Swindle

Height: 13.5cm (Robot Mode height), approx. 11.5cm (vehicle length)

Articulation: 13 points total- swivel neck, ball joint shoulders, upper-arm swivel, hinge elbows, ball joint hips, thigh swivel, hinge knees.

Colors: Molded light olive green, transparent purple, and black. Painted dark gunmetal grey, metallic purple, black, violet, and orange (cannon).

Accessories: Gyro Cannon with Missile.

Release Data: Released December 2008 in the United States at a MSRP of US $10.99.

Gallery:  17 images.

Author: RAC

Swindle is a one-robot black market. He's only a Decepticon by default, since they're the ones who most often take advantage of his unbeatable deals on armor, weapons and combat systems. If it shoots, explodes, or focuses light into a beam intense enough to melt high-grade armor, Swindle will sell it to anyone. Anyone who can pay his price, that is. Most of his inventory, he scavenges from those who fall in battle, but he doesn't mind helping a crippled Autobot all the way to the scrap heap before stripping him of his weapons.

As is often the case, Transformers Animated takes the original Swindle's sole personality trait to extremes, and combines it with some clever casting. Voiced by Fred Willard as a sleazy used car salesman/infomercial frontman-type, Swindle makes a single-episode appearance (to date) in Animated as the secret benefactor of the Society of Ultimate Villainy- the alliance of most of the human villains that have pestered the Autobots to date (plus Slo-Mo). He lasts just long enough to be an awesome Monster-of-the-week type villain and name-drop the Vok, and is promptly hauled away to have his exotic alien weaponry sold at police auction. The police auctions in futuristic Detroit must be great.

You'd think that, being a one-time-use villain(to date), Swindle might not be the most interesting design, this effort being saved for recurring characters. But TF Animated's character designer, Derrick J. Wyatt, is a big fan of the original Swindle, and it shows on the show, and on this figure. Oozing personality, Deluxe Swindle is as appealing to look at as he is on screen, with a small swarm of flaws bringing him down as a toy.

Vehicle Mode

Swindle appears to be a Humvee-derived design in that he has that same unattractively square look of a Hummer. (Seriously, they look like garden sheds on wheels.) That ugly works better here though, since Swindle is A) a Decepticon and B) has a giant cannon on his roof- it helps tip the scales from "unattractively square" over to "brutishly utilitarian." The socket the cannon plugs into is hexagonal, so it can "click" into position when rotated. The cannon's removable of course, since the retractable model shown in the animation is a wee bit impractical for an $11 toy. Even without the cannon, it's not the most convincing disguise in the Transformers world, due to the gigantic Decepticon insignia on his hood. But disguise isn't his style. Branding is good business, after all- how's anybody going to buy anything from you if they can't find you? And Swindle's Decepticon brand is unique, as I'll get to in the deco section.

As sometimes happens with Transformers vehicles with lots of interlocking pieces, Swindle's side panels don't really match up as well as they should. This can be alleviated somewhat by fiddling with the parts, but even at its best the seams are quite noticeable.

Transformation

It's right in that great middle ground, where the transformation is neither overcomplicated nor dull. One thing that literally and figuratively took a moment to click for me: the torso and hands each depend on a small 3-hinged arm that folds one way for Vehicle Mode and the other for Robot Mode. Until I realized that's what was under there, it was a bit tricky to negotiate, but now it's smooth sailing. Those are always the hardest kinds of transformation joints to manage for me anyway. The one part that does concern me is the center of the hood, the halves of which form the tops of Swindle's arms and hold his fingers. They're the thinnest part of the toy, and compared to the nice solid feeling of the rest of the toy they just feel a bit fragile, whether they actually are or not. I'm being careful of them, either way.

Robot Mode

He looks so friendly! As any good salesman should when he's trying to make a sale. Swindle has a nice Robot Mode design, and while a lot of people are fond of the bolo tie- which is admittedly a neat touch -I'm more amused by the fact that his head is so flat and squared off, befitting his design heritage as a Scramble City limb. And like so many Animated Transformers, his torso sports a faux car grille in absolutely-physically-impossible proportions.

