It's a Christmas post!

This is my new Fansproject Sidearm.  He's a "third party product," or "we pretend Hasbro doesn't own this intellectual property" toy.  So I'm kind of a jerk for owning one, but him just being an accessory to a Hasbro product I already own makes me feel a little better.

He's nominally an add-on to the "Not Rodimus Prime" trailer upgrade for the Classics Rodimus toy, but I didn't care about that.  Thankfully, you could buy this fake Firebolt toy all by himself.  What's crucial is that he's designed to fit into Rodimus's hands (sorta, more on this later), which have non-standard pegholes.  His fist pegholes are way too small to accommodate the usual 5mm weaponry.  That was always annoying, and kept me from just using the original Firebolt with my newer toy.  So, hey, woo, something fits.

...but as I said, sorta.  I have no idea why they did this, but riiiight behind the right-size-for-Rodimus peg is the right-size-for-the-Rodimus-Prime-add-on peg.  Right behind!  What the hell!  So, really, Rodimus can't hold it at all.  ...unless you tuck his hands inwards at the wrist, at a half-transformed placement, so his other peg can have room to go.  whyyyyy

So that was a major disappointment.  At least the rest of him was pretty neat.  I mean, he transforms into a gun, and in a different way than in the character he's pretending not to be.  Plus he clips onto the spoiler while Rodimus is in car mode, which is appreciated.

He also comes with some other "intended for use with the bigger Rodimus Prime upgrade" parts, some chrome spoiler pieces.  These are not pictured.  They're also supposed to be able to clip onto the side of Sidearm to make a sort of crossbow thing, but this does not actually seem to be feasible.  The parts won't clip on.  So oh well.  Not a big deal to me.  Those parts can go in a baggy up in the attic somewhere and I'll never care about them again.