Swindle's alternate mode for Fall of Cybertron is a four-wheeled vehicle that looks moderately hefty-- a decent "alien futuristic" take on his jeep/hummer alt mode he's traditionally had. His mold detailing alternates between sparse to some pretty intricate little bits like the cylinders near the front of this mode and the grill-like panels near the back end. There are a few robot mode extras that make themselves known in this mode, however-- the biggest offender is his back end, which is mostly hollow and has the long robot "heels" sticking out fairly blatantly. His lower arms are also fairly obvious between the two wheels on each side, though the exhaust pipes at least cover up the fists. If you don't have his small gun accessory plugged onto the top of his engine block, the back of his robot head is also fairly conspicious, though by outline more than anything else. As opposed to being in a game-accurate and G1-accurate tan for his mass release version, Swindle gets a rather bright shade of yellow here, with black being the main dark color to offset it. Some metallic gunmetal gray and dull purple paint apps help to break up the yellow a bit more, and the paint apps are barely adequate in this mode, and not much more-- stuff like his wheel hubs (with all that awesome mold detailing), exhaust pipes, and headlights are desperately needing some paint detail to bring them out. His color scheme is actually meant to be a "light" homage to Energon Blight, though a bit less slavish of a color-homage than tje other mass-retail Combaticons are to their own corresponding Bruticus Maximus components. I really wish they had toned down the yellow just a tad, but otherwise the color scheme looks pretty good as-is.
    One quick note about the transformation-- when detaching Swindle's rear section from his front in getting him to robot mode, be careful when you pull it apart at the tabs. The tabs tend to hold together a bit TOO well, and several people have reported the tabs snapping during this part of the transformation if they were't careful.
    As for the robot mode, Swindle's quite tall for a FoC deluxe-- in fact he's the tallest of all his fellow Combaticons, though in fiction he's normally depicted as the shortest! This is almost entirely due to his body mass actually being slightly "front" heavy, with his chest angling down in front of his head a bit too far. That-- above anything else-- is what makes this robot mode look a bit awkward, though having very small upper legs compared to his lower legs and having his shoulders a bit wide doesn't help either. I really wish his shoulder pieces locked into place somewhere instead of just hanging out around his upper body, as it makes that area of this mode look a bit more haphazard than it otherwise would have. Another downside is that Swindle has practically no back at all-- just enough plastic to connect his arms to his torso and hide his main combiner port, really, so looking at him from a back view you get the impression that he's distinctly skinnier and how much of a false "shell" most of his bulk is. I do like the way the exhaust ports rotate around on his lower arms, however, as well as the piston cylinder-like details around his head, the way his grill piece pegs securely into his stomach, and his headsculpt. Unfortunately, said headsculpt could really use some paint on the face-- another weakness here, though most of the paint apps from vehicle mode thankfully transfer over to this mode as well because of his transformation. Swindle can hold his gun nice and securely in either of his open hands. For articulation, Swindle can move at the head (at two points, though one is solely for transformation, so he can only look down, not up), as well as at the shoulders (at two points), elbows, waist, hips (at two points), knees, and slightly at the ankles. The awkwardness of his chestpiece and how small his upper legs are can hinder articulation a bit more than it would seem from that list, however, and there pretty much isn't any pose you can put Swindle in where he doesn't look awkward.
    Swindle forms an arm or leg of Bruticus.
    FoC Swindle has some good points-- namely the overall look of his vehicle mode, arms, and robot mode head-- but some awkward proportions in robot mode really hurt him, particularly with how the chest/shoulder assembly is designed. I understand some sacrifices have to be made considering he also turns into an arm or a leg, but those robot mode proportions get on my nerves more than they probably should. His color scheme is decent, but not great by any means and he doesn't have enough paint apps-- thus, overall, this is the version of the FoC Swindle mold I would recommend the least. Compared with his other FoC Combaticons, Swindle's mold is pretty middle-of-the-road.

Review by Beastbot

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