From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Age of the Primes Rant: Voyager wave 6

Combaticon Swindle (Jeep with trailer, Bruticus shin)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/AoP/VSwindle

Okay, it's appropriate that what amounts to a Deluxe in size gets sold
as a $42 Voyager is SWINDLE, because rather a lot of people think this is a blatant ripoff of people who already committed to assembling Bruticus.
Wavemate is a coppery redeco of Vector Prime, so that there can be one with Age of the Primes branding, but that was a hard pass for me at $42.


CAPSULE

$42 price point, oy.

Combaticon Swindle: As a $30 Voyager, it'd be decent on its own even without the combiner aspect. As a $35 Voyager it'd be okay. As a $42
Voyager, it's a bit underwhelming. If you're part of that shrinking
population that can afford to keep buying Transformers, I'd call it mildly recommended.


RANT

Packaging: Standard AoP Voyager window box, but where most Voyagers have the lower legs obscured, Swindle is shorter than the height of the plastic window. The back of the box renders have two insets featuring the gun
trailer (one shows it in trailer mode holding Swindle's own guns instead of having them on the back deck, the other shows it transformed into Bruticus's cannon but mounted on Swindle's shoulder).
The instructions do have the combiner mode...in fact, the entire back of the sheet is devoted to that. Oddly, while the instructions show how to turn the trailer into a big cannon, they just have it store on the back of Bruticus's right leg, they don't indicate it can be held in Bruticus's hand. Maybe they figured that was too obvious to spend instruction space on.


DECEPTICON: COMBATICON SWINDLE
Combiner Component: 5 of 5
Altmode: Military jeep, Bruticus shin
Transformation Difficulty: 21 steps (robot to vehicle), 6 steps (trailer to
cannon), 31 steps (vehicle to combiner leg).
Previous Name Use: None with the "Combaticon" qualifier, many without
Previous Mold Use: None
Origin Universe: G1-ish

Packaging: Four regular ties and a double tie across the thighs hold the robot into the tray. The big cannon is held in the left edge by one tie and
a corner flap, while the small handgun, the rear deck post, and the gun
trailer are in a plastic bag taped in the lower right.

