Deciding on a G1 Bruticus

[DELTAprime]

I know the G1 Bruticus mold is getting a bit worn out so I'd like to get one before the mold is totally shot. I like the Car Robots Ruination variation of Bruticas and I found one but the gold plastic and the fact it's a Sonokong not Takara version have me worried. I'm still also looking at all other versions.

Is there anything to look out for when buying a Bruticus like bad QC on certain versions, mold variations, ect?

[BigTransformerTrev]

Not that you are likely to make this mistake, watch out for figures that seem 'bigger than they should be'. A dodgy company made molds of the Combaticons and used similar colours but they were huge and made of an incredibly crappy plastic. They were often found in $2 shops (I found a Blast Off in a really bad Transformers knock-off show bag at the Melbourne show a decade ago) and some people still try to flog them on ebay where scale can be hard to judge.

[GoktimusPrime]

The gold plastic on Vuldigus should be fine AFAIK (I've not heard any reports of it having problems). Gold plastic itself isn't necessarily poor - it's the quality of plastic. HasTak have notoriously used cheap plastic for their golds as well as the browns on Transmetal Megatron. Besides, IIRC it's not the same shade of gold as those with GPS. I only own the RiD Ruination version which has grey plastic, but like I said, I'm not aware of anyone who's experienced GPS w/ Vuldigus, so AFAIK it doesn't suffer from it. If you look up Gold Plastic Syndrome it has a list of all TF toys known to suffer from brittle plastic.

Sonokong Transformers are perfectly legit - they're not KOs and the toys are in no way physically inferior to their Japanese counterparts. Sonokong is a South Korean company that used to hold the licence to distribute TFs in S. Korea (now it's Mocom AFAIK). They essentially repackage Takara toys in Korean language packaging, instructions, tech specs etc, but the toys are the same. They packaging quality isn't always as good as Takara's, and may not get the right tech specs for that toy (and sometimes the tech specs card is just missing), and often the stats vary wildly from the Japanese specs (it's as if they just roll some dice to come up with their Strength, Intelligence etc.)... but let's face it... unless you can read Korean it doesn't really matter, does it?

But the toys themselves are fully legit and of good quality.

[Sinnertwin]

I have a few Sonokong toys and IMO the quality and price isnt an issue ,unlike the recent Encore release which, to me is rubbish.
As for variants of Bruticus, Baldigus, Ruination,off the top of my head i can remember the metal vs plastic versions on some pieces and the lack of rubsigns and indents.

[DELTAprime]

So look out for KO's, which is SOP for G1 collecting.

Don't worry about Sonokong. (Only thing I have of theirs is a JRX and it's paint was horrible, that's why I hesitate on them.)

And be careful of the Encore reissue.

Thanks.

[swoop]

With the exception of battle gaia I have every version of bruticus.

There is a mould change for blast off/movor, from G1 up until rid the mold has a pointed nose and from universe on wards the nose is rounded.

I have sonokongs valdigus and there is nothing wrong with it, its a more screen accurate version than rid's ruinations too. Gps is not a problem, I must have transformed it 50 times over the last 7 years so don't worry about that.

G1 bruticus has a problem with its chest shield popping off when you try to move the arms but if its for display then it shouldn't be a problem. G2 onwards fixes this problem.

I can't comment on the encore version, mine is still sealed but I have heard that it is a bit dodgy.

My universe mega octane's legs are a little loose, I don't know if thats a problem with that release or just mine but it is something to look out for.

The arctic camo runation is nice and the colours look are uniform and look really good, if you are not particularly attached to the bruticus or ruination characters in their show colours then I would get this version