Tuesday 28 June 2011

Botcon 2011 Sideswipe!!

sshead
Botcon 2011 had Sideswipe bundled with the crazy Toxitron as an attendee figure.  It is a re-colour with a new head of the good old Animated Rodimus.  Which I have now covered three times previously with Black Rodimus, the Sons of Cybertron set and my Japan and US version of normal release Rodimus.  So, here we go again.

Good thing it’s a good mould!

So here we have Sideswipe.  What’s he like?  Well read his bio and find out.  Again, he has his own instructions and a G1 Tech Spec card.

Sideswipe.
Function: Investigator

“You break the rules, you answer to me”
A hard boiled, hard-hitting, hard fighting ‘bot who has been around the block and seen it all.  Underneath all his bluster, though,<too many commas grrr> is the same idealistic Autobot that has been serving in one capacity or another for millions of stellar cycles.  Incredibly observant; he misses nothing and forgets even less.  He has little patience for those who act before they think, perhaps because they remind him of his own lost youth.

  • Strength       -6
  • Intelligence   -8
  • Speed          -8
  • Endurance    -3
  • Rank            -6
  • Courage       -9
  • Firepower     -4
  • Skill            -9


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Good to see the G1 Styled tech specs, although the bio is more along the lines of Nightbeat than Sideswipe.

Botcon is run by the ‘Official Transformers Collector Club’ who whip out a magazine for the club members every 2 months.  I have issues (pun intended) with the quality of the magazine, as at times is terribly amateurish, specifically their excessive love for commas.  The Bio they wrote for Deluxe Unicron from the Cybertron toy line was horrific, commas on almost every second word.  The spell checker they were using should have been about to explode I think but they still ignored it.  It made for horrid reading and was almost too painful to look at.  None have been that bad since, but they do still put commas in places where they shouldn’t be.  Shame there isn’t a ‘comma abuse network’ I can call.  Hmm, since I am typing up the bios, I might dig out that Unicron and have a rant.  They also used the word ‘impacted’ as well, which makes me want to cry.



Moving on…



Sideswipe!
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His body is plainly the same body as Rodimus.  The colours, although a bit plain are based on his appearance in the G2 toy line.  The original was a red Lamborghini, a very nice little figure I always thought.  He has a new head that is also used for one of the Stunticons (still waiting for them) and although it doesn’t look that much like Sideswipe’s head, it manages to pull it off reasonably successfully.  It looks better than Rodimus’ head would anyway.  The engine on the bonnet I don’t really like that much, I think it would be better for Sunstreaker since he had an exposed engine, but Sideswipe didn’t, so I folded mine down for vehicle mode to reveal his Autobot logo.


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It looks pretty good.  Oh and that’s a picture of him MISB I guess. Sealed in a bag.  Actually really MISB would be in the bag with Toxitron. 


Only one down side about folding the engine in for vehicle mode, it gets in the way of the feet that plug into the front bumper.

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Still, if you don’t look at it from below, you won’t notice I guess.  I still prefer mine with the engine hidden, I guess I will have to wait for the comic to see how they represent him.


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The shield under the Autobot Insignia I guess is a police badge after all the guy is a detective type chap.  Think Columbo.  Who has recently passed away.  My sympathies.



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The green lantern symbol thing on the side is the initials of Sideswipe ‘SS’ in Cybertronian.  The second S is reversed though.  A nice touch, but ruins the ‘in disguise’ option a bit.


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The underside of the vehicle is pretty neat and folds nicely.  Again a positive thing about this mould.









His weapon can be slapped onto the roof of the car, just like the original G2 Sideswipe.
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He comes with Rodimus’ bow, but recoloured to match the green black and white.  He has white paint for the back brake lights.









I recommend googling “G2 Sideswipe” to see the inspiration.  The G2 version looks pretty good, the green is a lot less noticeable.  Still, I have learned why they did one particular thing that is a bit wrong….


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Yep, Clear windows.  Following the instructions, you are supposed to leave the head looking forwards as you transform it, but you end up with his face looking out of the window.  I prefer to turn the head backwards and then transforming, as the back of the head doesn’t yell out at you “GET ME OUTTA HEEEEERE!”



Being a copper, I assume Sideswipe is one for leading the Autotroopers.  In vehicle mode, they looks pretty cool together.

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Robot mode is pretty cool and the colours come together a bit better.  I have gone on and on about the coolness of this mould and as usual, the posing options of this toy are really really good!

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His noggin is pretty grumpy looking too.  Mine only has one eye painted, did he lose it, or is he just winking?  His chest is also really really G2 Sideswipe looking too!  That’s pretty ace!

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The instructions state that you just transform him like a normal Rodimus, but while I was waiting for him to arrive, I watched Peaugh’s youtube review and he came up with an idea that I quite liked in regards to the spoiler.  If you mis-transform it slightly, you can lower the height of the spoiler on his back, which can make it look more like an upturned collar!

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Flip down the black bit that the spoiler is attached to, and then gently twist the spoiler around and bammo he goes from one to the other!


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Doing that makes him a bit less Rodimus like and less Breakdown like as well ( I think that is who the other one of this guy is…)


As you can see, red hands and exhaust legs.
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And, as with vehicle mode, he looks pretty cool posing with his Autotroopers
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Now with his troops, briefing completed.
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What we have here is another good recolour of a great toy.  The colours stay true to the inspiration and although his head isn’t all that much like G2 Sideswipe’s, it manages to do the trick quite nicely.  Personally I would have preferred to have had the engine removed so that you could have his vehicle mode with the symbol exposed easily, but you can still do that, just without flush feet.  My only real concern is a problem with the use of the mould I guess.  On most of my Rodimie, the ball joint connecting the shoulder together has been a bit wonky and loose.  Sideswipe here is much the same I am afraid.  Every time I have transformed him  and a lot of the times when I have moved his shoulder it has popped off.  Sure it’s easy to plug back in again, but I fear there is some mould degradation going on there, made more noticeable by the looseness of that joint in the first place.


Is it worth hunting down specifically?  If you love SS and must have them all?  Yes.  G2 fan?  Probably as it is a nice homage.  Animated fan?  Not really as he didn’t debut in the show, but he does make the Animated world a bit more sexier.  Anybody else?  No.  Get a Rodimus instead.  If you can’t, then this guy will do nicely, as long as the price isn’t ridiculous.

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