Rare Toy - Side Burn

SIDE BURN

"Side Burn is a born exhibitionist; if it's loud, fast, or haphazard, you can't bet that he's tried it. Then bragged about it at a local Energon pub. Upgraded with a new Spark engine, Side Burn is now topping land speeds once thought to be unreachable and still hasn't found his limit. Although he'd be more than happy on the track, watching the world streak by his windshield in an indecipherable blur, Side Burn knows that his speed will someday provide a key advantage in the war against the Decepticons. Even if Prowl and his other friends in the newly-formed Autobot military don't share his outlook"
*Please note, the bad grammar/syntax etc is how it was written on the card. I'm not going to alter it for the sake of posterity

Role: Autobot Speedy Knight

Quote: "Think you can keep up? I doubt it!"

Strength: 5

Intelligence: 7

Speed: 10

Endurance: 7

Rank: 5

Courage: 9

Fireblast: 6

Skill: 7


Robot Mode



Side Burn's robot mode is a metallic blue with a lighter blue flame deco on the chest and on the sides and backs of the arms. Side Burn also has white panels on his lower legs, arms, his entire upper legs and spoiler. Side Burn's feet, hands and exposed wheels are black. Side Burn's groin has white, light blue and red highlights, and he also features the silver and red engine block from his vehicle mode at the top.
The arms are connected to his torso by a ball joint that enables them to rotate fully, so long as they don't get obstructed, and his lower arm is connected to the upper arm by a hinge, to allow it to be bent forwards by 90 degrees. His hands feature sculpted fingers and also have a peg hole. However the peg-hole on the figure is smaller than most other's, meaning that he can't hold other character's weapons properly (unless they are a repaint of him). Side Burn also has a small Autobot insignia printed on the very top of his lower left arm.
Side Burn's legs are connected to his groin area by a pivot joint which allows it to swing backwards and forward as far as they can without being obstructed. The upper leg is connected by a pair of pivots that enable hi to raise them outwards, and fold inwards as well (as part of his transformation scheme, so it's not that important for the robot mode). The lower leg is connected to the upper leg by a hinge and pivot combination that allows him to bend them backwards by about 90 degrees and rotated fully on the pivot. (This can only work if you unlatch the door panels on the upper legs to become skirt-type appendages)
Side Burn's feet are connected by a pivot joint that allows it to be repositioned for balance if needed, depending on the surface
Side Burn's head has a blue and white helmet with a silver face (sculpted with a nose and mouth. His eyes are fitted with an orange light piping feature that lights up his eyes when exposed to a strong enough light source (though his eyes have also been painted over with some red paint as well, which weakens the effect...though why it is like that I have no idea.
Side Burn also has some yellow paint over his right helmet forehead horn, the lower chevron and over his left eye (which a lot of people though was a mistake before looking at their profile cards and suddenly catching on).



Side Burn's left arm is fitted with a flip out black communicator (or buzzsaw if you want him to have another weapon). Also his gun can be clipped onto his back and used either as a storage area for the gun, or as a rocket pack for him to fly around with

Alternate Mode



Side Burn's vehicle mode is a metallic blue hot rod sports car with a large white spoiler and lighter blue flame deco on the hood and doors, based on the Dome Zero car model. And has been recoloured to resemble the character of the same name from the Robots in Disguise series.
Side Burn also has sculpted headlights which are painted yellow, exhaust pipes and speed vents as well as other panels, including a small sculpted door handle on both sides. Side Burn's exposed engine on the hood is painted silver with some red highlights
Side Burn's wheels has silver hubcaps and black tires, sculpted with tracks for friction. The wheels are able to rotate fully allowing the vehicle mode to roll freely along the ground.
The windscreen and side windows are made of a translucent dark orange plastic that shows the interior of the vehicle, which includes a driver's seat and passenger's seat, and a driver's seat. On top of that canopy is a giant Autobot insignia (really, it's huge!)
The rear of the vehicle features a pair of sculpted headlights on the black area (which becomes the feet in robot mode). Also, there's a small slot on teh underside of the spoiler's mechanism that allows you to plug his gun into it to act as an exhaust pipe or rocket booster, which when the missile is plugged in, looks like he's going at extreme speeds.



On the instructions sheet it shows an attack mode, which has the spoiler mechanism folded out on top of the canopy of the car, to give it a blade weapon and a mounted gun weapon (though the pretend-driver's view might be obstructed by the big spoiler in his eye-line!)

Transformation

Side Burn's transformation sequence is pretty simple, especially when compared to last year's exclusive, Dion. He doesn't have any fiddly parts and mostly just requires sliding out or rotating parts, easy!
The only really issues I have with him is that when pulling out the arms, the retracting component inside the chest that connects to the arms sometime's gets stuck, and some reports have said that the arms fall off (due to the mold being quite old and over-used in the past few years) but mine doesn't suffer from that problem. The only other possible issue with Transformation is that if his head is rotated either direction and isn't straight forward, then it won't Transform properly (as the head is designed to fit into the engine block especially)

Accessories



Side Burn comes with his gun, which can double up as his exhaust pipe/booster rocket/ jet pack or whatever you want, as well as the flame themed translucent orange missile that can be plugged into the blaster and launched by pressing the large white button on top. Due to the design of the blaster, it's not able to be held by every standard peg holed characters (which is the standard nowadays really)

Availability

Side Burn was made available as the Collector's Club's incentive figure for members who joined before Mid-March 2011 and was shipped out during August (mine arrived at the end of the month). He was put up for sale at the Club Store as well in August, but sold out within hours.
Side Burn was made as a repaint of the Classics Rodimus toy with no new features, other than the colours. The mold has been repainted into multiple versions of Rodimus/Hot Rod, including his Shattered Glass version.


My Thoughts

I have to say, considering that this figure is a "free" one just for joining the club, it's pretty much fantastic (I know I said that about Dion last year, but this one blows him out of the water!) He's well designed, in terms of what mold was used, and his colour schemes, with the only real issue being that his yellow head detailings seem a bit sloppy and lazy.
In terms of quality control, this figure also seems to be better than Dion as well, the only real issues I've heard about him is that his head sticks, his arms are too loose, and some mis-placed parts (ie two left hands, or one of the leg panels being backwards etc) but over all, I think that he was better handled than past years. However, the spoiler was slightly bent during shipment, but it was easily bent back.

In general, this is probably my favourite of the Incentive figure so far, and he even looks better than some of the figures you have to buy.
He actually fits in very well with Universe Prowl (to go with him as his brother, like in Robots In Disguise...now if only Hasbro or Fun Publications would make an X-Brawn toy to finish the trio..HINT! HINT!