Sawback's alt mode is a disc, made to work with the Deployer Drift mold. It's one of the best disc modes out of all the Autobot Mini-Cons with this alt-mode-- the dog feet are rather obvious on the bottom, but other than that it's solid all the way around, on both sides. You've got little "blades" coming out of the edges, and armor plating details throughout the toy (including even something that looks like Drift's head crest). It's just 90% pure awesome, as far as the proportions and mold details. Unforutnately, there is NO paint in this mode. None, at all, which is really a shame with those details. His main color by far is a nice shade of dark milky blue, which is cool by itself but with no paint, it's such a dark color you can't make out many of the details easily. Beyond the blue there's just a little bit of the white gears used for transformation visible on the sides, which provides at least a little much-needed contrast, but that's it, unfortunately.
    To transform Sawback to his beast mode, you just pull back on the top section of the disc and the rest automatically unfolds, while said top section becomes his tail. In beast mode Sawback's an Akita-like dog, which fits given Drift's Japanese theme. Using that part of the disc for a big fluffy tail was a brilliant idea; it really helps to give Sawback character. The head piece has a rather fierce expression, with Sawback snarling a bit-- and here is where the only paint is on the entire toy, with a white muzzle and pale yellow eyes. I honestly think reversing the colors might've worked better for this mode-- making him mostly white with a bit of blue. Still, it's a pretty good color scheme overall, just-- again-- not nearly enough paint. The upside of having obvious legs in disc mode is that they make pretty good legs in this mode, if a bit undersized. The weakest portion of this mode is the body, as from a somewhat top-down view you can see the gears and the hollowness inside the mode, which is partially a side effect of having the entire top rotate off to become the tail for the transformation. The body is also a touch too long in the front, but not by much-- if you're going to poo-poo the proportions in this mode you should look at it from a front view, which is a bit too 2-D because of the fact that he transforms into a disc. Unfortunately, as with pretty much all RID2015 Mini-Cons, Sawback has no articulation-- it's this pose or nothing. If you try to rotate any of his moveable parts, he'll start to curl back up into disc mode. For his transparent armor bits, Sawback gains an extra "flame-like" spike coming off of his tail, a "mask" around the top portion of his face, two daggers on his shoulders, and two guns on the sides behind his front legs. They're a transparent amber, which looks pretty decent against the dark blue, though admittedly I have seen better transparent colors. As usual the armor bits add a lot to this mode, making Sawback look considerably more fierce and with quite an arsenal on his front end. The side guns look a bit too obviously like animal legs (given that they DO become animal legs if you get all the Wave 1 Mini-Cons to form the special "secret" figure), but otherwise the mold detailing and proportions on these pieces are solid. Unfortunately the mask piece cannot fit on anywhere if you transform Sawback back to disc mode, but all the other pieces can stay on.
    Sawback is one of the best disc Mini-Cons, with an incredibly solid disc mode (with only tiny feet showing) and a pretty good Akita dog mode as well. I love the big fluffy tail made out of part of the disc, and having this kind of dog being the main mode is pretty unique among Transformers, to boot. His armor bits are, as is almost always the case with Mini-Cons, a nice touch, but it's a darn shame the mask can't fit into the disc mode. If you keep in mind the inherent weaknesses of the size class/gimmick and want more Mini-Cons for Drift, it's hard to recommend a non-show character more then Sawback.

Review by Beastbot

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