26 years ago, the very first episode of Brave Exkaiser aired, the first of the ongoing Yuusha / Brave universe series (sometimes spelled Exkizer or Exkaizer).  Produced by Sunrise, and funded by and with designs from Takara, it wasn’t long until toys followed.

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We’ve looked at a few Brave bits recently, so lets go right back to its roots and look at some of the earliest toys, with the titular character Exkaiser and his various combinations, across his two releases; first in 1990, and then later as part of the short-lived Masterpiece Brave line.

Exkaiser / King Loader

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Original packaging

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Reissue packaging circa 2001

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Exkaiser is a Space Police car, who powers-up to reveal the motif of a lion on his chest.  Because Brave.  No more explanation needed.

 

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Shown above are the original on the right, and a 2001 era re-release (unstickered) on the left.  The only difference between the two is that the upper arms on the original are molded in blue, and on the reissue they are molded in red.  As you can see, I’ve opted to show Exkaiser in powered up robot mode.  Considering this is the smallest part of Exkaiser, it’s worth pointing out that he’s about the size of a small Voyager TF figure.

 

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Here we compare the original to the 2006 era Masterpiece release (MPB01 King Exkaiser).  You’ll notice quite a size disparity.  Despite being a much smaller product, the Masterpiece Exkaiser is a much more involved transformation, and features loads more articulation, as well as a display stand so you can ace some action poses with him.

 

 

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Here we see Exkaiser attached to his trailer; King Loader.  If you’re getting a distinct Star Convoy vibe from the trailer, you’re in the right place mentally, as these toys tend to share a lot of similarities with the latter day Takara only Transformers releases as seen in Victory and Revenge of Convoy.  It’s a big chunk of attractive plastic, which sacrifices all poseability in favour of sheer size and chunkiness.  If you prefer you toys with a bit more poseability, I suggest you look at the Masterpiece below.

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I’m sure it comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone to find out that I prefer the chunky vintage (warts and all) over the Masterpiece.

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King Exkaiser

As is the way of things in Brave, Exkaiser and King Loader can – of course – combine to become a bigger robot.

 

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Very similar in execution to vintage Star Sabre, King Loader can transform by himself, but without Exkaiser inside, he has no face.  It’s these little details that link Brave and Transformers, with their parallel designs informing and influencing each other, which won me over to collecting a new toyline when I always said my mecha collecting was going to be Transformers only.

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Everything opens up, ready to insert Exkaiser, and when you lower the chest and head compartment of King Loader, only then do you get KING EXKAISER.

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There’s lots to like about this mold, even with his shampoo bottle articulation (something he shares with Sky Garry and Star Convoy!).  First off, lets look at that impossibly Takara styled but-totally-not-Optimus-honest-Guv faceplate.  What about the crest on his head?  Every bit the king.  Giant lion motif on the chest despite the complete lack of animal alt. mode?  Check!  Weapons storage?

 

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Check.


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He’s a big old toy, towering over the majority of G1 combiners, even just in this mode.  But what about his Masterpiece version?

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Well this guy does the job too.  Massively more poseable, and with a lot more anime-esque styling.  There is a lot to like about this guy, and I can see why a huge number of people prefer him to the original.  personally, it’s not what I got into collecting Brave for, as I like the original chunky Takara aesthetic, but hey, isn’t it great we have options?  If they had done more than two of the Masterpieces, maybe I would be more into the line, but as it is, it just feels like a fragment, rather than a collection.

 

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Side by side shows the biggest differences between the two.  They are very disparate aesthetic choices; neither is right nor wrong, it is just a matter of preference, and no-one can deny that the MP makes a great stand-alone piece.

 

 

Dragon Kaiser

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The companion piece to Exkaiser, Dragon Kaiser is an intimidating lump of plastic in his own right.  I’ve found this guy one of the hardest Brave pieces to track down in good condition – much harder to find than Exkaiser –  maybe as he is prone to yellowing, and sadly the weapon attachments are key to his alt. mode too, which somewhat diminishes the example I currently own.

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Dragon Kaiser is a big toy, with such an Optimus Prime inspired face it’s untrue.  Present as always in Brave are the impressive chromed headcrest and a larger than life chest motif.   As with King Exkaiser, he only becomes this form when Exkaiser is present inside his torso area, otherwise he is simply known as Dragon.

