Phil's
Movie Swindle & Camshaft
Review


Swindle

Swindle is a red car. Now before you say Swindle isn't red there's been 2 repaints of the Combaticon Swindle Jeep in Red (Japanese Leland and G2 Swindle) as well as the Minicon Swindle using red in it's colour scheme. Swindle here isn't from the Movie, he's from the video game as the banner on the packaging proclaimed. As for his car mode - think Classics Cliffjumper. You will. And that colours your perception of the toy from this moment on.

His gimmick works in this mode - press the button in his rear window and a Batmobile like flame cannon pops out the back of the car. This will be getting the robot into trouble later. If you partially TF the car you can activate the head auto TF, and then turn it back to a car to add a cannon onto the front. Doors open on the car swinging forward on ball joints.

TF: Open the doors, and pull the front wheels out to the sides bringing with them the arms and the doors. Pull the sides of the back of the car away from the middle slightly, fold the undersides down to form heelspurs which should be rotated backwards allowing the feet to be folded down. Fold the cannon up into the robot chest. Fold the bonnet forward to form the top of the chest, and the roof back to auto tf the head. Unfold the arms.

Robot mode is primarily very traditional TF, but with this years fad a monocular face. Lots of grey on the limb parts that weren't car. Surprisingly posable he's got bending ankles and knees, ball jointed hips and shoulders, bending elbow and a ball joint in each wrist. The car roof at the back of the robot folds up to allow you to fire the cannon.

Unfortunately he's got an unanticipated feature. Warning ! Armada Megatron moment approaching ! The cannon can be TF'd so it's more pointing downwards than straight out. It can be fired from this angle too. The results are not for the young among us to see.

Not a bad toy. Decent gimmick. Problem is I feel Classics Cliffjumper is a very similar toy. But somehow better. Maybe it's the eye thing with Swindle. But I think having him this soon after Cliffjumper is hampering my view. There again I look at Dreadwing and see Armada Thrust and that's 5 years ago !

Swindle was a wave 2 Movie deluxe toy which was sold in the Uk and in Japan where he was numbered MD-11.


Camshaft

Camshaft is a Movie deluxe wave 6 toy with Landmine & Cliffjumper. Thanks to Nigel I have the other 2 at a reasonable price. ta !

But I passed on Camshaft. Was so so on Swindle and I don't think the deco is so good this time round.

Camshaft was available in the USA & the UK, but wasn't sold in Japan.


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