There's three base toolings for Combiner Wars Voyager Class toys so far (with a fourth, Sky Lynx, on the way), and Hot Spot was by far the best of them.  So I'm similarly happy with Onslaught, who is a reworking of Hot Spot.  Hot Spot was lithe and dynamic and sturdy in all the ways that matter, and Onslaught takes all these fundamentals inherent in the tooling and nudges them in a different direction.

Onslaught keeps a lot of the same parts, like the basic torso framework and most of his arms and legs, but now he transforms backwards from the way Hot Spot did -- his legs now become the back of the vehicle and his arms become the front.  The extended armature with Defensor's combiner robot chest-and-head parts is replaced with something a little more simple.  There's just rotating and unfolding involved in Bruticus's combiner kibble, rather than also wrapping around, but that's fine.  It accomplishes what you want it to.  It looks like Bruticus's chest and head in combiner mode, stashes away behind Onslaught in robot mode, and (in its weakest iteration) becomes the weapon placement in armored truck mode.  If the two cannons aren't enough for you, there're also pegholes to attach Combiner Wars Shockwave, who also becomes Bruticus's handheld weapon.  

It's a pretty perfect Onslaught and pushes all of the Onslaught buttons I can imagine, which is fairly impressive for a toy that's mostly Hot Spot.  After a few new parts and a reversed transformation (and a slightly altered combiner torso formation) and you've got everything you'd want.  He can even peg his cannons into the kibble on his back to complete his original silhouette.

He's just very satisfying.

Way back at BotCon earlier this year, Hasbro said that Onslaught was going to have a running change -- first his combiner parts were going to be tan plastic (to make a better Onslaught) and later they'd be silver (to make a better Bruticus).  It kind of seems like they've skipped the tan plastic version entirely, and maybe it's because everyone in the world said they'd be waiting for the running change with the silver.  Honestly, Onslaught doesn't need the tan parts to look like Onslaught.  Who cares if he has a bunch of silver stuff in the middle of his armored truck mode instead of tan?  It's a worthy compromise to get the better-looking combiner mode.  

Phew!  I'm finally to Part Five of Bruticus.  Unlike the other four, Onslaught doesn't become any number of limbs.  He's limited to being the torso/head/thighs.  Someone's gotta have all the male connection ports!

I am a little saddened by Onslaught, but not because of Onslaught himself.  No, I'm sad in advance for Impactor.  I've always wanted an Impactor toy.  (Well, where "always" means "since about 1997," when I learned the Marvel UK stuff existed.)  But Onslaught's robot mode has some problems, and I want Impactor to be amaaaaaazing.  And if Onslaught's not amazing, then neither will Impactor.

Technically, Onslaught only has two problems.  His forearms.  They are attached to his elbows by tiiiny ball joints.  But his elbows are attached to his biceps by some very stiff ratcheting rotational joints.  I think you know where this is leading.  You try to move his forearms, his forearms are more likely to pop off than to move, because that's the path of least resistance.  It's supremely annoying.

Maybe the plastic tolerances on Impactor will be different, and his arms will be fine!  Who knows.  But it irks me.

The arms are what get in the way of the other modes, too.  They just sorta hang underneath his ribcage in torso mode (though they peg in place) and in truck mode you have to cover them up with his weapon or else he's a truck with arms on his hood.

The rest of Onslaught's robot mode has no problems.  Sure, he obviously has Bruticus' pelvis hanging off the back of his ass even when seen from the front, but I can overlook that.  And don't look at him from the back because of the whole Bruticus head thing, but Transformers rarely look nice from that angle anyway.   (I do wish you could plug in his gun behind his head, as you could the original Onslaught.  You can in Bruticus mode, as is intended, but the Bruticus head gets in the way of it happening when Onslaught is in robot mode.)

His truck mode is not great.  Well... it's better than it looks, and how it looks is "less good 1986 Kup pickup truck mode."   Again, I care less about this re: Onslaught, and moreso about future Impactor, who hasn't had a toy before.  It's definitely its own thing and not a recreation of 1985 Onslaught's very long military truck mode.  Like Brawl, Onslaught was a pre-existing design for the previous Transformers game, so the designers didn't have as much leeway, and instead the torso mode had to be kind of shoehorned out of him.  If you've seen his truck mode from War for Cybertron, you'll see that it suffers the most.

The torso mode though is everything Bruticus needs, however.  It's the most important thing Onslaught does.  He's the torso, which means he has to hold everything together.  He can't be the weak link, and he's not.  He pegs together very stiffly so that the whole thing doesn't fall apart under its own weight.  This is a good reason for him to be a Deluxe instead of a Voyager or larger -- if he were any bigger, this thing would be hella unstable.

FOC Onslaught is not a great toy of the Onslaught character.  But he's a fantastic Bruticus torso.  Given a choice between the two, I think this toy chose wisely.

At least Impactor will be orange.  Orange absolves a lot of sins.