Robot Mode: Okay, he's short, and really looks like a Deluxe at first glance, albeit with a big shoulder cannon as an option. This is one of those cases where the cost is largely in the part count, though, and there's a lot more bits for transformation than a normal Deluxe has. Still not enough to really justify the price point, though. Additionally, the back is pretty hollow, and they don't seem to have tried to make the trailer/cannon work as
a backpack to cover that up. Heck, even making it so that the vehicle mode
gun mount could store in the hollow back instead of awkwardly sitting on the back of one boot would help. In other awkward placement news, the vehicle
mode bumper and grille are stuck onto the undersides of the forearms pretty awkwardly. Other than all these things, it does match the animation model
for Swindle reasonably well.
At 5" (12.5cm) tall it's pretty much Deluxe height, and the bright
yellow and purple make it the closest to already being G2 of all the Combaticons (although G2 made him orange and purple and gave yellow to Onslaught)). Actually, while they're going with the animation colors for the most part, the yellow is really a whole lot brighter on this toy than in the
G1 cartoon. It's even brighter than Alternators Swindle, which was pretty bright yellow. Decepticon Purple plastic is used for the neck, the torso
front plate behind the hood/windshield piece, the shoulder joints, elbow joints, Bruticus ankle tilt joint on back, and the mostly hidden waist joint. If you look closely at the inner face of the left boot, you can see a bit of the trailer hitch piece, which is also purple plastic. Black plastic is used for the head, fists, bumper chunks on the forearms, thighs, knees, wheels, ankle joints, buttflaps (vehicle mode seatbacks), the lower back, the guns,
and the gun mount piece. Everything else is that super bright yellow
plastic, including the vehicle hood piece on the chest (which is painted purple). Note, the windshield chest window is the back side of the vehicle windshield, and it has a single wide window rather than two panes with
wipers, reflecting the simplification the animation designs underwent.
The vehicle hood that sits between the chest window and the full torso front plate is painted a duller Decepticon purple and doesn't match well with the plastic, and this paint is also used on the very bottom of the pelvis
front (the top of the pelvis front is purple plastic from the waist joint piece). The windshield chest window itself is painted silver. A darker gunmetal paint is used for the face, the wheel hubs, and a bit on the lower pelvis front. The pelvis front bit is part of the fake bumper on the pelvis, the molding continues across the hip joint pieces but is not painted there.
The rivets on the front of the hips are cleverly positioned as the headlights of that fake front end, but the rings around them should've been painted gunmetal too (which would match the actual headlights) and weren't. I'd be tempted to fix this if Swindle was likely to spend any significant time not
on Bruticus's leg. Anyway, the eyes are light metallic purple, and a silver outline Decepticon symbol is printed on the upper abdomen.
The neck is a balljoint with the socket in the head and a cut in back so the head can look up, plus a transformation joint to let it tilt back even farther (NOT used for vehicle mode, just limb mode), the waist is a smooth swivel plus a tilt to Swindle's left for limb mode. Pinned hinge and swivel shoulders, bicep swivels, double hinge elbows so they can bend double, and while the wrists look like they have hinges they are in fact fixed in
position. Pinned hinge and swivel hips of the type where the outer thirds of the pelvis move with the hips, upper thigh swivels, hinge knees, ankle
sideways hinges. The toes can bend down on transformation hinges, but it's
the whole sole of the foot that moves, and this isn't too useful. The buttflaps are hinged, but also not useful or necessary since they're attached to the hips. There is a swivel between the peg of the big cannon and the
rest of it, so it can be rotated.
The fists can hold 5mm pegs, there's 5mm by 3mm rounded rectangle slots
on the shoulders for the long gun, and the flight base 3mm socket is on the underside of the pelvis rather than the usual back. I suppose the transformation connection peg and socket on the backs of the boots are 3mm in diameter, but they're not terribly useful for storing things.
The long cannon is 3.25" (8cm) long and made of black plastic with no paint. Near the back end is a 5mm by 3mm rounded peg that can be held in
round 5mm sockets (less well in hexagonal holes or 3/4 circle hands). As noted, this peg is on a swivel. There's a 3mm stud on the left side of the cannon just rearward of the grip, meant for holding the rocket pistol as a combined weapon for vehicle mode. The muzzle is a 3mm socket, although it's
a bit shallow for the 3mm peg Fire Blasts I have.
Because of the 3mm peg on the side of the big gun for attaching the
rocket pistol, and the placement of the stand-mount 3mm socket on the
underside of the pelvis instead of on the back, you can mount the big gun
under the pelvis for prurient purposes. "Say hello to my little friend! And it can be your friend too for a low, low price!"
The small rocket pistol is basically a tube with a stubby finned rocket
on the business end and a short 5mm peg grip at the back, a total of 1.5"
(just under 4cm) long. The tube is 5mm in diameter, so hands with mitten hinges might be able to hold onto the gun that way. There's also stubby fins on the body of the gun at a level with the grip, but only on top and left, as the right side has a raised 3mm socket with collar for attaching to the long cannon.
The trailer cannon is also, with the folding out of a 5mm peg and
flipping it upside down, Bruticus's handgun. As Swindle's shoulder cannon,
the 5mm peg points forwards looking like a laser sight or something. The trailer wheels are sandwiched together in the back and can spin freely, one
can imagine them spinning up as the cannon charges up for a megashot. Regardless of how it's being used, it's 3.75" (9.5cm) long with black plastic used on the barrel, the top and bottom of the main body, and the internal wheels. The sides of the body are bright yellow plastic. There is no
paint. A nonstandard rectangular tab on the left underside goes into a slot
on Swindle's torso top (between head and shoulder) so that the cannon barrel lines up roughly over his shoulder. Fold out the 5mm peg and it can be held
as a giant hand cannon by Swindle or a smallish hand cannon by Bruticus. The barrel aperture is 10.5mm wide. While the cannon is on Swindle's shoulder,
the right arm's range of motion is severely restricted, and the long cannon can't really be stored on the right upper arm.
Man, it would've taken so little effort to make it so that Swindle's big gun could plug into the muzzle of the shoulder cannon to make a longer weapon appropriate for Bruticus, but they didn't take that step. I mean, you can
put it on top, but that doesn't look particularly good. With effort, I can
jam the back end of the big gun into the cannon muzzle, but it's definitely stressing the plastic. After some very careful Dremel use I managed to make the fit better: http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/BruticusCannon.JPG