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His alt. mode is a big, huge ass jet technically known as the Dragon Jet.  His weapons should plug into his shoulders to form an extra set of wings.  He transforms similar to the way Grandus / Dagbase transforms lies down.

 

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MPB-02: Dragon Kaiser was the second and final Masterpiece Brave release.  I no longer own this toy, simply because when I bought one and opened the box, I wasn’t expecting a bunch of parts to assemble, I was expecting a toy that wasn’t there and doesn’t really exist.  I genuinely got nothing from the MP Dragon Kaiser, and never even combined the two before selling it on.  Genuinely, I disliked it, in the same way I dislike the CMS Gokin Gaogaigar releases; they don’t feel like toys – rather a bunch of fragile and easy to break pieces.  Maybe this is unfair, as the MPB releases definitely display better than the CMS releases, but I was disappointed with the toy and the MPB line as a whole.

However, in the interest of completeness, check out TJ Duckett of Kuma Style and his amazing article on MP Dragon Kizer.  This is certainly a huge improvement on the original in terms of articulation, I guess I just love bricks.

 

 

 

 

 

Great Exkaiser

What, you thought we were done?  This is Brave, remember?

The final form of these guys is when they combine together.

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As cool as the head and chest are, it does look sort of stupid combined to be honest, but hot damn is it a mega-imposing toy.  This is taller than the Energon releases of Unicron and Primus, this is taller than Planet X’s Genesis figure…  In Brave terms, this is almost as tall as Brave King J-Der, and makes Super Fire Dagwon look small.

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Sure, there are obvious compromises to the figure, but this was Takara’s first ever attempt at a Brave-style hat-on-a-hat combiner.  The forearms are clearly too big to be in any sort of proportion, and you can see way too much of King Exkaiser through the arms.  He barely even has articulation, just two points of movement in his arms.  Dragon Kaiser’s back plate does nearly all the work of holding this guy together as well (doubling as the crest surround, to make the chest even more over the top), and is easily damaged.  But damn, if that doesn’t make for one big ass toy!  Although, this is one Brave combiner I choose to display in individual combined modes as Dragon Kaiser and King Exkaiser, as the space saved displaying them combined isn’t worth the less pleasing aesthetic of the combined mode compared to the individuals.  Unfortunately – and rarely for Brave – he is less than the sum of his parts.

 

 

 

Looking at the vintage figure, I can easily see why Takara wanted to tackle this again and try to improve on their representation of this character.  One of the best things about doing these blogs is having the chance to revisit toys and form new opinions, and perhaps I judged the MPB02 release too soon, as there is no denying that both Dragon kaiser and Great Exkaiser are huge improvements on their original releases.  With my obsession for collecting sprawling lines, and in my bid to cut down on extraneous pieces in my collection, I might have sold this truncated line short.
If you want a more in depth examination of the Masterpiece version of Great Exkaiser, I recommend you check out TJ Duckett’s amazing and in-depth review right here.  You won’t regret it!

 


As with most of these Brave characters, there are a myriad of non-transforming vinyl and PVC pieces you can collect most of which are more anime accurate, but for me, none of them come close to having the character of the original Takara releases.

Thanks for reading as always, and we value your feedback.

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Appearing in the Brave Command Dagwon series in 1997, Gunkid makes for an interesting toy.

 

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One part Brave, one part Battlestar, no wonder he ends up looking like something from Brave Starr.  I’m surprised he didn’t come with little handheld pistols like Shadow Maru and Gun Max.
In robot mode, he stands about the same height as G1 Galvatron.

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The cowboy theme is worn right on it’s sleeve with this guy, or maybe on his head.  I mean, Cowboy hat aside, he has little spurs on his heels, and he also has a “battle mask” face which is very reminiscent of the old handkerchief mask of the Wild West for bank robberies and the like.

 

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Notice the very brave crest on the cowboy hat, the face plate covers, and the shoulder cannons.

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It’s easy to spur him into action. Ho-ho!

His transformations are simplistic, but effective.  He transforms into four “distinct” modes.

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In gun mode, or INFINITE CANNON as it’s known, he can be held as a gun by humans and used to fire foam darts at your friends eyes.  It’s a really fun mode, with a good size and weight to it, and it’s all too easy to lose the foam pellets which adds to it’s toy charm.

 

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His second mode is the obligatory and somewhat phoned in cannon mode, or KID TANK mode.  Let’s be fair, G1 Galvatron got away with it just about, and the “transformation” between modes was less involved than with this guy, and the little molded tank treads do help.

