General Information: Images:
*Images and text below from Hasbrotoyshop.com: Roll out for some serious robot action! This heroic HIGHBROW warrior figure features spinning blade weapon accessories to give his opponents extra trouble. When it's time for combat, convert him into twin-engine bomber vehicle mode so he can "soar" right into the heart of the battle! Highly detailed robot-to-vehicle figure converts from robot to twin-engine bomber vehicle mode -- and back again! Ages 5 and up.
Robot Mode: My favorite aspect of this figure however are the little details. First there's the head sculpt. As you'll see later in the vehicle mode review, Highbrow takes inspiration from World War II pilots and vehicles. His head is designed to look like a human's head wearing an old style pilot's helmet with goggles on it. These helmets typically included some leather, so the texture of the helmet section and its color (brown) both pay homage to these types of helmet/goggles. As if to add to the rather oganic looking parts of this figure, there are lots of tube and wire like shapes. You'll find some of these on the lower part of his torso as well as his waist. Even the design of his fingers look more curved and tube shaped than squared off and angled (as many robotic hands are often designed). While not very organic looking, another set of designs I love are the thigh sections. Instead of just one layer of detail, it looks like leg sections with armor plates on top with small circular rivet details. Another favorite detail of mine is a rocket booster on his back that look like tons of mechanical parts connected by wires. It's a pretty complex set of designs that look fantastic. I could go on and on about the little details (including pistons sculpted into the lower back) but suffice it to say you can tell a lot more care went into this sculpt than you would normally expect. The primary plastic colors on this figure are light grey, military green, gunmetal, light blue, translucent yellow plastic and clear plastic. The robot mode blends together the colors very well. No one color really dominates. The upper body has most of the green, including the heads, arms and hips. The rest of the body also has the light grey and blue. The light blue in particular is a nice touch as Highbrow is a plane in his alternate mode. The darker green and gunmetal colors help ground him as a military robot while the light grey acts as a nice middle ground between the two extremes of color. The translucent yellow color is used on his head for the light piping eyes. The effect looks nice if you shine a light right into the back of the head, but its fairly subtle otherwise. However, if you slide the helmet piece down over his face, a lot more translucent yellow is exposed, allowing more light to shine into the eyes. Paint applications are done in a couple of the same colors as his plastic parts: namely light blue and gunmetal. He also has dark red, gold and brown. The light blue is the most prominent color, found on his lower legs and the insides of his feet. You'll also find it on his forearms and torso. Gunmetal is found on the aforementioned lower torso section with tube details. His head is painted brown on top (the helmet section) and gold on his face. The red stripes are on the top of his chest. In a text description there isn't a ton of paint detail, but there's actually quite a bit of paint used, it's just all very uniform. This is especially true on his lower legs which use a huge amount of light blue paint. It's a good looking paint job, but I would have liked to have seen a bit more paint on his waist area to bring out more of the sculpted detail. Interestingly, you won't find an Autobot symbol anywhere on this figure, either painted or sculpted, which is rather unusual for any Transformer nowadays. Highbrow has twenty one points of articulation in this mode. This includes five points in each arm and four in each leg. I'm not counting the wing flaps with the middiles mounted on them connected to the hips. Several of these points are ratchet joints such as the ones on his hips that really give the fibure stability. There are two primary action features on the robot mode, though one is perhaps a bit more deliberate than the other. On the head, the helmet/goggles slide down over his face, which is absolutely awesome and looks fantastic. His other action feature involves the propeller blades on his forearms. If you swing the robot fist in the blades point forward. Press the gold engine piece on his forearm and it spins the blades like a melee weapon. That's a particularly viscious image and fits with the "old school" warrior persona that Highbrow embodies. Highbrow has two Gatling gun weapons that he can hold in his fists. These weapons can also be attached to the wing panels on his hips, freeing up his hands to go into "melee" mode. While not strictly an action feature, there are several missiles attached to the wing pieces on his hips. This really has cool implications as to how much firepower this guy is carrying around and can bring to bear even with his hands occupied by Gatling guns! Transformation to Vehicle MOde:
Vehicle Mode: The details of the plane mode are just as retro as the vehicle mode itself. All over the figure are rivet details showing where plates connect to the skeleton of the vehicle. On the two booms are engines right behind the propellers with vertical lines on the front and curved shapes on the four corners. Behind the engines are pipes that curve back (perhaps for exhaust?). Each of the wings have four missiles mounted on them. On the underside of the vehicle are some of the details from the robot mode, that now look like critical parts of the vehicle mode including the lower details of the rocket from the back of the robot mode. Take a look inside the cockpit and you'll see a seat and control panel in front of it. Another subtle detail are tubes in the middle nacelle of the vehicle where you can imagine machine guns installed. Like the robot mode details, the ones on this mode are wonderfully done. The same colors used on the robot mode are present here, with the addition of white. However, this mode brings a lot of the colors together. On the top side the vehicle is mostly dark green plastic and paint while the underside is mostly light blue. The gunmetal parts are still found on the propeller, missiles and gatling guns. A bit of silver paint is found on the central nacelle at the front. On the sides of the middle section (near the cockpit) is "P+10" in large white letters while each of the rear horizontal stabilizers has a tribal tatoo type pattern on it. The gold paint on the engines becomes very prominent in this mode as well. The color scheme isn't anything amazing in this mode since it's so uniformly green, but at the same time it's completely appropriate to the vehicle being a military vehicle with a very singular purpose of acting as a fighter. In this form it's easier to press the engines down to spin the propellers. The placement of the gatling guns and missiles looks really awesome, but then if you think about it for a second, firing those weapons would actually involve him blasting off his own propellers unless he deliberately stopped spinning them. My guess from a fictional standpoint is that Highbrow has other propulsion mechanisms aside from the propellers to help him move along, otherwise the placement of these weapons wouldn't make a whole lot of sense (aesthetics aside). On the underside, there are wheels that swing down from the robot chest piece. On the side booms there are single wheels that swing down to provide stabilizing landing gear.
Final Thoughts:
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One of the new characters introduced in the "Hunt for the Decepticons" toy line is Highbrow, a Voyager Class Autobot. The character may be new, but the name is going to sound familiar to long time Transformers fans. In Generation One, Highbrow was an Autobot "Headmaster", a Transformer whose head could detach and transform into a smaller figure. This time out, Highbrow is just one character/figure.
