while this feels rather awkward. At least the bucket dome is lovely with the gunmetal gray and silver highlights, but he still looks like Juggernaut! His articulation consists of a somewhat limited ball-jointed neck, shoulders that are on ball joints, butterfly hinges, bicep swivels that are a little hindered by the shoulder kibble, double-elbow joints, wrist swivels, a waist swivel, and hips that move front and back, in and out, thigh swivels, knee joints, and ankle pivots. His massive weapon can be sort of dual-wielded while his alternate mode weapon can be placed on the top of it for additional storage, even though it looks bad.
The weapon can be stored on the back, even though the peg that's on-par with the WFC trilogy blast effect nubs doesn't really hold it on that well. Either in the robot mode or in vehicle mode.
For a size comparison, he's somehow slightly shorter than Bumblebee (who yes, is still the regular SS-70 version and not the Buzzworthy version) and Optimus Prime (who is the regular retail version which is fine with me). I'm going too guess that the fact that he was a Minibot did make him feel more like they had to have him be a stumpybot, but I wouldn't mind if he was at least taller than Bumblebee and slightly shorter than Ratchet.
Transforming Brawn is very different than I expected, which does make sense given how Cybertronian he was in the movie, but the way the legs transform and tab into the back and the new wheels while the front of the robot mode becomes the back is unexpected to me. It's almost very origami-esque when it comes to how they tackled where the robot parts went. The resulting vehicle mode feels very Technobot-esque. Between the placement of the wheels and the way the cockpit works, the alternate mode doesn't feel too much like something Brawn would turn into yet it weirdly works if you ask me. The one thing I'll give them credit for is how they kept the color layout mostly consistent, with the top being the custard yellow and the bottom being the olive green, though the arms and feet juxtapose this mindset. As for the weapon storage, the rifle can be stored on the top with the same faulty peg, but the front of the vehicle can use a drill that now fits the Technobot vibe even more. I can see Brawn digging into the ground and exploring different environments that his fellow Autobots normally wouldn't. That being said, the gap on the back of the altmode takes some points away. Like, was it really hard to have a panel cover it? I know the robot head isn't that visible to some extent, but the gun does little to hide the gap.
For a size comparison, here he is with B-127, and while Bumblebee does feel a little more like a take on the WFC game's alt mode compared to Brawn's half-Technobot, half-Rescue Heroes feel, the two alt modes do work quite well to some extent. I was expecting Brawn to be an alien version of his offroad vehicle, but they actually made it better by having it feel more like an excavating vehicle that can fit him quite well. As a figure, this version of Brawn may be a lot more enjoyable than the ROTF toy; not because of the aesthetics, but moreso for the better articulation and the fact that Brawn is tolerable as far as his addition in the movie is concerned as he never appeared in any other movie while the other Autobots and Decepticons Starscream, Soundwave, Ravage, and Shockwave don't look the same as they do in the other movies. He's not 100% perfect but he is my favorite out of the newly made Bumblebee movie characters from Cybertron that aren't Optimus, Bumblebee, Shatter, Dropkick, Blitzwing, and Starscream if you don't include him as part of Blitzwing.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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