Sideswipe's warrior class figure has a VERY accurate vehicle mode when compared to the show model, at least when it comes to proportions. Pretty much all the angles and the detailing is spot-on, and there's no robot extras whatsoever unless you count the little bits of the upper legs you can see if you look reaally intently inside the tinted windows. Even by RID2015 standards, the mold detailing is minimal on the car mode, with only a few basic angles along the main body. There are a few areas with a good amount of detailing, though-- namely the front and the back. The front bumper has nice angular headlights and porous grill detailing, while the back bumper has taillights, more porous exhaust vent details, and tailpipes. As is unfortunately the norm, though, Sideswipe's paint apps are pretty basic, and a little disappointing. For one, there isn't enough red to be show-accurate, specifically near the back top of this mode. There is some red paint on the side doors and front hood, but it's noticeably lighter than the dark red and doesn't look all that great. There's also some light red used for the Japanese symbols near the rear sides, but of course that's supposed to stick out against the surrounding red a bit. There's some light blue on the front headlights, but that's it as far as other colors of paint; no paint at all on the back bumper, a real shame there. As for weapon storage, yes, Sideswipe's sword just kinda pegs in on the top of the hood. It's pretty darned obvious, and I wish it was on the underside instead, but at least it pegs in solidly and stays there.
    Even for a Warrior, Sideswipe's transformation is a bit more complex and unorthodox (though I still wouldn't call it hard). The entire front side sections of the car mode fold around and in behind the robot chest piece, the front bumper folds behind the back, and then the back side sections rotate around the inner side sections along with the feet to form the legs. For the MOST part, from a frontal view this mode looks pretty accurate-- the legs are a little large proportionally (the feet in particular, and there is a noticeable gap in between the feet and the bottom of the lower legs if you look closely), and his main body could stand to be just a TOUCH wider, but generally things are pretty good. There is a bit of kibble, with obvious car doors on the sides of his lower arms-- that said, at least these pieces are bolted onto the lower arms instead of the arms just being molded into the car doors, so props to Hasbro for that. The front section behind the back does mostly stay out of the way from a frontal view (except for the front bumper, which is pretty darned obvious behind Sideswipe's head and shoulders), but from a side view it's rather unsightly, given the gap between Sideswipe's main body and that car front. It also sticks out a bit from the side if you're looking at him from an angular view. These are all minor issues, though, compared to the MAJOR issue-- Sideswipe's shoulders don't lock in place. AT ALL. The side front sections of the car also pop up pretty awkwardly in between his shoulders and his back, and don't lock into place either, so it's pretty easy to make them look a little awkward if you don't angle them just so. Just a (working) tab on the main body on each side, that's all it would have taken. At least the fold-up chest panel helps hide this issue a little bit. His head is sculpted pretty accurately, with the "punk hairdo" at the top. He's got silver paint on his smirking face, along with light blue on the eyes, faux car headlights on the chest, and a bit above the waist. He's also got some black on the kneecaps and some lighter red for the Japanese symbols on his chest. Otherwise, he sticks to the basic red/black color scheme of his vehicle mode, and not much additional mold detailing has been added to his robot mode parts beyond the basic head design and chest sculpt. As for articulation, he can move at the head, shoulders (at four points, though one of them is transformational and really shouldn't be moved, but you inevitably will accidentally move it), elbows, hips (at two points), knees (at two points), and back-and-forth at the ankles, so he's certainly the most articulated RID2015 Sideswipe toy.
    I applaud Hasbro for trying something different than the norm for Warrior Sideswipe's transformation, with some really unique rotations of the sides of his vehicle to form his robot mode. For the most part it works, except for the shoulders-- make no mistake, the shoulders are pretty darned annoying when posing, as they don't lock into place at all and the odd angles of the car bits poking up between his shoulders and head make it look even weirder. There's also a bit of kibble on his lower arms and behind his back, and some missing paint apps, but it's all minor compared to the shoulders. If you can stand the shoulders, by all means this is otherwise a pretty good toy-- just temper your expectations going in.
 

Review by Beastbot

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