Botcon 2016 Ramhorn
Combiner Wars Brawl's first revealed repaint was his Generation 2 version but the first to market was his use in the Botcon 2016 Predacus boxset as a new version of Tripedicus' Ramhorn. As someone who's only experience of Brawn was as a floppy waisted mess that wouldn't lock together I wasn't looking forward to trying this....The good news here is that Ramhorn is better. Much, much better. There's no obvious moulding changes here but the waist, at least the problematic lower hinger, is much MUCH better purely by virtue of being an awful lot stiffer on this toy than my Brawl. A lot stiffer to the point that I need to turn the waist rotational joint sideways before I move the hinged piece because the toy is more likely to move at the hips first!
As well as being a red and grey repaint of the original Brawl the toy features two new pieces. The first is the head, exclusive to this version of the toy, very accurately modelled after Ramhorn's fleeting on-screen appearance in Beast Wars: The Agenda part 1. However I worry about the ears: they're VERY thin pieces that I can see being broken quite easily.
The other new piece included with Ramhorn with be reused on the Technobot Nosecone. When Ramhorn was revealed his drill bit and cockpit was shown mounted on the rear of the tank but leaked boxart for Computron shows it mounted instead of the tank gun on the turret. So which is it? The answer is both! The drill, one solid unit I'm afraid: the drill bit doesn't spin, has the two shallow slots on it slide that enable it to fit in the turret front and indeed even be elevated a bit. There's also a 5mm peg rising up from the very rear of the drill unit and in front of that a 5mm peg hole recessed down from the top. This peg hole can then take the hinged 5mm peg on the back of the tank turret, locking it in place over the back of the tank. The drill works with the Brawl version of the toy too, in either position, so you can end up with a tank gun on the turret and a drill sticking out the back!
I am led to wonder is there has been a slight error with this piece: the handle is on the underside of the Brawl turret gun but the top side here. It looks very odd using it as a proper gun handle as it shows the exposed face of the drill to the top when using it as a weapon. Best to have it plugged into the bottom of the fist hole or the hole on he side of the arm. In vehicle mode I prefer it plugged into the front of the tank with the turret moved forward so it projects beyond the body for drilling. It's position in combined mode is less certain: you can't leave it in the turret in Ramhorn's prescribed arm mode or it'll hinder the arm's movement at the shoulder. Official pictures suggest mounted on top of the turret facing outwards.
Better than I expected it to be by some distance. A more solid spinning drill would have been even nicer as would some more thought as to how the drill would be held.
