Highbrow (TF 2010)

This article is about . For other uses of "Highbrow", see Highbrow (disambiguation)|The name or term "Highbrow" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Highbrow (disambiguation).}}
Highbrow is an Autobot from the movie continuity family (via the 2010 Transformers toyline).
"They may take our spiders, but they'll never take our PRETZELS!"

With age comes experience, and in Highbrow's case, that's a lot of combat experience. He has ended up fighting many seemingly unwinnable battles in his lifetime, but nobody has managed to take him out just yet. Highbrow may be old, but he's far from frail.

Fiction

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Toy bios

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Highbrow and Ratchet once teamed up to take on The Fallen. Certainly knowing that they will probably not win, at least they got to show The Fallen just how determined the Autobots were to stopping him. Hunt for the Decepticons Voyager The Fallen Highbrow was also pretty resourceful, as he could easily show Ratchet at least twenty ways the medic could use that laser scalpel of his to weaken and cripple even the most powerful of Decepticons. Rescue Ratchet (Deluxe)

Unite for the Universe

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Oh, hey, there's the last plane out of Saigon!

When Starscream used the Unite process to power himself up and challenge Megatron's leadership, Ratchet was dispatched with a weapon that would fry the Unite components and neutralize the threat. Highbrow and Tomahawk flew escort for the NEST plane carrying Ratchet to the battle zone. The Strongest Weapon

Toys

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Transformers (2010)

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"Incinerator ain't got nothing on me!"
  • TakaraTomy ID number: AA-11
  • Accessories: 2 gatling guns
  • Known designers: Alex Kubalsky (TakaraTomy){{#if: |, {{{2}}}}}
Released in the third wave of Hunt for the Decepticons Voyagers, Highbrow transforms into a World War II-style fighter reminiscent of the [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Lockheed P-38 Lightning|{{#if:||Lockheed P-38 Lightning}}]], and features propellers which are geared to spin if you press the engines down. In robot mode, he features a flip-down battle mask, is armed with two non-firing gatling guns which can mount on his hip guards/small front wings via 5 mm post, and the propellers on his forearms can be swung down to function as "spinning blade weapons." Highbrow's battle mask resembles the goggles and headgear of a WWII American fighter pilot, and the lenses of the goggles are made of a clear plastic. This allows one to see Highbrow's eyes when the mask is down, as lowering the mask reveals much more of the clear plastic on the back of his head, allowing the light-piping to shine through more.
With the cockpit shell halves splitting open and forming the wings, at the same time revealing the thruster attached underneath the "main" cockpit body, which is then flipped down, the cockpit kibble on his back actually turns into a jet-pack.
His robot-to-vehicle instructions completely forget the "fold cockpit back into place" step (which would go between steps 14 and 15), but fortunately it's pretty obvious. Strangely, he does not have a faction symbol in either mode, something of a rarity among modern Transformers.
The Takara Autobot Alliance release features a darker, more muted sand blue on the plane undercarriage/robot chest and legs compared to the Hasbro version's bright powder blue.
This mold, with the alternate head, was redecoed to make Generations Powerdive, and was also retooled into Timelines Obsidian.

Notes

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  • Bill Rawley explained at BotCon 2010 that Highbrow's tailfin symbol is a pretzel with tarantula legs. This was meant as an oblique reference to Jared Wade's father-in-law, who flew a P-38 Lightning, and whose callsign had something to do with pretzels and/or spiders.

Foreign names

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  • Japanese: Highbrow (ハイブロウ Haiburō)