Like all BotCon/TFCC toys, Rewind is a redeco, but a redeco of a toy unreleased in the U.S. This mold was originally intended for "Reveal the Shield" Rumble/Frenzy, but the last wave of the RtS Scouts was cancelled, and Rumble & Frenzy only saw production in Japan. Here, FunPub has taken the general idea and ran with it, making it a mold for the AUTOBOT cassettes, with the announced release being Rewind, in a toy that's more "independent" from Blaster. His alt mode is a square little dual-barreled anti-aircraft tank, not unlike Energon Kickback. Proportionally, there's not much wrong with this mode; there's no obvious gaps, it's not like the turret is too small or anything. There's only very minor robot extras-- namely, Rewind's chest is slightly visible on the back end, and the back of his feet as well, but these are pretty small extras, especially the latter. The mold detailing on this toy is also outstanding, with the treads intricately detailed, along with the turret, the sides, and top with vents, armored plating, and the like. (The treads don't actually roll, there are little wheels on the undersides.) The turret can rotate 360 degrees around, and guns can move up and down, and little central gun can move side-to-side a little as well. There's also a C-clip-enabled bar on the back end of the turret, so you can clip on compatible weapons to Rewind if you have them. The thing is, there is one MAJOR downside to this mold in vehicle mode, and it's due to the "gimmick" of this toy that's primarily designed for robot mode. See, Rumble and Frenzy-- the 'bots this mold was originally designed for-- could turn their arms into piledrivers. This toy has a simplified version of that feature, and the piledrivers pop out on their own when you press a small button the sides of the arm. The problem is, they're on an absolute HAIR TRIGGER, and it is VERY hard to do anything with Rewind without them popping out-- and this isn't some mold degradation issue either, I have the Japanese versions of this mold as Frenzy & Rumble and they have the same issue. Particularly in this mode this is incredibly annoying, as it makes the treads essentially "break in half" and become too long, as well as throw the side sections of the tank out-of-alignment with the central section. The legs peg only shallowly into the back end, and when the piledrivers come out it usually causes them to unpeg, making this even more of an issue. I cannot stress how incredibly annoying and easy it is to accidentally trigger-- it really does all but ruin what is otherwise a pretty good alt mode. Moving to a more positive direction, the base colors for Rewind are fairly basic-- being black with a lot of blah light milky gray-- but there's a prety good amount of gold paint along the turret guns and parts of the back to help break up that monotone, boring color scheme some. I do wish the gold was a richer version of the color, though-- it's a bit too pale here and doesn't provide as much contrast as I'd like. There's also some red on the side panels, which looks good against the black-- but it makes Rewind look a little too similar to Frenzy/Rumble (choose who you want to be the red/black one) in that respect.
    For Rewind's robot mode, the sides becomes the arms, while the legs unfold from the bottom, the turret rotates around behind the back, and the back of the tank mode folds down to become the chest. The legs are rather slim, fitting Rewind somewhat, though I don't like that the whole hinge that the waist rotates down on is just right there below the chest-- it makes his midsection look much skinnier than it is. There's actually a bit of a black "block" behind the hips and lower waist, but it doesn't affect articulation that much (only backwards at the hips). The chest has mold details that are obviously meant to mimic Frenzy and Rumble's chest details, so they don't look quite right on Rewind. Still, that's a relatively small quibble compared to the arms. Rewind's got BUFF arms, which do not fit him-- particularly his IDW form-- AT ALL. His arms are also just a mess in general, with the piledrivers hanging very obviously and obnoxiously behind the arms. You can fold up the arms on top of the piledrivers if you want to activate the piledrivers as they're supposed to be used in this mode, but piledrivers are another portion of this mold that just doesn't fit Rewind at all. I also am not a big fan of the little tread-half sections on the side of the arms, which don't get in the way of articulation but just look weird. On the plus side, the dual blasters on Rewind's upper back can be taken off on their C-clips and clipped onto the little bars for them on the outside of Rewind's hands, which is at least one thing that mimics the Rewind's traditional dual guns. The color scheme in this mode is more light gray and less red, which is unfortunate given how much I dislike this bland gray plastic and how the red added some pop to the vehicle mode. At least the gold-- especially on the chest-- helps add some color to an otherwise mostly monotone color scheme. Rewind's head mold is taken right from the IDW comics, and looks excellent-- every necessary detail is there and properly proportioned, even with a little camera on the side of the head (though the lens of it isn't painted, alas). The faceplate is painted a nice red, though, and the visor is a pretty decent shade of light metallic silvery blue. For articulation in this mode, Rewind can move at the neck, shoulders, elbows (at two points), back-and-forth at the wrists, along with movement at the hips, knees, and a bit forward at the ankles. However, as mentioned before, the piledrivers can get in the way of arm movement a bit, and although the legs can get into a good number of positions, the feet are a bit small and Rewind is a little backheavy, so he's not the most poseable Scout.
    TFSS 2.0 Rewind is my least favorite toy from the second subscription service, at least in terms of how well the mold fits the character. I mean, I'm glad they brought this formerly-canceled mold over to the States, but a tank mode plus the bulkiness of the upper body in robot mode makes this a very ill-fitting mold for Rewind. My guess is the Club came up with a great mold fit for Chromedome and felt they "had" to make a Rewind because of it, and thus this mold was sort of shoe-horned in-- but it doesn't really fit him. Plus, it's one of the weakest Scout molds from the "Autobot Alliance" line too, with an INCREDIBLY annoying gimmick and a bit of a problem fitting together in tank mode. There's better toys of Rewind out there; I'd recommend those instead.

Review by Beastbot

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