It feels like this is written a lot around here, but it’s
time to pick up the pace on some figures that have been sitting around, as new
things have been coming in, and more new things will be arriving this week and
next. So, the backlog needs to be addressed.
Sly Strike is the third member of the Warbotron Bruticus (
feel like it needs a better name. . . –mr) team, an unofficial version of
beloved Combaticon Swindle. Like his immediate predecessor Heavy Noisey, Sly
Strike is a very realistic, real world-looking vehicle as well as an accurate
to the original robot. He’s also probably the best toy in the set, mostly for
his competency, and not for any mind blowing or exceptional reasons. He’s great
because he’s really basic, essentially, also like Heavy Noisey.
As a robot, Sly Strike is pretty much everything you could
want in a Swindle. Very poseable with a good array of joints, including a
waist, this is one figure that does not suffer for its blocky, boxy body. The
arms are a bit stumpy, and despite their having a full complement of joints –
elbow, bicep, shoulder swivel, outward shoulder, wrist – they don’t feel like
they have a range of movement. The figure has the same complement of joints in
the legs, but the calves are so large and so bulky that they inhibit the
movement of the foot, essentially cancelling out the ankle joint. Sly Strike
has a great face sculpt, complete with smirk, and is the only head on the team
to actually have a face, all four other not-Combaticons having mouth plates.
The figure comes with two weapons, a fairly typical pistol
and the larger cannon, with translucent barrel, which seems to be a nod to Animated Swindle and the large
roof-mounted cannon that that model has. It feels like the cannon is supposed
to peg in somewhere, like over a shoulder or something, but there’s no place
for it. Sly Strike doesn’t hold this cannon very well or very securely, so this
piece often gets set aside in favor of the pistol, which the figure holds much
better. Both weapons mount on the roof of the vehicle mode with no problems.
We’ll get to vehicle mode in just a minute, but I have to
once again complain about the Swindle color palate, this mustardy tan/yellow
that really makes good figures seem as plain as can be. It is, again, the
dominant color on Sly Strike, and it truly does look like some kind of baby
food or baby poop, and it so, so saps the look of the figure. I hate this
color, but it is accurate to 95% of Swindle toys and the G1 animation model, so
I have to deal with it. On Sly Strike the color is actually pretty light, so it
looks a little browner than yellowy, so it bothers me less. In general, I’m not
a real Swindle fan, although he is loved in most corners of the fandom. It’s
cool that he’s an arms dealer and a black marketer, but to me, Swindle is a
great example of a Transformer character having one single personality beat
that is rolled out over and over and over again, that we’re supposed to fawn
over. Ha ha, Swindle is a shady business dude, here’s a speech bubble of him
trying to make some shifty deal lol! Yeah, sure, but is there really nothing
else that can be done with the character? It’s a characterization just like the
color scheme: really one note, but it’s accuracy means you deal with it even if
it wears itself out.
Vehicle mode is great, a Humvee rather than the old World
War II-era Jeep of G1. In fact, it seems like Sly Strike uses Animated Swindle for its inspiration,
which would make Sly Strike more appealing to people who may want a high
quality, Animated-esque Swindle in
their collection. That adds a level of utility to Sly Strike that lots of other
Third Party combiner figures don’t have, that being the ability to not have to
serve as part of a team, or not having to buy the entire set to really unlock
the value of the individual figures. There was a time when this would be said a
lot in regards to these Third Party combiners, like “if you’re looking for a
quality Hook for your collection, Dr. Crank works as a stand-alone figure” or
whatnot, but if you’re looking for a Voyager sized “Classics” Swindle for your
collection, Sly Strike would work great. Swindle is also the only Combaticon to
actually be a character, so it’s conceivable that people would simply want a
Swindle and they may not have interest in the rest of the team. 
The alt mode is effected essentially by wrapping the robot
mode in a bunch of panels, which roughly form a backpack whilst in robot mode.
This type of transformation is pretty polarizing, with some finding it fine and
others thinking it’s a real cop-out. Personally, if it is done well, I
generally think it’s fine, despite being kinda easy, and Sly Strike manages it
pretty well. The vehicle mode looks good, provided you line everything up
properly, and if you don’t, it’s kind of a mess. The vehicle not only seems
like a nod to Animated, but also is one of those updates to a G1
character that really does make sense, given Swindle’s original old school jeep
mode is not only really dated, but also pretty silly if you consider the sizes
of each Combaticon relative to each other. Certainly you’ve seen that image of
Bruticus if all five members were correctly scaled, with Swindle being the
absolute smallest member. If you don’t go nuts over panelforming, the only
thing that would have been an improvement on Sly Strike’s vehicle mode would
have been some type of suspension so that he could drive over obstacles and
have his wheels move up and down.
By and by, Sly Strike is a pretty safe figure, again like HeavyNoisey, not taking any risks in either mode, and it totally works. Air Burst
took some risks; Sly Strike plays it completely safe. I said this earlier, but
this is most likely the all-around best figure of the set. It’s solidly built,
and well designed, and looks good if pedestrian in both modes. It beats out
Heavy Noisey as best of the set because the robot mode doesn’t have the
limitations that Heavy Noisey does, in terms of that figures’ awful and
puzzling shoulders and overall slenderness. Seems like a negative, or at best a
backhanded compliment, but it is true, and it is sincere: Sly Strike is totally
competent, and it’s that competence that makes him a real winner. He’s not my
favorite figure of the group personally, that honor still being held by AirBurst, but Sly Strike is probably the best executed. About a week ago, I
finally assembled Warbotron, but Sly Strike had been in leg mode for over a
month prior, just sitting there on the shelf with the foot attached, and I
hardly missed him. Sometimes good figures are just good, and not amazing or
life changing, and that’s fine. Sly Strike is a good figure in every sense of
the phrase.
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