Head On! The Brainstorm Addition!

www.botchthecrab.com

Several months ago, after I had finally gotten a couple of Detolf shelves and was rearranging my collection, I noticed that the only Autobot Headmasters that I owned were Fortress Maximus, Encore Fort Max, and Siren.  By contrast, I owned Scorponok and Skullcruncher for the Decepticon side.  Thanks to flywheels at Random Toy Reviews and Heroic Decepticon at his eponymous blog, I was influenced into buying Apeface and Snapdragon, but it left my Autobot Headmasters woefully understaffed.  Well, as understaffed as having two 2-foot tall figures can be.  Throw in the fact that I was trying to force my way through just the first disc of the Japanese Headmasters series, and I felt the need to pull the trigger on an Autobot.  Enter Brainstorm.

Brainstorm is perhaps most famous now thanks to his being a member of the Lost Light in James Roberts' beyond excellent Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye series from IDW.  So much so that I'm not even going to talk about it.  Let's just say that I love his portrayal in the comic; it's so much better than the portrayal in Headmasters.  My only concern was that with an increase in popularity would come an increase in price.  I've actually been tracking Headmaster prices for a couple of years predating the release of More Than Meets The Eye and they've actually remained fairly stable, so I was glad for that.  After finding one in good condition, I placed an order and received him just before Christmas. 

This particular sample of Brainstorm that I bought came unstickered, which is my preference nowadays for older figures.  Most of the figures I've gotten in the past have had shoddy sticker placement or really rough ones, meaning that they had to be replaced.  Getting a "naked" figure just cuts down on all of the labor that goes into cleaning to prep for Reprolabels.  Which this guy already has as of this writing.  Since I had already taken these pictures before the new decals had arrived, I just decided to show Brainstorm as I received him.

Brainstorm's alt-mode is a jet fighter.  If the fins are positioned little differently, you can achieve an X-Wing look.  It's actually more pronounced in the 3rd party Smart Robin figure.  The light blue used for Brainstorm is appealing to the eye.  Mix in some grey and orange, and you have yourself a winner. 

Brainstorm is partnered with Arcana, at least in the American G1 series.  As everyone knows, in the Japanese series, Brainstorm is the head while the body is a transector.  I'm not a fan of that version for one reason: what does becoming a head do for the whole disguise theme that the Transformers name imply?  The Headmasters entire purpose in life is to become a head?  Makes no sense.  Sorry, rant over.

As with all Headmasters, Arcana gets to sit in the cockpit.  As you can see, Arcana looks pretty comfortable.  Almost as though he was looking to shoot womp rats...

Brainstorm combines with Arcana to form...Brainstorm.  I like robot mode more than I initially thought I would.  Just looking at pictures on the Internet, Brainstorm just seemed gangly and out of sorts.  Pictures don't really do him justice. 

Thanks to his transformation scheme, Brainstorm features a bit of leg articulation, allowing for semi-dynamic poses such as this.  At the very least, he won't be statically posed in my collection.  Another great feature that the Headmasters feature is the ability to swap heads.  The only part of the Japanese series that I truly enjoyed would be when they yelled "Head On!" and swapped heads.  Since the only other large Headmaster I own is Fort Max, I tried this feature out with Cerebros.

I must admit that Spike does not look good on Brainstorm's body.  The resulting figure looks a bit freaky.  Still, I think that once I get the rest of the large Autobot Headmasters, the resulting combinations will look pretty good.