 

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His final mode is as a jet, or KID FIGHTER mode; complete with landing gear, wings and tailfins.  It’s obvious where all the parts go, but they never intrude upon the other modes, and the way the view-finder folds down to become a cock-pit is very satisfying.  The landing gear hidden inside the gun handle is another nice touch, and it makes this mold super fun and interesting.

 

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As we look at his alt. modes, something interesting becomes apparent.  Cannon… gun… flight mode?

The rumour is that the design for Gun Kid originally started life as Battlestar Megatron, if this is true, then he would have been the only Decepticon to make it into the Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Return of Convoy toyline, alongside Star Convoy, Grandus, Sky-Garry and a handful of combining Micro-masters.  It’s a well known fact that bad-guy toys do not sell as well in Japan, which explains why the Autobots constantly out-number the Decepticons, especially in Japanese only lines such as Victory, Zone and Return of Convoy.

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This was the penultimate Japanese line of G1 Transformers released in 1991, coming just before Operation Combination in 1992 which was mostly repaints, Euro releases and Micro-masters, as such Return of Convoy featured the last of the big leader type toys, and Takara was busy at work designing new toys for the Brave toyline.

 

 

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At this point, there was no TV show to support the line, and the story of Transformers continued exclusively in the pages of the Battlestar Manga, published in the Japanese TV Magazine.

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Dark Nova

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Dark Nova Robot – size of a small moon

In the storyline, Dark Nova (to relation to any Nova Prime) resurrects Galvatron as Super Megatron.

 

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Super Megatron – scourge of the ice-caps.

 

Below is the character model which is believed to have been the predecessor to Gunkid, and there are certainly comparisons between Super Megatron’s jet mode and Gunkid’s.  Although maybe not as much as the robot mode looks like Animated Megatron, but given Derrick J Wyatt’s love of the animated series that does not surprise me.

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All this could explain why Gunkid feels like a G1 toy through and through.  There is zero partsforming and you can transform between modes very quickly, and the toy doesn’t disassemble into fifteen pieces to combine with five other things like some Brave toys do.  To the point that I’m almost tempted to customise one into Megatron; if the Gunkid head wasn’t so darn adorable!

 

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Of course, to keep things Brave, Gunkid does have the ability to interact with other characters, and he can interact with both Fire Dagwon (who you might remember had a cameo in our Thunder Dagwon comparison article) and Power Dagwon in his GIANT WEAPON MODE.  I don’t want to spoil this interaction until the Super Fire Dagwon blog goes live, but once it does I will post the pictures here to complete this blog (although SPOILER if you go back up and look at the very first image of the box).

 

Thanks for reading!

07 Mar 2016

Grandus Designs

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Rear box-art

 

Collecting can be a curious thing.  To outsiders, they may think that Optimus Prime must be the rarest, most expensive and sought after Transformer s there is, similarly with the general public and Star Wars thinking that Vader or Boba Fett are the hottest of the hot.  The truth is that yes, while the majority of fans WILL want these figures, so did the majority of kids back in the day, and as such they are easy to find and the majority of collectors will have long had these key “foundation” items in their collections.  Sure, a C-10 MOSC Darth Vader 12-back will run more than a loose example, as will a sealed Goodbye Convoy or VSX set, but mostly you have to venture into the obscure to find the true rarities.

The truth is, there are four distinct categories; easy to find items, hard as nails to find items, expensive items, and then ungoldy expensive “grail” items.  In my experience, POTF Yakface is one of those expensive items – much like a complete Scorponok or Typticon – that are REALLY easy to find, everyone and their kid brother has had one for sale at some point.  Sometimes, much less expensive items are much harder to find at shows, stuff like the Turbomasters or Predator Jets, which don’t sell for much in UK / Europe, can be a real chore to track down.  The comic-book world is very similar, but with much more choice available you’ll always see hundreds of different dealers all selling the same “hot” books for hundreds of times the original cover price, while trying to find “unpopular” books with a low guide price value is much, much harder to do.  Rarity does not always dictate value.

