Okay, before I get into the review, time to clear up a bit of trademark confusion first. The first releases of this toy were titled "Decepticon Forth" on the packaging, though after the first release the name of this toy was changed to "Decepticon Back". However, a redeco of this mold that comes with a version of Grimlock was ALSO named "Decepticon Back", so for the sake of clarifying which is which, AND since the names "Back" and "Forth" only makes sense if they're both used, I'm going to stick to calling this one Forth.
    Now that that's over with-- Forth's ball mode is... well, it's definitely the least ball-ish of all of the ball Mini-Cons. It actually looks like a Mini-Con version of Unicron, as the four legs curled up against the circular body are VERY obvious, and they look like mandibles in this mode, kinda like Unicron's planet mode. That's kind of a big downside, given how the main thing you need to get for a ball alt mode is that it's round. Having legs-- even collapsed legs-- obviously sticking out of one end is a big eyesore. The horn from the top of the robot mode head also sticks out, though not nearly as badly. The overall color scheme of this mode is a dark milky green used for most of the ball, with a fairly light purple used for the top of the head piece and the leg pieces. I mean, given that the robot mode parts are mostly a different color, it's like they WANT you to notice all his robot bits in this mode! That said, the overall color scheme is fairly decent, though nothing to write home about. The mold detailing on the figure is fairly basic beyond the aforementioned robot mode details, with a couple of circuitry lines and divots here and there, but he's not as detailed in this respect as most of the other RID2015 Mini-Cons. The hand details are apparent, but only just-- they hide in this mode fairly well, surrounded as they are by other details of the same color. There's also some detailing near the center of each side (with the legs facing down) that oddly looks like a mean face in the middle of the ball. Huh. Kinda weird...
    To transform Forth to robot mode, you take the side thirds of his ball mode and pull them apart, which causes the head to automatically turn up while the legs automatically splay out. You then manually rotate the arms out of the sides. The end result is a rather bug-looking type of robot mode, what with the four pointy feet and a human-bug-kinda face with a little green horn and several sharp teeth. Complete with the little red eyes, he looks like an evil little sucker that'll bite your ankles clear off-- I just love that headsculpt. That said, beyond the head there's no paint on this toy at all, which is definitely a downside. The body is a bit too wide because of the transformation, with the shoulders the same distance out from the body as the END of the insect legs-- particularly from a frontal view, this looks odd. The arms are also too skinny and basically non-functional, as even pointed all the way forward they can't reach past his head. The arms at the shoulders are the only points of articulation in this mode-- they can move front-to-back at said shoulders. There's a couple of small details inside the chest bits that slide out in this mode-- a couple of "screw" details and the like-- but by and large the details from this mode are all visible in the ball mode, so there's not much new here in that respect. As with most Mini-Cons, Forth comes with his own armor pieces. His are a nice transparent violet, which both complement the light purple and contrast against the dark green, so I like the shade-- it adds a bit more to the scheme. He has an add-on piece for each leg, which has some intricate technorganic detailing that looks really cool, especially since each of these pieces look like a scythe. Unfortunately, the tabs for these four pieces are a bit too long, so they can fall out annoyingly easily. Forth also has a piece that pegs into the back of each hand, and gives him a tri-barreled blaster on each arm. He's got a very odd helmet piece as well, which makes his horn bigger but... in a different direction? Which is also weird. He's also got a little carapace-like piece on his rear end that doesn't really do anything.
    Decepticon Forth has a decent "bug" look overall and is definitely a fairly unique ball Mini-Con with some nifty armor pieces, though he definitely has some problems in both modes. In a ball mode, it's the blatantly obvious legs sticking out; in robot mode, it's the very wide body, very skinny arms, and leg armor pieces that fall off way too easily. He's not outright awful for a RID2015 Mini-Con, but he's definitely one of the weaker ball Mini-Con molds.
 

Review by Beastbot

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