Transformation: The legs turning into the rear half of the vehicle was complicated in terms of steps but ultimately not too hard to figure out following the principle of "if it can move, move it." It was the front end that took me a while, in large part because I kept trying to figure out how
the head folded back into the torso...and for this mode it DOESN'T, so the
"if it can move, move it" principle is misleading this time. The top of the head is simply part of the front grill, with the forearm kibble wrapping
around to either side of it. Another counter-intuitive bit is that the
elbows leave almost zero ground clearance so I kept trying to find way to get the arms raised up a bit more. Note, if you don't have the cannon mount post piece in the right place before snapping the rear halves together, you have
to back up a few steps and split the boots apart if you want to put it in later. If you leave it out on purpose. there's not really anywhere good to
put it, they didn't bother to make a way to attach it to the trailer.
To transform the cannon into trailer mode pull the yellow side panels
out and fold them around the cannon barrel. The base chunk (the bit that connects to Swindle's shoulder, or the top in Bruticus gun mode) folds around 90 degrees and snaps onto the side panels to lock them in place. Going back
to cannon mode, the base chunk has to be lifted up and out of the way so the panels can swing back away from the barrel, and the base chunk needs to be aligned properly so the side panels can snap against the sides.

Altmode: A rather blocky jeep, which really only seems to try to look
like an actual "in disguise" vehicle in the front half. The back is just a rectangular chunk with wheels and some surface details which are largely lost because yellow plastic is bad at showing details. Like, the front end is pretty clever in how the robot head is integrated into the bumper and those buttflaps become driver and passenger seats, but then...meh.
Not counting the hitch (which can be folded away when not in use), it's 4.5" (11.5cm) long and mostly bright yellow with some purple, black, and silver. The wheels, front bumper, seats, gun mount, and guns are black plastic. A bit of the purple of the hood is purple plastic, and it's really obvious how badly the purple paint on the rest of the hood mismatches with
the plastic. The trailer hitch in back is also purple plastic. Everything else is bright yellow plastic.
The hood is painted purple with that silver outline Decepticon symbol as mentioned in robot mode. The front of the windshield has two molded panes
and windshield wipers, with the panes themselves being painted the same dull silver as on the robot chest window. The horizontal grille slits (not vertical, that'd require licensing from Jeep) are painted black, while the headlights are dull silver with gunmetal rings around the lenses. The wheel hubs are all gunmetal, not just the two that were visible in robot mode.
It rolls okay on the pinned-axle wheels, but as mentioned earlier has almost no ground clearance because of the robot elbows between the front wheels. The cannon can rotate due to the swivel in its peg, but cannot elevate. The windshield's transformation hinge can swing through almost a complete 180 degrees, and the seat backs can fold forwards. The only connection points are the rounded rectangle at the top of the gun mount post, and a 5mm ring on the fold-out trailer hitch. Well, there's also lots of exposed tabs and slots from transformation connections.
The trailer isn't much bigger than a Hot Wheels car, and doesn't look
like much of anything besides "box with two wheels and a hitch peg," although it does have a rounded-rectangle mounting slot for the long gun or combined guns, making it a gun carriage instead of having the gun mounted in the bed
of the jeep. Most of the body is just folded around the big cannon barrel,
and there's no paint visible in this form either (gunmetal paint on the wheel hubs would've been nice, at least). 2.5" (6.5cm) long including the folded down hitch peg (a little longer if the peg is folded forwards). It has a
sort of support chunk at the front so it stays close to horizontal when not hooked up to the back of vehicle mode. When attached to the hitch, the combined vehicle mode is 7" (18cm) long. If you decide to put the guns on
the trailer, their usual mount just sort of pokes up on the back of the jeep, as mentioned earlier it has nowhere else to store.

Combiner Limb Mode: Yeah, I didn't even try to guess this from the final pictures, way too many steps for me to want to play trial and error. The instructions start from vehicle mode, but having followed them I think it might've been easier to start from robot mode. From robot mode, the
chestplate rotates to vehicle position, the arms bend around back so they can wrap around the Bruticus skeleton, the waist rotates and you fiddle with the feet so they make Bruticus toes. Oh, and the head swings back between the wheels on the robot back.
The instructions for attaching to Bruticus are slightly wrong, possibly reflecting an earlier version of things. The front grill pieces cannot wrap
on top of the calf bit like shown in the instructions, you have to fold them
90 degrees to fit into notches in the sides.
http://www.dvandom.com/images/SwindleBoot.JPG for comparison.
As a boot, the "ankle" hinge is snapped into place, but when unsnapped it's a very stiff joint even without ratchets anywhere in the hinge.

Overall: Well, it has a lot of complex engineering dedicated to trying
to look as close as possible to the animation model in all three modes, so that's something. Still, it missed a few easy improvements that could've
been made, and is definitely in the overpriced range.


Dave Van Domelen, got Big Figs Optimus Prime this week, six times taller for seven bucks less....


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