To get to the fourth category of ungodly expensive items, we’re usually talking about test-shots, unique items, or lucky draw figures.  These are things that not every collector can afford, and some collectors just don’t like.  For me, test shots mostly hold no real appeal, same with the majority of Lucky Draw toys (although I can always be tempted by black repaints damnit!).  I collect mainline toys with a factory finish, and as such I tend to avoid all Gold / Silver chrome toys, resin casts, test-shots, clear toys, or “battle damage” customs, as much because I don’t like them (although I like seeing them in other people’s collections and at shows) as I don’t have the money or space, and every collection needs a cut off.  I’ve often felt that a great collection is as much defined by what ISN’T in it, as what is in it.
But if you collect mainline toys and have a sense of completionism about you, the “towards the end of a line and no-one wanted it” syndrome can be a real pain.

Which brings us to Grandus.

 

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Released in 1991 exclusively in Japan as part of the later day Micro-masters “Return of Convoy” subline, this limited toyline featured three major releases with Grandus, Star Convoy, and Sky Garry, as well as the introduction of the combining Micro Masters with Sixliner (all of which were released in the West 10 years later as part of the Universe line and will be featured in a future blog, including the rare chase figures!), and repackaged versions of the Micro Master teams all of which came with numbered Micro Trailers.

 

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The only fiction the line had was in the form of the Battlestars Manga, as the TV show hadn’t been renewed after the single episode of Transformers Zone had failed to gain support for an ongoing series the year before.

 

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You can’t really see from the front, but check out the funky claw hands below.

 

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Despite little to no fiction appearances, Grandus has become one of those extremely hard to find and thus expensive end of mainline toys.  A good example, complete in a box can run up to $1,000, but for those willing to hunt around, he can be found a little cheaper sometimes.  I got a great deal on mine, who is largely in great condition as seen above, but even then one of the accessories is missing (the missile pod, I’ve had two sent to me but they’ve both disappeared en route strangely, at a cost of $40 each), and the helicopter pad has badly yellowed and will need replacing.

 

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Grandus is a fairly big toy, and certainly chunky.  Whilst not up there with Fort Maximus, or even Metroplex, his blocky nature makes his proportions tricky to define and he casts a mirage of being bigger than he really is. Transformed into his rather nifty aircraft carrier (not a patch on the USS Flagg), he might look a little basic, but it serves a purpose I’ll address after the next picture.

 

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There is no denying that Grandus is a brick.  I’m okay with that.  It’s a comment that often gets thrown around as a pejorative term to describe the lack of poseability in those early G1 toys.  People who’ve come to collecting Transformers later in life, through Beast Wars or even Bayformers don’t have the bittersweet tinge of nostalgia colouring their perceptions, and it can be hard for some people to see the early figures as the charming quantum leaps of toy technology they really were, compared to the modern-day Masterpieces we’re darn lucky to be getting now that many people take for granted.  Grandus takes brick syndrome a step further than most, and some people use it as a way of mocking the figure, quoting the normally excellent TFwiki;  “He transforms from a short fat box on its stomach, to a fat box with a base sticking out of its stomach, to a fat box standing up. The inventor of the Triple Changer is rolling over in his grave.  A terminal point G1-era city-former, he is painfully simplistic and bricktastic in robot and vehicle modes, compensating with … an arsenal of weapons, as well as Micromaster ramp and base modular compatibility”.  I think they missed the point completely.  Sure, he may be a brick, but he wears it on his sleeve so much it pretty much becomes a play feature, and I believe the Micromaster ramp and base modular compatibility came first.  Form follows function, and on this, Grandus wins.  Take a look at all the detail inside him.

 

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I sometimes think people forget that Grandus is as much a playset as he is a robot in his own right.  If Grandus is a brick, then The Ewok Village is a block of plastic that just sits there, the Kenner Death Star is just a tower with no points of articulation, and the TMNT Technodrome is just a round brick.  We do collect toys after all.  True, he does only have two points of articulation with his arms, but this still goes one step beyond his Countdown and Sky Hammer contemporaries by being a robot in his own right, not just a playset / vehicle named after the central figure.  If that was the case, the Grandus set would have been called Spinner, after his Micromaster companion we’ll get to in a minute.

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Take that best Megatron figure we never got!

 

Not only can Grandus join up with ANY of the Micromaster bases for a myriad of different combination, not only can his motorised features can be powered by Star Convoys tracks as part of his rarely seen base mode, but that’s just his base mode!  He can also hook up to Metroplex in aircraft carrier mode, or be dragged along by Dia Atlas, 0r – most impressively – he can also link up with his line mates Sky Garry and Star Convoy to make the Triple Combination Battlestar Attack Base (unpictured as it doesn’t fit in my light box, but once we’ve had a look at Sky Garry and Star Convoy I will show this super mode.  This blog is here for the long haul, so comfort yourself with the above artwork for now).  So, yeah, eat that Overlord and your awesome but limited use base-mode.

