What does the Comic tell us About the Brute Force Toyline that Never Was?
Brute Force was Marvel's failed attempt at joining in the toy-cartoon-comic fun back in 1990.
What isn't often talked about (if ever) is how much effort Jose Delbo (and whoever else was doing character design work in pre-production) put into planning for the realities of toy design, because it's not hard to suss out what was intended from the art alone.
Parts Reuse Was Planned From the Start:
The metal production molds are the most expensive part of toy production, so any time you can reuse parts across multiple figures is a savings. Each side has two unique members (Hip-Hop and Lionheart for Brute Force, Armory and Ramrod for Heavy Metal) three that share obvious parts with an opposing figure.
Uproar and Wreckless appear to use the same upper arms, upper legs, pelvis and probably chest. Uproar's bullets were likely planned as an accessory.
Surfstreak and Bloodbath appear to just have different heads, maybe tails, and either different accessories and limbs or just different accessories depending on execution.
Soar/Slipstream and Tailgunner appear to have unique add-on armor for the wings, heads, and legs. The wings might also been different, but I'd guess that when time came to mold plastic they'd have used the same ones.
Size Classes are Easy to Guess:
The "charge into battle" shot gives you every indication of what size everyone was going to be sold at. My guess, based on the art and the action features later shown off, is it would break down like this:
Small - Soar, Surfstream, Bloodbath, Tailgunner
Medium - Lionheart, HIp-Hop, Ramrod, Uproar.
Large - Wreckless, Armory, the toxic mutant (if they planned on making the off-theme guys)
Super Large - Heroic and Evil Transports
It's harder to place Heavy Metal since they don't seem to have add-on vehicles, but the art represents Armory as being huge and a major threat...
And uproar seems to have mass equal to Lionheart on his cycle, though he might have been packed in with the villain's large transport or had another add-on vehicle planned later.
It's likely that the vehicle-attached figures would have gotten solo releases, likely with different decos. As was the style at the time.
They Planned for Action Features, and I think I know what they were.
Furman and Delbo knew how to make a toy-comic, and everyone gets to show off their action feature in a toy-comic. Brute Force leaves some solid clues for what those features would have been. Now, there would probably have been launchers (Wreckless's Bearzooka), water-shooters (Surfstream almost certainly had one), etc, but I'm talking more about the showcase feature.
Surfstream and Bloodbath Were Low-Effort Transformers-
-or else they were biting MOTU Dragstor's style. Surfstream and Bloodbath clearly had both swimming/rolling configurations and upright figure configurations.
Soar (and likely Tailgunner) Had Blast-Away Armor
You don't do this trick twice in 4 issues if it's not your gimmick.
Wreckless and Uproar loved Hugs
My guess is there was at least some thought put into the possibility of Wreckless and Uproar having a "bear hug" feature that could work as general limb-swinging and chest pounding. In addition to the grabs Wreckless does a lot of right hooks and, oddly Uproar mainly fights with his mace for a character with bullet bandoleers. This one's harder to nail down because the actions are very obvious for bear/ape characters, but either a weapon-swing or a grab/bear hug seems really likely.
Wreckless's gun is the kind that you could mount on a figure's shoulder without them needing to hold it in-hand, so the arms might have been free for the action feature if my guess is right.
This Octopus Bastard Spins
You can't tell me Armory doesn't spin. perfectly radially symmetrical middle section designed in such a way the central body could spin while the legs and head stay stationary. arms that grip weapons or other figures, he's huge and clearly meant to be Heavy Metal's mega-weapon. He spins.
Hop-To Heroes
Now, if there's one thing the Brute Force characters do, it's leap. But the characters with the larger lock-on vehicle armor all leap out of the vehicle to attack a foe at least once.
I have to wonder if the vehicle figures were intended to be ejected from the vehicle as a leaping attack. (this would seem thematically in line with the armor-shed gimmick from Soar) This would be in addition to some general reconfiguration between low-riding "speed" modes and upright battle modes.
Ramrod would have had a headbutt gimmick.
It's literally all he does in the comic. I don't think he even has a gun.
Conclusions
Brute Force was intended into be a not just an action figure line, but a feature-heavy character driven line. The play patterns imagined were ambitious. I see Starriors, Transformers and Centurions DNA in there, and it would have been a lot more fun than Captain Planet for an eco-themed franchise.
The Marvel crew clearly learned a lot from the toy industry from working with Hasbro, Kenner, Mattel, Mego and numerous others through the years, and it shows. This concept started with toy ideas, it's just a pity no one was incentivized to make them.
