"Me Strafe say two heads are better then one"
"Me Swoop say you try hard"
"Me Strafe say you no try hard enough!"
"Me Swoop no try hard enough?! Me Swoop arm for combiner now!"
"Me Strafe wanna know why you try that again. Weren't you pants for Grimlock last time you try combining?"
"Me Swoop rather not talk about that..."
"At least me Strafe got more than a sword and stupid hand shield"
"At least me Swoop have elbows and not give birth between movies"
"Me Strafe have no idea how it happened either..."
This originally was the title, that I just kept going and going... I like to have fun when writing these.
"Alchemist Swoop: Plants disorienting fear into enemy circuits"
Let us take to the skies with the Dinobots as we continue this mini Dino marathon. But instead of just looking at one Pterosaur, why not look at two? I do have a set of Age of Extinction Dinobots and while I didn't want to compare a Deluxe to a Legends class figure for Slash, I think comparing two deluxe is reasonable wouldn't you say? Let's find out who rules the sky with a head to head battle between Swoop and
Starting with Swoop's dino mode, and with the exception of the colours, this is a very faithful G1 Swoop toy. The colour pallet goes for a G1 cartoon scheme with a touch of metallic green around what will be the robot wrists. Unfortunately, this alternate mode doesn't lend itself well to the whole "robots in disguise" idea (though granted it'll be pretty hard to hide giant robotic, nonrealistic dinosaurs). Just by looking at the dino mode, you can tell what's going to become what in the robot mode. The shins are the dino mode backpack, the robot head's a part of the dino head, the arms are trying to hide by pressing themselves up as close to the robot body as possible and the dino "legs" are just two panels with token feet on them. Granted, it does let you sit Swoop comfortably in a perched position, something aided by the hinge and swivel in each of the wings (which have a lot of great sculpting detail along with the shins). The only complaint in the engineering I have with it is how they had to engineer the neck for the dino mode, but considering what it has to do for combined mode, I'll let it slide. My copy of Swoop has a loose jaw so its pretty easy to give him a gaping mouth. But the sword helps to keep the mouth closed as that's where it stores on the figure (which becomes a problem later on). The combined mode hand stores on Swoop's back in dino mode, which only makes the backpack look even bulkier. Overall though, Swoop does pull off the look of the dino it was inspired by pretty well, just with a few large liberties taken along the way.
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| I openly admit I'm not a professional photographer, progress will be made as these go on, hence why this is a mix of my photos and photos online |
If Swoop took large liberties though, Strafe is a Pterosaur in name alone (and yes I know Pterosaur only means "flying dinosaur"). Swoop does make a conscious effort to try and hide his robot mode bits and while Strafe does dance with some interesting ideas (like having the robot mode arms be the "arms" of the dino, everything else about the "DISGUISED ROBOT" mode comes off as a complete afterthought. I don't know about the rest of you, but I haven't seen a dinosaur, let alone a flying dinosaur, have two heads and two tails. Using the robot mode arms as the dino arms does lead to some better wing articulation then Swoop's does, at least in terms of the bend. Strafe can get his wings to go completely down as well as change angles to aid with flight if this was a real dinosaur, but there is no room for the wings to bend upwards at all, which Swoop can at least do. Strafe's perched pose has an air of viciousness to it, as it looks like he's waiting for prey before swooping in for the kill. Strafe does have the advantage in terms of aeronautical engineering, there's no backpack other than his crossbow, but the robot legs had to go somewhere so Strafe has two long and overly spikey legs (which at least are better then flaps, Strafe can at least kind of walk-in dino mode. The necks though are a problem for Strafe as well as the only engineering in them (with the exception of jaws which do stay in place) exist for the robot mode only, so the two heads can only look inwards. Combined with the swivel they have, you can fudge Strafe looking around, but it is still very limiting so you have to fight for the poses. Overall though, I do have to give the point to Strafe, even if the dino mode looks completely ridiculous. There's just more you can do with it as Swoop's kinda a brick with wings.
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| I'm sorry, Sky Lynx couldn't come to the phone. Something about an "Earth Wars" thing that he and Blitzwing were going to, so have his strange half-brother!... He was a little drunk this morning |
That brick with wings though has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. For Power of the Primes does bring back the Combiner Wars Scramble City gimmick so Swoop can be an arm or a leg. Swoop's legs do sports engineering similar to the Breakdown, Rook and Brawl molds from combiner wars (or to use examples of what I've reviewed on the main site, Wheeljack, Swindle, Hound, and Brawl). The thighs can tuck into the shins purely for the sake of a leg mode. A very, very thin leg mode. Something that works for Swoop in robot mode is that there's extremely little kibble in robot mode, and the wings tuck in great for the combined modes. But as a result of it, there's no bulk for leg mode which makes it look thin when compared to other leg modes. For this review, I've been comparing it to the leg modes for G2 Wildrider, Hound, and Hellbat, and Swoop just looks tiny by comparison. Thankfully though, officially, he's not supposed to be a leg. Some fans would argue he shouldn't combine at all but I'm not one of them.