 

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Spinner is the most Brave looking Micromaster I think I’ve ever seen in both modes, moreso than the Micromasters that actually came out in Brave (oh God, he’s on about Brave again – Editor).  He’s hardly the first Transformer to use a police theme, but the colouration and the way the shield is framed is straight out of Brave Police J-Decker – don’t believe me?  Well watch this space, we’ll be covering Brave more in the coming months.

 

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So that is G1 Grandus, a big hunk of plastic love.  Unfortunately, we’ve never had any other toy versions of the Grandus character, and he’s yet to turn up in any Botcon fiction, or even James Robert’s obscurathon feelie comic More Than Meets The Eye.  Thankfully, those are not the last bastions for the unloved, Transformers Animated makes up the holy trifector and adopted Grandus with a lovely version of him which, sadly, never saw a toy release.  Pictured below was the very first tease of Animated Grandus re-imagined as a sumo-wrestler, released by the awesome Derrick Wyatt on his blog.

 

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Hasbro gave us two of these at least, and I helped see the release of two more, so that’s not bad.

As well as appearing in the Botcon 2012 Animated Sunticon-job comic fiction, Grandus did make it into the actual cartoon itself, along with his official mold-mate retool Dug-Base, officially part of Transformers for the first time.

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Wait a minute, who?

Dagbase 

From the Brave of Command Dagwon series, Dugbase was a retooled version of Grandus.  Like other latter-day Transformers that never got recoloured or reissued, Grandus was repurposed for the Brave line.

 

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Dagbase is an awesome toy, and tends to retail MISB for about 1.5th of the price of Grandus, so for some he is an excellent stand-in if you just really want to own the mold without skipping a mortgage payment, but he’s an excellent toy in his own right and thanks to DJW and the Animated cartoon, you have an excuse to annoy the Brave purists, slap an Autobot faction logo on him and port him right over to your TF collection.

 

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Look at that face!  Not only does he look stoic and serious compared to Grandus, but he’s already well equipped to see most 3D movies.

 

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His base mode feels even more city-like than even Grandus with the inclusion of two very Fortress Maximus reminiscent ramps that enable the various trains (so many trains) that make up the Brave line to interact with him, and the accompanying Decoy-esque solid Dagwon figures show the difference in the idea of scale between Transformers and Brave – most of the Brave figures are huge, especially when combined into their final forms where they often can reach Fort Max scale, and each one of the included figures represents a full-size character.  Much bigger than a Micromaster base.

 

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Like Grandus before him, Dagbase can also link up to a lot of his fellow Brave toys to make a sprawling city mass, including the obvious TF repaints like Death Garrygun, but also new robots like the HUGE plane Fire Dagwon, who also has a little seen base-mode (again, I will show all of these in future blogs, I can’t show every picture of every robot, in every configuration at once, and we’re building to some of the more obscure stuff).

 

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At a glance, Grandus and Dag-Base look very similar as they have such unique body-types, but actually the differences are quite noticeable; with the feet, hands, faces, back of the head, and accessories (including shoulder mounted traffic lights???) all changed to give them both a unique identity.  You don’t see these two side by side that often.

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None more so than the aircraft carrier mode, which for Dagbase becomes more of a, uh, well I’m not sure what you’d call it exactly?  As I mentioned earlier he tends to interact with trains moreso than anything else, but I can’t see how this could work with trains.  So let’s just call it a battle platform and move on.

 

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Overall, I prefer Grandus out of the two.  I think Dagbase has some great features and I like a lot of his remolded bits, and his ramps, but there is something about the colouring on Grandus that I love.  His little claw hands give him some much needed personality where the headsculpt fails him a little, and the huge 371, a reference to his Japanese release number (C-371) really adds an extra layer of nerd appeal for me.  And what can I say, I love huge, sprawling base mode cities.

 

Grandus’ mold wasn’t the only thing recycled for the Brave line, his working title of Iron Baron was also repurposed for Thunder Baron and Road Baron.  Those crafty peeps at Takara never let anything go to waste.  Including their designs for Super Rodimus Prime, which we will get to one of these days, but not just yet…

Thanks for checking out the blog!

-CZH / Ceno Kibble / Sid