(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to Combiner Wars Hot Spot. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of Combiner Wars Hot Spot here.)

    Onslaught is a remold, but he's a pretty extensive remold. The biggest difference is in his vehicle mode; it's essentially been "turned around" from Hot Spot's fire truck mode, with the front of the fire truck being the back of this mode and visa versa. Some small window pieces have been added to the now-front of the vehicle mode, while the front windows of the fire truck have been removed and replaced with small feet parts that fold up against the top of the rear for Onslaught's vehicle mode. The most significant mold change, though, is the addition of a bunch of "stuff" in the middle in place of Hot Spot's fire truck ladder. The end result is that it makes the toy a military transport like G1 Onslaught, but also makes it fairly obvious that this mode was designed with Hot Spot in mind first. My biggest issue with this mode is all the aforementioned "stuff" in the middle-- it's basically the dual guns mounted on the sides of a bunch of thinly-disguised pieces of the front of Bruticus' torso mode. The top of Bruticus' head is even clearly visible near the back end of this bunch of "stuff", whereas at least with Defensor's head the top half folded down to make it less obvious on the fire ladder. And really, the other light milky gray pieces (besides the guns) really don't look like anything that's on an actual military transport. It's just a bunch of wing-esque parts that partially hide the gap in the middle of the mode that shouldn't be there on a military transport. Because of the mold changes, there's also some obvious gaps in the back end of this mode (made from the holes for the combiner ports), whereas with Hot Spot these were covered up by the fire truck windows. The robot arms underneath the front are also more obvious this time around, since having little fists underneath the front is more obvious than having them underneath the back, as was the case with Hot Spot. Beyond the blah light milky gray, most of the rest of the mode is a dark dull grayish blue, which is a fitting and accurate color for Onslaught, though I wish there had been a bit more in the way of paint apps-- with the exception of the dark purple on the sirens (which really SHOULDN'T have been painted on Onslaught who is-- again-- supposed to be a military vehicle) there isn't really ANY paint in this mode. It's really unfortunate, as the remolded parts like the little windows in the front are pretty intricate and begging for some silver paint or something. The dual guns can rotate up and down in this mode, but otherwise there is no articulation in this mode.
    It's in robot mode that Onslaught is more obviously the same mold as Hot Spot-- little has been changed about the overall structure and design of this mode. All the Bruticus chest/head bits from the middle of the vehicle mode are now on the upper back as opposed to Hot Spot's ladder. This is good in that it doesn't stick out below the waist like Hot Spot's ladder, but it is a bit bulkier and makes Onslaught a little more back-heavy, with the sides of the backpack sticking out from the sides a bit more. On the plus side, the long heels still make him fairly steady even with the added back-heaviness, and the placement of Onslaught's dual guns in vehicle mode means that they can poke up from behind his body like on his G1 toy if you don't want him to hold them in his hands. The windows also clip onto the sides of Onslaught's shoulders, a slightly bulkier but still effective way of covering up the combiner port holes there. The new feet aren't as bulky as Hot Spot's, and still quite effective. The other changes to this mode are with mold detailing only-- the shoulders have more "armor pad-like" detailing on them, which of course fit Onslaught perfectly. The chest piece has also been completely re-done, with a bunch of really cool circuitry details inside, including dark blue, orangish yellow, and red bits amongst the silver background. Onslaught also has a new headsculpt, which is pretty much spot-on his G1 head but updated with a few more details. The red optic strip looks great against the black head. The color variety in this mode overall is thankfully much improved over the vehicle mode-- aside from the aforementioned paint apps on the chest and head, his "shoulder pads" are painted a really nice military-esque olive green that complements the grayish blue pretty well. There's also some more of that color on the waist, along with some dark purple, which looks quite nice with said olive green. Black is more evident in this mode as well on the upper legs, and the sides of the legs have a nice purple striped pattern over exposed silver mold detailing. Plus, much of the boring light milky gray is on the back in this mode and out of view, which is a good thing in my opinion.
    In the torso mode ("Bruticus"), Onslaught's transformation follows the same general form as Hot Spot's in the legs, but the chest and head pieces fold out in a more straightforward manner than Defensor's nifty ladder fold-around trick. The head "cover" from vehicle mode does fold back, and the guns can rotate around to still stick out behind the top of the body, again like the G1 toy. The other difference is that the robot arms fold up in a higher position than on Defensor, giving Bruticus an appropriately beefier appearance with bigger shoulders. The downside of this, though, is that Onslaught's robot fists are REALLY obvious here. On the other hand, the part that folds down to Bruticus' pelvis mitigates the "tiny pieces of hips before the GIANT upper gestalt legs" effect that Defensor has going. The Bruticus head is excellently sculpted and detailed, with the red eyes and silver faceplate and antennae going quite well with the shiny black head. The chest "shield" pieces have a lot of excellent mold detailing like little vents and the like, but all these details tend to be glossed over by that ugly light gray. However, they do peg into the sides of the chest VERY solidly, and cover up what would be exposed combiner port sockets. (The little added vehicle mode window pieces just fold out to the back unceremoniously and sort of hang there, but they stay back there solidly enough where they honestly don't need any tabs to stay in place.)
    Combiner Wars Onslaught is a fairly neat idea in theory, but in practice it falls through in some significant aspects, particularly in the vehicle mode which just looks sort of cobbled together, especially in the mid-section. The robot mode is honestly slightly better than Hot Spot's overall, with better shoulder and chest details and kibble that doesn't make itself as obviously known. The gestalt mode is a draw-- Bruticus' transformation isn't as intuitive as Defensor's and the obvious robot hands on the shoulders are definitely a negative, but the excellent chest shield and pelvis design, along with everything locking into place quite tightly, is quite nice. Obviously if you're getting the Combaticons you'll want Onslaught, but overall I think Hot Spot wins slightly as far as the better usage of this general design/mold, mostly because his vehicle mode is considerably better.

Review by Beastbot

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