Here we go again; FOC Sideswipe.

I tried avoiding this one for the longest time, since his base body is based on Jazz from the Fall of Cybertron toy with which I was not overly impressed I knew I wouldn’t like it that much.  I don’t.  But annoyingly they gave him a toy version of my favourite gun in the game.  Therefore I crumbled when seeing it in the shops and here he his.

So is he an improvement over Jazz?  Is the gun worth it?

No and No.  So as a result I have some pictures I quickly took one night while working at another site.

 

Once again, nice to see the graph stats on the back.  You can immediately see the problem with the gun from here.  Even though it looks game accurate, it’s huge.  Too huge for Sideswipe, it even looks too big for a voyager sized toy. I haven’t tried it with a leader yet, but I think that’s the way to go.

I rather dislike the repurpose of the Jazz skeleton for Sideswipe.  Sideswipe should have a flat bonnet chest, not a slightly pokey out chest like he has here…

The articulation is exactly the same as Jazz, complete with the cheap version of a ratcheted joint on the knees and ankles and elbows.  He essentially has the car hanging off the torso and skinny horrid little legs down the bottom.  Worst of all, the horrible gap in the chest by the neck is still there.  GAH!  It still looks ridiculous.

While the helmet looks like it is sculpted well, the face looks a bit deathly with sunken cheeks, so really I can’t even say that I like the face sculpt that much…

BAH!  There is more of that horrible floating head.  On this pus side I did work out a way to make him less gappy in vehicle mode.  You just have to exert a large amount of pressure on his shoulder pads to lock them in place before changing modes.

The tabs below have to plug securely into the shoulder pads, which for me usually resulted in the arm popping off the ball joint.  On the plus side that made it easier to plug that tab in, but defeated the purpose of transforming a bit…

Hmmm, makes that shoulder plug in nice and tight!

I did find a fat version of the robot mode in my playings this time.  Makes him look a bit like one of the Wreckers from the 3rd TF movie.


Still butt ugly though.



Now for the gun.  Interestingly it has a long barrelled mode and a not as long barrelled mode, but it is so huge that Sideswipe can’t actually point it anywhere….  Nicely sculpted and it does have a rotatable chamber at the bottom which makes a click noise for some reason…  Play value?  The clicks don’t sound anything like a weapon.

So..  not only is the robot mode pretty awful, the main novelty (for me) was a bit of a waste, especially since I don’t have any leader sized FOC figures….  How’s the vehicle mode?

I actually prefer the vehicle mode over the robot mode by quite a bit.  I think I even like the vehicle mode more than I like Jazz’s vehicle mode.  It looks pretty close to the game model and has fewer gaps than Jazz had.  There is an annoying gap at the back of the vehicle though.

Annoyingly a plastic stress mark appeared almost immediately after transforming…  Not very impressed with that.  Right by the hinge above the black bit.

The gun also fits on the roof of the car as well as the side.  If you put it on the side though, the gun being as large as it is means the rear wheels no longer make contact with the ground.  It also covers the whole roof, although it does look a bit Roadblaster-y

Sigh, it just looks so stupid.  I guess it isn’t as bad as those blasted stupid Mech-tech Weapons….  And it looks just as ridiculous on Jazz too.

As a vehicle it looks a lot more solid than Jazz does, but I think that is due to Jazz having the rear spoiler and piston things.  Odd that from essentially the same figure, one is a better robot mode and the other a better vehicle mode.  Sadly this means that that neither toy is great.

So in the end, we have another weak toy.  No surprises there as it is based on a weak toy.  Even  the funky new gun is no saving grace as it is ridiculously huge.  Although a better vehicle than Jazz, it’s a worse robot mode.  I thought I’d keep it, just for the Cybertronian vehicle mode, but after a while, I decided that even that isn’t really worth it, so I ended up selling mine.

I did keep the gun though!