The endearingly-flat head is a swivel joint, but if you really want front-to-back tilt you can use the transformation joint to accomplish it. The shoulders are ball-joints, and luckily the right shoulder on my Swindle- the side with the hardpoint for his cannon -is plenty strong. His left arm, on the other hand, has the loosest, floppiest ball joint I've ever seen on anything. No resistance whatsoever. Fortunately, the forearm swivels and elbows are both plenty tight. The arm articulation overall is tricky- between the shoulders and the large forearms, plus interference with from the Vehicle Mode rear-view mirrors, it's easy to get stuff caught, or for the range to be not as good as you think it should be. The shoulder armor at least swivels, so that's one obstacle lessened. But add the big, bulky cannon on the right arm and (for me at least) the dead shoulder on the left, and the back weapons folded down? It's not a good combination. Compared to the typically big, meaty fists on the animation model, his hands look too clawlike as well, and the grille of the SUV being made of the same plastic makes his hands look really odd.

Below the waist- which transformation and gimmicks have rendered jointless -he's about average, with the ball-jointed hips being blocked slightly in front by the torso plate. (Again, my personal standard for limbs: 90 degrees along any available axis from a neutral position, whenever possible.) The faux-wheel side plates are hinged, though, more than enough for them to have no negative impact whatsoever on the sideways movement of the hips. The knees just barely scrape that 90-degree minimum, and his big, blocky feet preclude ankles. Less obstructed than the arms, but nothing State of the Art, either.

But wait, there's more! Surprisingly, Swindle retains an awful lot of the weaponry he displays in "S.U.V.," the only glaring absense being his Vok force field generator, and I just don't think there's any way you could do that effectively at this size, if any. Two large, winglike panels of the SUV hang off of Swindle's back, and can swing up over his shoulders to become the smaller cannons he used to deter most of the Society of Ultimate Villainy. And also, his lower torso can open up to fold out the chaingun-like chest cannon! While this is a nice touch, it also causes a minor problem: the front panel of the lower torso doesn't hold tightly to the body. It's a minor thing compared to the bad shoulder in my opinion, but the panel flopping around is something I'd imagine a lot more likely to be a widespread issue. Even so, I think the extra gimmicks on Swindle outweigh the inconveniences they cause.

Paint and Deco

There's a couple oddities with deco choices here. First, the fact that Swindle was molded in olive green, when all the promotional images of him would indicate a mustard yellow color closer to his G1 counterpart. My guess is that the wrong color guide was used and that the toy is based off of Swindle's "night" color pallette- which would be understandable, since most of Swindle's scenes in "S.U.V." occur at night anyway. The other interesting choice is Swindle's Decepticon insignia: he's the first Animated figure to get to market with a purple Decepticon symbol, let alone the purple symbol with white borders that's been used on almost all the modern Transformers toy lines. There are a few more coming with purple insignia (Waspinator being one), but all of them are in the unbordered style used for the rest of the Animated toys' typically gold Decepticon logo.

Outside of these two points, the paint is clean overall but not great. As is common with Animated toys, most of his heavy black outlines, most notably on his legs and collar, have gone unpainted. I'm used to that so it's not a big deal. More noticeable, and damning, is that none of the paint on the hinged part of his torso wraps around as it should. The faux truck grille, the purple patches, the gunmetal crotch, are all just painted on the surface of the piece. It wouldn't be as bad if it were just one color, but it's three or four paint applications all in the same place, and the cumulative effect is one of cheapness. The cheap vibe is also not helped by the presence of scarring all over the toy, presumably from where parts were freed from the sprues after molding. Lastly, as with Cybertron Megatron and Prime I have to question the use of transparent plastic for body parts here, as I'd really like to see something more show accurate.

Accessories

-Cannon

Hasbro has been getting inventive with missile launchers in Animated. Simpler than Leader Megatron's recoil gimmick, and thankfully less useless and less frustrating than Voyager Cybertron Megatron's sword-cannon-thing, Swindle's cannon gimmick is simple and elegant. There are a series of cutouts along the cannon barrel where transparent purple plastic is visible; when you load the missile into the cannon, the inner piece slides back and the cutouts turn bright painted orange, as though the cannon were charging. Neat! The cannon connects to Swindle's arm or roof via a good old 5mm peg, though if you're thinking about having Swindle sell it to one of your other Decepticons the shallowness of the peg may present problems with some fists. Luckily, it connects to Swindle quite firmly.

Closing Remarks

As with most goods you see on TV, Swindle is not quite as wonderful as his sales pitch would lead you to believe. It's a fun character with some definite selling points, especially all the neat weaponry gimmicks, but the paint could have been better, and the articulation could have been better. And the Vehicle Mode could have been better. If the shoulder and torso problems turn out to be widespread, those could definitely have been better, too. I'm still fond of the toy, because it is a fairly accurate representation of the character(at night, at least), but it will probably not shock you to learn that I rate Swindle Could Have Been Better.

-RAC, 02/01/2009