Skids makes his return in Dark of the Moon as a Chevrolet Spark again, but despite the alt mode being used again this time around he's a completely new mold. Thankfully, in vehicle mode he still retains the excellent, accurate proportions that his previous mainline toys had-- probably pretty much a requirement, given that he's a licensed vehicle, but still. The only real robot mode extras are the small light green bumps that form his feet sticking out from below his back end, but those are minor at best. You can also just BARELY see his robot mode parts behind his windshield, but they're tinted well enough that from a casual glance they aren't obvious (particularly if you turn his robot head to face the interior). There are a few unsightly "cracks" on the rear half of this mode, but I wouldn't call those outright extras, either, particularly since it's a black car anyways. The color scheme of Skids has been reversed for all of his Dark of the Moon toys, and it looks good-- having just black and the tinted windshield colors would've looked boring, but the two stripes of light green paint down the center (along with the silver headlights and dark red taillights) really look nice and give some pop to the color scheme. Skids has two Mechtech ports, both on sides of his roof. If you slide the red "sights" button back, Skids' Mechtech gun transforms from a gun with two vertical barrels to a longer one with two skinnier silver barrels. It's hard to see what this would really accomplish, but it's still a bit of a cool transformation, even if it can't lock into place in its "extended" mode, which is unfortunately the case with nearly all the other Mechtech guns.
    Skids' robot mode is... well... Skids is supposed to have goofy proportions, that's a given, but not THIS goofy. His chest is too big proportionally (or his head too small, take your pick), and his lower arms have obvious, unsightly panels on their backs (one flips around to reveal some green detailing, but it still looks bad). His shoulders look okay enough, but they actually articulate a little BELOW where you think they would, so it looks a little weird if he has his arms extended out in front of him. His RotF deluxe had really tiny feet and a bit of a problem standing up by himself-- well, they WAY overcompensated on this version. His feet, despite the fact that they're supposed to be at least a little on the small side, are RIDICULOUSLY huge-- it seriously looks like there's an extra joint near the heels that should fold down to make his legs taller and his feet shorter, but no such luck. On the plus side, the car roof kibble hides behind his main body well enough and doesn't get in the way of articulation, and the shells of the back end stick out a tad from the legs, but don't get in the way of articulation either. The increased number of green in this mode helps to make Skids pop color-wise again, though I wish his arms were more green than that blah bluish gray. His face is excellently detailed, looking pretty much like it jumped out of the movie design (but with more black because of his new color scheme)-- the aquamarine eyes are nice-looking, as well. The mold detailing is also quite good on the robot parts, particularly on the arms, chest, and upper legs, where little pistons and the like are molded in everywhere. When it comes to articulation, Skids can move at the neck (at two points), shoulders (at four points), elbows, at the wrist on his right (larger) hand, and at the hips and knees (at two points). So generally you can get his upper body into a decent number of poses (though he may look odd given the aforementioned issue with his shoulders), but his lower body is less impressive, with such short legs and knees that can't bend backwards due to... well, I'm not sure. There's no real reason why they couldn't, but they aren't molded to, so they can't. Huh. He does have a ton of Mechtech ports in this mode, though-- one on his upper back, and two on each arm, so you can really pimp him out with weapons if you want.
    The deluxe version of DotM Skids has a pretty nice color scheme and vehicle mode, but his robot mode is so horrendously awful proportionally that it's very difficult to recommend the toy to anyone except hardcore completists (and that's taking into account that his proportions should be a bit goofy to be movie-accurate). Yeah, he got a bit simpler of a transformation in this version, but the trade-off isn't nearly worth it. Save up and get the Human Alliance version if you like the overall design of Skids and his new color scheme.

Review by Beastbot

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