Dave's Car Robots Rant

Brave Maximus

Thanks to Quenton Quiney, ultramagnuslrll@yahoo.com, for loaning me his Brave Max to review.

CAPSULE

Big, of course. The colors beat out any previous version of this mold (yes, this is the third version after Fortress Maximus and Grand Maximus, assuming you don't count any limited edition stuff). The transformation is pretty simple, but at this size a more complex transformation might be too hard to actually DO (more on this below). For a brick, the poseability is reasonable, and there's a good number of gimmicks. However, it's REALLY expensive. $150 is about as low as you're likely to find, and $200-$250 is more likely. Additionally, it lacks several of the accessories that Fortress Maximus came with. Basically, if you're not already really interested in this toy, I'm not going to recommend you drop the money on it. Any toy that's going to cost you $200 or so has to be something you really want, and I'm not going to convince you either way, most likely.

RANT: (Thanks to Neale Davidson and Doug Dlin for the techspecs)

CYBERTRON: Brave Maximus Function: Cybertron City

The warrior Plasma transforms into head mode and combines with Cybertron City's Master Brain to form the warrior Brave. He fully understands and trusts his fellow Cybertron fighters. When Brave calls out "Transform!"; and changes into head mode, the ground splits asunder with a mighty roar, and Cybertron City changes into a colossal Transformer 350 m tall. His ultimate deathblow attack, the "Final Burn," fires off all his cannons at once, enveloping the surface it strikes in white light and annihilating evil. When he transforms into the Superdreadnought-Class Battleship Maximus, he can carry Cybertron warriors and use the Space Cybertron Net to travel between fixed stars at the speed of light.

STR 10 INT 9 SPD 10+ END 9 RNK 10 COUR 10+ FRP 10 SKL 10 Avg 10

Transformations: I'll cover this here first. I've had a "MiniMax" knockoff for some time, and the transformations are fairly simple, about at the level of a Basic or simpler Deluxe (the additional details the size allows for are not involved in the transformation). However, when you're wrestling a leg the size of your forearm into position, you're glad it's not more complicated! Mass and stiffness of joints really make any transformation trickier.

Colors: Brave Maximus is a darker version of the mold, not just the use of darker grey and darker blue, but also the "city at night" effect. The original Fortress Maximus never really looked like a CITY in city mode, but the simple addition of yellow "windows" scattered across the dark blue towers really brings out the idea of a robotic city. About the only quibble I have with the color is the use of neon yellow/green plastic for the clear parts (the left side chest "door" and the cockpit for the flying fortress mode). Maybe a more pure yellow would have looked better than the greenish hue. The metal pieces (you didn't think purely plastic joints could hold together a behemoth like this?) are very bright and shiny, a little at odds with the overall look of the toy.

Brave is mainly red and black, ironically almost the exact colors of a Cerebros knockoff I got a few years ago. Plasma (Spike) is black-bodied with silver accents and red limbs. Some Plasmas, I hear, have manufacturing defects such as two left arms. But most are okay.

Missing Parts: Brave Maximus has no external weapons and no non-head assistant robots. The only things that come with Brave Max are Brave, Plasma, Brave's pistol and the radar dish. That's it. No big guns, no secondary bots, no Master Sword (which was added to the mold for Grand Maximus, IIRC).

City Mode: http://www.protoformproject.com/dvd/images/bmcity.GIF shows the city mode covered in Spychangers and with Build King for perspective (note, I deployed a few weapons that strictly shouldn't be out in city mode, so sue me). On the one hand, it's easily the biggest Transformers toy. On the other, it's not "PRIMUS, WHAT IS THAT?" huge. I guess I'm spoiled by the fan-made Fortress and his buddies.

The tallest tower is 12" (30cm) tall. The city is 14" (26cm) wide and 23" (58cm) long, with a roughly ziggurat/pyramid-like shape made up of blocks and ramps.

The central tower has a small cockpit for Plasma to sit in, and it's emblazoned with the Cybertron (G1 Autobot) symbol. The right side tower has a stairway/terrace piece that folds town. The left side tower has a prison unit, although the outer door is a bit hard to open unless you have very strong and fairly long fingernails (or use a tool). It's too small to hold anything over the size of a minibot or squatting Basic. Spychangers (recolored G2-era TF GoBots) stand nicely in the prison.

