If you’ve been keeping track, you might have noticed that I’ve gone through all of the original 7 Headmaster’s remakes from Titan’s Returns. You might have been expecting the last review here to cover Titan’s Return Brainstorm. Well, you’d be almost correct. The thing is, I have Generations Brainstorm already, and I don’t really need Titan’s Return Brainstorm, so instead, you’re getting Generations Brainstorm.
If you follow some of the recent lines just before Combiner Wars, it kind of felt like Hasbro was exploring and experimenting with ideas for future lines. We got Scoop with his Trigger masters, and the Minicon combiner team, and Brainstorm here, the first Headmaster in years, I believe since Transformers Energon with it’s Omega Supreme and Minicon head. Before that was Armada Sideways with his swappable headmasters.
As our first modern Headmaster, Brainstorm is pretty good. There were some early reports about issues with the neck joint on the Headmaster and body, but rumor has it that problem was fixed. He even fakes the classic power level gimmick with a flip down panel inside his chest that activates when the Headmaster is attached.
The Headmaster itself is a little iffy though, the arms are large chunks with the arm bits painted on in the appropriate areas. He looks nice for the most part for such a small figure though. He works well with his little cockpit in space ship mode.
The new headmasters though aren’t compatible at all. There is a size difference for starters, which breaks the port set up. In the broader sense though, I like the size difference here just because it makes for some nice variety from “All Deluxe scale”. I also am not huge on swapping the heads between bodies, so I don’t really mind that there is a lack of compatibility.
So I’m not saying the Titans Return Brainstorm is bad, he’s based on one of the better molds in the line, but I just really like this version of Brainstorm from a few years earlier in Generations.