Arm mode is Swoop's best mode in terms of combined mode. He makes a great arm as he's not overly bulky. The only kibble he has is the dino head hanging in in pseudo limbo. Articulation is on par with Wildrider (the Combiner Wars Dead end mold for the record, it was used to make Smokescreen for Sky Reign), and is proportionately around the same size as an Aerialbot mold (like Hellbat). The biggest problem Swoop has in combined mode is his sword. Like I said, the only way to store it is on the dino's jaw. The hand though is the most posable on one of the combiner limbs I have ever seen, as it uses Swoop's ankle tilt from transformation to move up and down a bit depending on the position its in. Speaking of the hand though, thankfully this isn't the Hand Foot Gun from Combiner Wars... but it's still not without its flaws. Proportionately it's around the same size as the Hand part of the hand Foot Guns which is fine and works well at keeping these combiners looking like their CW counterparts, but many have complained about the hands being too big in CW, and with them being the same size, people are going to complain again. Articulation's actually worse on the new hands as the thumbs (yes I said thumbs), are on ball joints and nothing else whereas the swivel on the Hand Foot Guns at least gave you the ability to give a thumbs up and the swivel could kinda let you do a hi-five. The new hands though do let you do slaps a lot better then the hand foot guns did. One thing I personally don't get is why they molded four regular fingers on the panel that flips out to complete the hand. Like I said, there are two thumbs so if they had molded three fingers on the hands, you could pass off the second thumb as a forth finger. The thumbs also act as the new combiners weapon ports, which is the main reason why the thumbs are far more limiting than the Hand Foot Guns. Visually, they look better than the hand foot guns, but in terms of functionality, the Hand Foot Guns are a lot better.
Let's cut back to Strafe for a moment cause he's feeling a bit neglected and... I think he let that win in dino mode go to his head because the robot mode looks ugly, and has some very annoying cut corners. The biggest thing is Strafe's wings. while they look great in dino mode, there is almost nothing you can do with them in robot mode and it just looks ugly as a result. At least the concept art (I cannot remember if we saw the robot mode in the movie) has the wings folded up like a cape, which looks great, but here they just look like giant sails stuck to his back unless you manage to bend them into something that looks like a cape. Unfortunately, that's not the only cut corner in that area because one thing the AoE Dinobots loved to do and what pissed me off to no end was how they did the elbows. Strafe has them, with a good bend to them to boot, but they are needlessly hallowed (not counting production costs) and if you want the elbows, you can't have the hands facing the right way which means that the arms are a nightmare to pose. The hands themselves have useless swivels on them and you'd think they'd be used to try and hide the hands in dino mode, but they do nothing for dino mode. Thankfully on the Platinum "movie accurate" release, they do blend in well with the arm so it's easy to overlook them. I can't vouch for the retail release though. The tails also act as kibble in robot mode though one thing I personally like that others will hate is that he's basically made of light piping. So the movie accurate version's a crystal robot? I'm game. The weapon itself is a generic crossbow with a friction fire missile that looks like it belongs on one of the Ocean Minicon team's weapon molding wise. Annoyingly, at time of writing, I've temporarily misplaced the swords which is why I'm not talking about them. If they're like the other deluxe swords though, they're solid molds but made of rubber.
Onto Swoop's robot mode and the simplicity of the design is it shows the commitment the team had to these designs. There have been a lot of people wanting G1 inspired Dinobots in the Generations line for a long time now and, while they might not be 100% of what people wanted, they do seem to be delivering on that desire. Swoop barely sacrifices anything in the move to Generations. He might be lacking a bit in weapons and the wings could have been compressed more, but apart from that the only big limit to the design is the size, which was needed for the sake of Combined mode. He even comes with a lot of great paint applications which help him stand out more from the CW limb bots. Is the size the worse sacrifice I've seen? No way in hell, even by combiner standards this is pretty light. Articulation is standard for a Generations Combiner Limb, head swivel with a small ability to look up and down, ball joint shoulders only limited by the wing kibble (which does manage to be more usable then Strafe's wings, as they make for great shoulder pads), 90 degrees elbow, transformation joint wrists to fold inward, waist swivel if you detach the dino beak from it, ball joint hips, thigh swivel, the above 90 degrees knee bend from arm mode, and transformation joint feet. He's a really poseable robot and a lot of fun to mess around with. I do however get the feeling that gear is going to be the big problem of the line's Deluxes and Voyagers. Swoop's painted sword (I don't know why it couldn't be a red plastic sword and had to be a clear sword painted red), is tiny in his hands. Not dagger sized tiny mind you, but it's still a better fit in a Legends class' hand. Molding for its great, but the size and lack of ways to store it are its biggest problems. As for the Prime Armour in robot mode... no ways around it, it looks rediculous as armor. It comes with a tiny pull out gun that's used to cover up the hole meant for Prime Masters, but on my copy, I can't get any Prime Masters to stay in place, I don't know if that's their fault or the hand though. It clips onto Swoop's beak via two tabs and it does hold in very well. Thankfully it can be used as a "kind of sort of" shield or can be put on Swoop's back using the two tabs on the thumbs. Out of sight, out of mind.
While Strafe may have the better dino mode (even if its the more insane looking dino mode), Swoop has the better robot mode. It's more playable, easier to pose in a way that doesn't show off the flaws of the engineering, and the brighter colour palette give it more life. Strafe does get brownie points for light piping everything and the paint is more movie accurate, but it just shows the flaws of the movie designs. How did they make a giant dinosaur that turns into a giant knight look ugly and awful? I swear the limb bot reviews going forward won't be as long as this (even next week's one will be shorter) cause the combiner hand's are a line-wide standard in terms of overall engineering. For next week though, we'll be taking a look at a few Slugs (because they can't use Slag anymore).For main site work incoming, the next review is Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, and if you missed the most recent review you can find it here: https://mediaholicreviews.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/captain-underpants-first-epic-movie.html
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