In front of the central tower is a nifty elevator ramp system. Ramps fold down at table level on the right and left of the elevator, roughly at the waist of the robot mode (the elevator is covered by the halves of the central tower in robot mode). After placing a small car (again, Spychangers work very well for this) in the elevator, you turn a small crank behind the central tower to raise the elevator. The crank is made up of several pieces, so you can maintain a firm grip on the handle while turning. This is good, since it's hard to get at the crank if you have adult-sized hands. Once thecar is at the top, you push down a button on the right side (as you face the opening) of the elevator to pop out the car and have it roll down the central ramp.

On top of the elevator is a place to plug in the radar unit (you have to remove it in robot mode or it looks goofy on his chest). A dial on the side of this spins to rotate the radar. It's very smooth and spins well.

The immediate left of the elevator is essentially a two-story garage or carport. Above it is a block which can become a turret, but usually doesn't for city mode. To the right is a box that can open up and accept Brave in its city component mode. Basically, Brave's arms fold in front and he bends over, then his feet plug into the slots. Brave's gun butt can be plugged into Brave's neck hole, turning this into a gun emplacement (I suspect this is not in the instruction). The emplacement fits a Spychanger quite well.

The long ramps on either side of the city mode (on the robot arms) each have manual launching slides. The action is quite smooth (unlike the scrapey about-to-fall-apart feel of MiniMax), and cars launch well.

A number of guns can deploy in city mode, even though they're not supposed to. The leg cannons show signs of this, as they don't elevate above 90 degrees...fine for a robot fighting smaller opponents, but not for a city in need of air defense.

Space Fortress Mode: Okay, it may not be called a Space Fortress, but I like the term. This mode measures 30" (77cm) long, and otherwise is as wide and high as the city mode. The coloring works against this mode a bit, as there's now sideways windows. In default mode, all of the city mode gimmicks are disabled except the radar dish, but they can all be deployed pretty easily, except for the prison cell and the terraces on the legs. There's a few places for other robots to hang out, but it's less integrated than in city mode. However, the cockpit for Plasma makes more sense in this mode, as do the leg cannons.

However, this mode mainly suffers from being pretty clearly an add-on. As in, "Hey, if we make the toes come down and leave it halfway transformed between robot and city modes, it's sort of a vehicle! Stick some wheels on it!" Just not very impressive, for all its size.

Robot Mode: The box proclaims that the robot is 55cm tall, but it exaggerates slightly. Brave Maximus stands 21" (53cm) tall.

http://www.protoformproject.com/dvd/images/bmrobot.GIF shows the robot mode standing with God Fire Convoy.

http://www.protoformproject.com/dvd/images/bmscale.GIF shows the three components (Brave Maximus body, Brave body, Plasma) together with Quentin for a clearer idea of scale in case you don't have God Fire Convoy. }->

In practice, Brave Maximus has universal joints for hips. However, the ratchets are VERY stiff, only have eight positions (45 degrees at a time) and the figure can't really stand when the legs aren't straight anyway. I tried sitting it down, but it tends to get in its own way in that pose (arm ramps especially). The shoulders ratchet, as to the elbows, both with the 45 degree limitation. The wrists twist freely. Granted, there's G1 toys with less poseability, but a few more joints would have been nice, if only a neck and waist.

I mentioned that Brave Maximus has no loose weapons. However, that does not mean it's unarmed. Cannons reveal under the biceps, rotate out from the backs of the fists, flip out from the sides and up from the shins, plus the gun turret attached to the left leg can be deployed. Total barrel count that can be brought to bear: 16. Be careful, several of the guns can pop off easily, presumably to keep from breaking off permanently. The boxes at each shoulder can also open up and act as firing points for Spychangers.

A slightly embarrassing "feature" on Brave Max is that the crank for his city mode elevator is on his pelvis. So if Brave Max tells you to bite his crank...don't.

Overall: A nice toy. For under $100, I'd definitely pick one up. For under $150 I might consider it (and have). But odds are that you're not going to find it for less than $150, so it comes down to how much you REALLY want this toy.

Dave Van Domelen, "Are those 16 plasma cannons, or are you just happy to see me?"