Swoop

Height: 15cm

Articulation: 19 total points - Double jointed neck; 4 points each arm: swivel shoulder, ball joint upper arm, ball joint elbow, wrist hinge; swivel wings; waist swivel; 3 points each leg: ball joint hip, hinge knee, ball joint ankle. Plus articulation specific to beast mode.

Colors: Molded grey, light blue, metallic blue, red, gold, clear orange; Painted metallic blue, red, silver, gold, blue, light metallic blue, orange.

Accessories: Mace

Release Data: Released with Animated Deluxe Wave 4 in 2008 at a retail price of US$9.99.

Author: ExVee

(more...)


Like the other Dinobots, Swoop prefers to be left alone on Dinobot Island, where he can soar and dive without worrying about the Decepticons taking pot shots at his wings. When he does have to return to the mainland to battle the Decepticons, however, he enjoys the way people scatter when they see his shadow. That, and smashing trees with his ball and chain doesn't compare to the satisfying crunch it makes when it bashes into Decepticon armor.

Derrick Wyatt once said that his personal choice for the voice of Snarl would be Louie Anderson. Along that same line, I can't help but think of French Stewart when looking at Swoop's robot mode. Have to admit his voice doesn't seem out of place for a pterosaur character, either. Though with the end of Animated at hand and no suggestion of any continuance from here, it seems unlikely that either wish will come true anymore.



Beast Mode

The stylized nature of Animated really seems to be helpful in the case of Swoop. While Pterosaurs have gotten a fair shake of representation over the years in Transformers, few have really stood out as exceptional toys to me. Typically burdened by terribly static beast forms, they might be different from more common beasty fare, but interesting toys they're not. Not so for Swoop. Whether intentional or not Swoop seems to take important cues from an earlier cousin, Beast Machines Skydive. Swoop takes the positive aspects from that toy and even improves upon them.

In fact, the only major complaint I have against Swoop's beast mode is the way the head is put together. For starters, you'll want to grasp the neck itself when you pose the head. Trying to move it from anywhere else results in the beak and most of the face pulling away from the back of the head, sadly revealing the robot face. Likewise the hinge to open the beak is more stiff than the hinge that lets the whole face fold down, so there's another peek at robot face. Plus, the beak has a decided limit on how far it should open. The hinge goes a lot farther, but there again pieces pull away and expose the robot head. That they tried to make the robot eyes also act as the eyes for beast mode is a problem. The robot eyes are small the begin with, but then they're set within a relatively deep, narrow opening in the sides of the pteranodon head, making them nearly invisible except under the strongest light.

The wings are done pretty nicely. The arms attach securely to the wings themselves. The wings are articulated very well. Skydive managed good articulation by making the wings attached directly to the arms, but this is better. The wings are a separate piece attached to the back, which are hinged. The arms are jointed at the shoulders, and through a case of really well handled engineering both move perfectly together, allowing for smooth flapping motions that do not threaten to pop one piece or another off the body. Sadly this does not extend to the other plane of movement. The wings are pretty well fixed at full spread, and any attempt to move forward or back results in things coming apart.

The legs are probably the weakest thing that isn't the head, and it's mostly because they're obviously oversized. Some things are hard to escape, and if the choice was between this or perhaps folding the legs over the back as ill-conceived boosters or other such garbage, I'll go with extra-long legs happily. The legs have just enough degree of articulation that Swoop can be posed as standing. Stability is helped by folding down the wings, but if you can line everything up right, Swoop will stand well enough with spread wings. The toes and heel are hinged as if to be able to grasp at something, though they don't close far enough or at the right angles to be able to hold anything by themselves. Odd that there's a little peg under the toes on either foot. I wonder what that might be for...?


Transformation

Pretty simplistic, in that it's mostly flipping things around on hinges to elongate the body. Initially getting the torso to lock together correctly in robot mode can be a little less than clear, but it doesn't take long to determine which tabs go where. And don't forget to rotate the waist!


Robot Mode

At least now one needn't worry about the head falling apart from trying to move it. The head has a lot of room to move with its double jointed neck. It's worth noting that there may have been a plan to have light piping in effect here which was neutralized at some point with a combination of opaque plastic and paint. Light piping would explain the idea of sharing eyes between beast and robot modes, and had it worked would have really improved their visibility in those tiny little openings.

In truth the biggest difference from beast mode is that the arms and wings can now move freely of each other. Because of how things had to be designed to make the wings posable in beast mode, the arms are a little unusual in how they're jointed here. Of particular note is the upper arms attached to angled ball joints. You can get the function of an upper arm swivel, but the odd angle involved can also lead to things running into the torso. And at least in my case it seems to facilitate popping one or the other arm off. But, if you can get the hang of it, this jointing can lead to an unusual range of potential poses. A face-palm is just one of the usually hard to achieve poses that Swoop can do with relative ease. Swoop's hands help with that, too. Three-fingered claws in a fixed position, but with the benefit of a wrist hinge. Not useful for much other than cradling his face is his hand, or holding specially designed weapon handles. But that's enough for me!

The wings have a little more range of movement now. The forward-back swivels are no longer restrained by the arms, and the hinges retain most of their range of motion. Of course, the wings look a little insubstantial to have outstretched for flying in robot mode. The character art seems to support leaving the wings folded down along the back to look like a cape, which is how I typically arrange them. They will stick out from the back a bit, but it doesn't make a balance issue.

The legs get little improvement. Though they gain double jointed knees in robot mode, one of the joints goes forward, but I guess if you ever wanted to scratch your face with your foot while standing up, that'd be just right for you. Swoop gets a pretty good range out of the joints in the legs, but though he has pretty wide feet, the really, really narrow heel can make trouble for extreme poses requiring unusual balancing. Since just the tips of the toes and heel actually touch the surface, it actually ends up behaving like a considerably more narrow foot.


Accessories

Swoop comes with a mace. In keeping with his fellow Dinobots, it looks like it's made of molten rock with a thin layer of cooled solid rock over top. Unlike the promotional images, a lengthy metal chain. Instead, it has a plastic chain of only nine links. Add that there is no swivel at the end of the chain, and swinging this thing around just doesn't work out that great. Similar to Grimlock's sword, this was originally supposed to have a pop-out plastic flame gimmick, but that was neutralized for safety reasons. Though apparently a little disassembly and trimming can restore it.

Amazingly, unlike either of Swoop's buddies, he has an actual way to carry around his weapon in beast mode. Those pegs on the bottom of the feet I mentioned fit one of two little holes on one side of the mace head. The holes fit a particular foot and actually have to go on a specific direction or else the curve of the bottom of the foot won't fit around the ball. So yes, the storage is pretty much just a pteranodon carrying around a mace in its claw. But it's sure better than whatever someone was thinking with Grimlock's "play fetch" method. And poor Snarl has nothing at all he can do with his Power Cheeto!


Closing Remarks

Swoop quickly became one of my favorites for not just the similarity to another favorite toy of mine, but for how it made what I liked about that toy even better. Swoop is probably the smallest and one of the most simple of the Animated Deluxes. But in this case it works out. The strength of the overall design comes through strongly in both modes, and that counts for a lot with me. Plus I have to give a little credit for some effort to make the weapon able to stow somehow.

Swoop is at least Very Good and would probably be a full out Excellent if the beast head held together better. The Animated team sure seemed to get the feel for beast modes faster than the Universe guys did...

-ExVee