Dave's RiD Rant:

     Bruticus (three-headed demondog)

     Okay, so Bruticus G1 is being re-released, but as Ruination.  So this
cerberus-y thing gets called Bruticus?  Whee.

CAPSULE

     Kinda iffy in both modes, transformation so complex that even the people
in charge of visuals couldn't get it right.  An interesting repurposed last
gasp of Beast Machines.  Mildly recommended.  $9.99 at Target.


RANT

PREDACON: Bruticus
Function: Predacon Dog
Altmode: Cerberus
Motto: "Who goes there?"

With three heads and a bad-dog attitude, Bruticus guards the headquarters and
dungeons of Megatron.  He's the last sight that Autobot prisoners see before
their cell doors slam shut.  And what a sight he is: three enormous jaws
glittering with razor-sharp teeth.  He's not the brightest pooch in the pound
but is ferocious in battle, inflicting a three-headed attack of growling,
biting destruction.

STR 8  INT 5  SPD 5  END 7  RNK 5  COUR 8  FRB 3  SKL 6  Avg 5.875

     It's worth noting that the picture of Bruticus on the package is not
only mistransformed in at least one significant place (the thighs), it also
has several pieces BOLTED ON backwards.  The "mask" on the right hand is
bolted on in reverse, and the "cheeks" are bolted to the ears backwards.  

     Beast Mode: First things first.  There's been a few people claiming that
this is a Chimera, based on the art in the Monster Manual (I assume they mean
the new MM, the original one wasn't even close).  These comparisons ignore
the wings and see a goat head where there is none.  Bruticus is a weird
mutant cerberus, or three-headed hellhound.  With big puffy cheeks (which are
in the wrong place to be the mane people are seeing).
     From leading nose to tail tip, Bruticus is 6.5" (17cm) long, in red,
black, yellow and some metallic blue-silver.  The openness of the design
reminds me of knockoffs, with bits just hanging there and holes visible
through the structure.  Poseability is limited, especially as kibble bits get
in the way.
     One notable design bit is that the right head seems to be inspired by
Jawbreaker, complete with buzzsaw blade (non-spinning, sigh) on the neck.
There's an armor piece over the nose of this head which almost obscures the
face entirely, I almost suspect it's supposed to be a brass knuckles thing in
robot mode, but flipped back in beast mode.

     Transformation: The front half of the beast mode un-crouches, and the
rear half becomes a backpack.  The chest plate does not need to flip up
during transformation, and I agree with those who think that this is the
remains of a removed Spark Gimmick.  On the right arm, it's not clear what
should become the elbow, but I find it looks better if the yellow part is all
upper arm.  You can turn the hand/head at the wrist to make it fit the pose
better. 
     The instructions tend to ignore what you do with the rear leg backpack.
If you rotate the haucnhes around so that the legs are as if flipped out
(flanks to the back), you can deploy extra combat arms.

     Robot Mode: 6.5" (17cm) tall, and a somewhat rickety mess of limbs and
kibble.  The strong use of unpainted red, black and yellow makes me think of
Ultra Visser-3 from the Animorphs line.  This puppy definitely needs more
paint on the black parts.  
     The robot mode has three heads, one to each side of the main face.
There is some resemblance between these faces and the faces of the
Tripredacus Council members as seen in Agenda part 1 (Beast Wars).  There's
four arms.  The outer two have no elbows and have hand weapons (a dagger and
a mace) molded into them.  The left inner arm has a flip-down dagger (the
crest of one of the heads).  The right inner arm turns at the wrist and opens
at the jaw/thumb, letting it loosely hold the triple scourge formed from its
tail.  The tail weapon ends in three tips: drill, dagger and axe.
     Poseability is better than it should be.  By that, I mean there's lots
and lots of joints that you DON'T want bending, but which are part of the
transformation process.  Kibble continues to get in the way of a lot of
stuff, or just pops off.  One nice detail, though, is a chain on one ankle,
hinged to be poseable a bit.  It would look better if the chain and anklet
were both painted silver, though.  As it stands, the chain looks like some
sort of blob connected to one leg until you look closely..

     Overall: Well, it's ambitious.  But it seems like they gave up at the
eleventh hour, going with lack of paint detail and a ditching of the
gimmick.  It's a challenging transformation, but mainly because it's not
clear when you've reached the end.  It has a certain freakish charm, but even
that only earns it a mild recommendation from me.

     Dave Van Domelen, had to put up with four net.drops from AT&T cable
modem while trying to write this, whee.