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!

Rare Toy - Dion

PLEASE NOTE: This review was originally written at an earlier date, so it might be outdated or lacking by my current standards



Dion

"There was a time when Dion cared little for the echoes of war beginning to spread across his home world. Occasionally he'd opine on the feats of the new robots with flight capabilities, who he secretly envied, but otherwise turned a deaf audio receptor to the discussion about the start of what some were calling the second Cybertronian war. All that changed the day the war finally found him. The flying robots landed at the front door of the storage depot, led by the one called Megatron. Amicable at first, the encounter quickly turned for the worse when Megatron unleashed his full fury on the dockworkers and fled with that cycle's shipment of Energon.

When Dion awoke, he now was fully aware of what Megatron and the Decepticons were capable of, and having lost all that he had known, Dion decided to join the Elite Guard and now works to stop the Decepticons any way he can!"

Role: Infantry

Quote: "Efficiency makes you strong. Speed makes you lethal."

Strength: 7

Intelligence: 7

Speed: 9

Endurance: 8

Rank: 6

Courage: 9

Fireblast: 9

Skill: 8


Robot Mode



Dion's natural robot mode is very constrictive, his arms can't move very much because of the back kibble, and of course his eye's pipe-lighting gimmick is hindered as well, however it still looks good, and emulates the original character model for the character as well.

Since Dion is a straight repaint, he has no remoldings, but it should be noted that he uses the Japanese version of the toy (hence the weaponry) His head is quite well detailed, and comes with a visor that comes over his entire face

Dion's colour scheme is designed to look like his original colours, but better suited for this new mold. He's mostly orange with blue, white and black highlights as well, and also has a small Elite Guard insignia on his left shoulder, which I think is very nice

His legs can bed at the knees and the very top of the leg as well via hinges. His feet can also be repositioned for whatever surface he is to be set up on, as with most recent toys as well.

His arms are able to bend at the elbows as well by a hinge like with the legs, and the shoulder joints can be rotated forwards and sideways as well, however the back kibble restricts the movement of the arms, so it's nothing to take note of still. The hands aren't articulated, but can hold standard sized weapons, including the two guns that he comes with.



Now despite the limitations caused by the back kibble, you can get around this, by using this fan mode that is readily available. Basically, you remove the orange parts of the back kibble from the black clips on the back, and slide them into the opposite arm to where you removed them from (ie the part from the left of the back, goes on the right arm and vice-versa, this creates a "boxing mode" also, the two guns that come with him can be clipped into the now vacant back clips, to give him a set of over-the-shoulder cannon weapons.




Alternate Mode



Dion's alternate mode is of a Hot Rod style sports car with a stylized rear spoiler.

The car is mostly orange, but has a blue colour scheme at the front, covering most of the hood and bleeds onto the doors (which is partially designed as an Autobot insignia as well.

Dion has a white rim around the edge of the entire car with details all across it. The windows are partially see through, but the side windows are purely dark grey paint. His headlights are realistic looking, but his rear lights are just painted over

His wheels are able to turn, as with mode recent car Transformers, so he can roll around a table unaided (unless he's mis-transformed of course). His doors, can open in vehicle mode, but there's no where to go inside the car

Because this is the Japanese version of the mold, he has a portion missing from the rear bumper for the guns to sit, where they can be used as exhaust pipes (with the missiles acting as blue flames/smoke coming out of it)


Transformation

Dion is a bit fiddly to transform, but only because you have to be able to hold a few things at the same time for either mode. The most complicated part is having the groin area split apart, then flipping the part portion of the robot mode, whilst having to handle the back kibble and arms and keeping everything in place when transforming him


Accessories



Dion comes with quite a few accessories actually for a loose toy, he comes with two white and black guns, each with a clear blue missile that he can hold in robot mode or vehicle mode as needed, but the best part of the accessories section is his little Minicon/Micromaster buddy.....


Cop-Tur



"Many amongst the AUTOBOT forces consider COP-TUR to be something of a renegade. With his permanent slouch, gravelly voice, goonish chuckle, and crude sense of humor, many take him to be little more than a dim-bulb thug and wonder why he's allowed to work alongside the Elite Guard. His commanders overlook his personality flaws because there's the brain of a mechanical genius whirring away inside that smirking bullet head. He's an expert in customizing Cybertronian anatomy, as well as designing more powerful, adept and efficient ELITE GUARD combat bodyforms to counter the escalating DECEPTICON threat. Top command figures it's better to keep him around, annoyances and all, than risk him turning to the DECEPTICONS."

Role: Mechanical Engineer

Cop-Tur is a small blue helicopter with some blue and orange parts (using some of Dion's colours of course) and is used to emulate the Go-Bots character of the same name. The robot mode is difficult to pose and is always in a slouching pose because of this, which is even referenced in the bio written above. His arms are able to bend at the elbows and can also rotate at the shoulder joints. His legs can also move at the upper-most parts to go in any direction. The helicopter propellers can also rotate by just turning/blowing them


Availability

Dion was made available as a membership incentive figure, given to all members who are active before Mid-March 2010 for free, and mine arrived about four months later in July. He was later made available on the Club's Online store

He is a pure repaint of the Japanese Henkei version of the Universe Hot Shot toy and comes with all the same accessories as that version but in new colours.


My Thoughts

I actually really enjoyed this figure, he was my first Club Incentive figure, and made a great addition to my collection (especially since I love obscure characters)

I love the redesign of this obscure character, especially since it's the first in the "free" toys that wasn't part of a set. I think his robot and vehicle mode are both well redesigned (deco wise etc)

However the Autobot insignias on his doors were marred by the unpaintable hinges which was annoying, since we have a nice, ornate blue Autobot insignia, with a bright orange blob in the middle, which is annoying

Another annoying thing with him, was that one of his legs and his head is prone to fall off, whilst I'm not sure if the leg thing is the same for all the copies of this figure, or if it is just mine, I do remember seeing a lot of complaints about the heads though, with one person even complaining about the head being absent in it's entirety!

The play value of this figure is quite high as well, especially if you do my fan-mode as well, since that increases his articulation somewhat, increasing his interactibility with other figures. Also because he's a recent car mode figure, he is able to roll out with the best of them, and fits with other recent car mode Transformers in a line up