Posted November 19, 2015 at 12:45 am

Big Bad Toy Store got in the Combaticon wave of Combiner Wars Deluxes, so let's talk about one of them, why not.  I'm glad the Combaticons are in the second half of the line, because we just kind of got them a few years ago, combining and all, in the Fall of Cybertron toyline.  There's a little deja vu involved.  When Hasbro dips into the Combiners well, the Combaticons tend to be what gets pulled up first, because they're one of those rare early teams that were an interesting variety of vehicles, rather than "all jets" or "all sportscars," and so it's kind of nice that they got to sit out the first few rounds this time.

This is Swindle!   I like him.  He's a drastic retool of the Protectobot Rook.  Like, super drastic, to the point that he's really just a guy who transforms in the same pattern but becomes a differently-sculpted robot and vehicle.  He shares, like, a crotch and thighs probably and maybe some other structural stuff, but the rest is all new.  But, as mentioned, he transforms the same.  "Roof" of the car goes on his back, legs form the lower half of the front, the arms fold up into the back.  Rook was a good toy, and so is he.  

And it's just nice that Swindle gets his own danged head, you know?  Of all the "guys who transform into limbs for larger guys" from the original Transformers, he's arguably the one dude who stood on his own, character wise.  And so he's important in a way a lot of the other Combiner Wars dudes are not.  And yet Hasbro, half the time, tends to get his head wrong.  Swindle has these adorably large eyes, right?  He's a con man who's adorable.  That's kind of his thing.  But the Alternators toy was really just Trailbreaker in tan, and then his Fall of Cybertron toy... I guess copied that head instead?  It didn't really look like Swindle at all.  But here's the wide-eyed combining Swindle toy you wanted.  Finally.

You can plug his cannon into his arm like he had it in the original cartoon, if you want.  That's also cool.

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