Hey all, I was just sitting here playing with my toy (hehe,pun intended) Searchlight, and it hit me that Searchlight is a 100% homage to G1 Highbrow,notice they both have dual blades,are both blue and gray,and the each come with little figure companions.Even tho Searchlight has a different transformation I really think he is a homage to Highbrow.Does anyone else think so?
Never really thought about it that way. To be honest Highbrow needs to be an Osprey rather than a Chinook for me to get it, but hey, it works in robot mode.
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think it was a deliberate homage except in the loosest sense. The similarities are fairly superficial.... you could also make the case that Movie Incinerator was a Highbrow homage, or that Searchlight is an homage to Twin Spin (since Hasbro has been dishing up a few Gobots homages recently). Really, though, I think it just boils down to the fact that they're all helicopters, and that blue and grey are fairly common Transformers colors. Your point about the minicon is well-taken, but so many TF's have minicon partners that that still doesn't quite seal the deal, I think. Not to mention, Hasbro actually seems to be using the name "Highbrow" again, but on a different figure. If they really intended for this guy to be Highbrow, I'd think they would just go ahead and give him that name from the get-go. But hey, who knows? Maybe a Highbrow repaint of the mold is in the pipeline. And Hasbro's naming strategy is always a bit arcane anyway. It certainly wouldn't be unreasonable for folks to use Searchlight as a Highbrow stand-in in their collections... as you mentioned, the similarities ARE there. (Speaking of Highbrow, I think it's a shame there was never a deluxe-size version of Animated helicopter-version Megatron.... that would have made a lovely Highbrow repaint. But scary Leader-class Highbrow just doesn't seem to work as well.)
Not deliberate, but who cares! I gonna get me classics Highbrow! A small paint app to teh head and he should be alright.
