william-james88 wrote:As for Bruticus, what you write makes perfect sense. I was never attached to the character though (I am not attached to any of these guys actually,
This statement brings something to mind. Exactly how many of us are actually attached to any combiner for the character that any of them were?
I ask since, for at least the G1 cartoon, practically every single combiner who wasn't Computron all had the same personality: "The Hulk but less angry." Computron was the only one who wasn't like this since he was calm-minded but instead had a personality akin to RoboCop, only even more robotic.
There really wasn't that much to these guys as far as their personalities went, with the majority of their appeal being mostly the same as what makes the various Power Rangers Megazords appealing: Their visual size and appearance of being bigger robots formed by the combination of several smaller but already giant-sized robots. That, plus whatever weapons they may or may not use.
This was all similar for the Marvel Comics in which the only combiner who got any kind of real story to him besides "generic big guy who fights the enemy" was Superion, as his first outing depicted him with a personality of being unstable and out of a control, endangering several human bystanders before he finally came to his senses and stopped himself from doing further harm. And that only happened in his first appearance since he got "fixed" later, becoming just as generic a person as the other combiners.
Even on the Japanese side of things, most combiners fared no better. All the G1 cartoon combiners were just extras used to fill out fight scenes with more action in The Headmasters. Newcomer Raiden was slightly more interesting with shades of a stock anime "I must defeat you to protect my friends!" type personality but which never went any deeper than that. King Poseidon of Masterforce was just Turtler in a larger form, and he himself was just another generic evil minion.
However, Victory's combiners were a bit more interesting. Road Caesar was probably the least interesting since he, like Raiden, was your typical "good guy" type. But Landcross was the first "young" combiner who was inexperienced and reckless, so that was kinda neat and refreshing to see. While Dinoking felt kind of like a reversion to the Hulk-esque personality of the earliest combiners, he got by with the people behind Victory having a little fun with him, as he'd at times be the victim of some slapstick moments that added some humor to his portrayal, with him getting frustrated and sad quite often, making him one of the more amusing combiners. And then there was Liokaiser. HO-LY-COW, he was awesome! The first combiner to ever have his components appear individually over a period of time to let us get to know each of them before the big debut of the combined form himself showed up, and boy was he impressive! A super-powerful, competent force to be reckoned with, as well as having a very smug, superior personality, with him constantly taunting and mocking Star Saber at every turn. Just watch
this video, it's probably the best first appearance for a G1-era combiner ever.
Then there were all the combiners from Return of Convoy and Operation Combination, but which were only seen in manga and story pages, so anything about their personalities was just told to us rather than shown to us. Sixliner's said to be a young guy, and an admirer of Star Convoy, but that's all we really get. And the others from Operation Combination's story pages were just kinda there, mostly just "Look! New toys to buy! Don't they look cool?!".
As far as post-G1 combiners went, the American Magnaboss and Tripredacus of Beast Wars never appeared in any fiction until this year's BotCon comic, in which no real personality for either was displayed. I have yet to watch Beast Wars Second so I'll take a raincheck on describing Japanese Magnaboss, Tripledacus, and God Neptune.
But for Car Robots/Robots in Disguise 2001, JRX/Rail Racer was kind of a "cool guy" type, but not much else to him. Baldigus/Ruination for the most part was just like Dolrailer/Mega-Octane in a larger form, being mostly stoic and militaristically formal, but one episode centered around a plan that was seemingly Dolrailer/Mega-Octane's idea, in which Baldigus/Ruination displayed a sense of rational levelheadedness and reason, as well as dismay and frustration once the plan backfired, making for a very interesting moment of seeing more side's to a combiner's personality than usual. And there was Build King/Landfill, who was basically Build Boy/Wedge in a larger form, but which made him be, like Landcross, a young and inexperienced combiner with a childish personality full of stubbornness, recklessness, impatience, cockiness, and more.
Armada had its lone combiner character in the Mini-Con combiner Perceptor, who was a mostly silent warrior and usually appeared to do something heroic like saving his friends from a tight situation. He seemed more stoic than anything. During Energon, however, he was relegated to the status of being a background extra.
Speaking of Energon, we got Superion Maximus, Bruticus Maximus, and Constructicon Maximus. Of the three, Superion Maximus was kind of noobish and young, while the other two were mostly bullish and rude. Superion Maximus also wanted vengeance for the other two's betraying him to the Decepticons, but besides that, there wasn't much else.
Skip over to Animated with its single combiner in Safeguard, who was essentially the personalities of Jetfire and Jetstorm merged together. Or at least, their voices. While the two Jet Twins each got ample characterization, their combined form of Safeguard didn't get as much, since he only formed when necessary during battle and didn't display as much of personality of his own than his components did.
I really don't think I need to bring up ROTF Devastator being mostly a mindless monstrous beast of mass destruction.
Fast forward to the Fall of Cybertron video game in which Bruticus was a big strong minion of evil, but thankfully not dumb. Just a big bad guy.
Then we go to Sanjou Gattai Tranformers Go! with the Swordbot Samurai Team and the Swordbot Shinobi Team. Most of these guys' appeal was in their looks and their fancy attack maneuvers since every form they took was your typical stock anime action hero type character who fights for honor and righteousness to save this beautiful planet and all who live on it (okay, maybe not to that extent, but had they gotten to show more of their personalities, that's most probably what they would have been like).
The Robots in Disguise 2015 cartoon gave us a rather unique take on a combiner in Chop Shop, who's a normal-sized guy instead of gigantic-sized, and that he'd rather not partake in any fight since he just wants to be left alone to favorite pastime: Stealing. He is a thief in every meaning of the word, robbing people left and right like the kleptomaniac his is. And rather than being stubborn or bloodthirsty, he's smart enough to flee the scene rather than risk being caught and locked up again, a experience he did not want to repeat (and ended up repeating anyway).
, but Computron's pre-order is already sold out 
)is a hard act to follow. See how several 3rd party companies have milked the base mold. If it is ever attempted (modern version), don't change the crew. Just update them with decent points of articulation and weight.If they make them too hollow and light, we get a Menasor part deux (well that piece of work has center of gravity issues as well) aka a fall down go boom robot.
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
