So. Sideways.
We knew very little about the Silver Audi Guy for a while. Once we started getting pics of his toy, it started looking kind of obvious--this guy's Barricade! I mean, look at him, he's got the head, the insecty window wings, the grille chest, digitigradey legs, everything. And then...it turned out it wasn't him, it was this new guy named Sideways. While slightly disappointing (as Barricade was my favourite 'Con from the first movie) he was still a pretty cool-looking toy, and it was looking increasingly unlikely that he was going to get another toy, so what the hell, I got him. Plus, nobody else seemed to have reviewed him yet, so I took the plunge.
Interestingly, Sideways doesn't actually turn into an Audi--just a vague approximation of one. It looks similar enough, though, and I don't care about licensed cars anyway, so what the hey. He's apparently missing areas of black on the hood, roof and trunk, which would explain why he comes in the same wave as Sideways (presumably the black would help differentiate the two silver cars). Frankly, I'm glad it lacks this paint, though, because a lot of the cars used in ROTF have this positively annoying habit of having stupid paintjobs. Like the random black hood parts on Mudflap and Skids. (Incidentally, though, the black and silver on Sideways makes him look a *lot* like the cartoon colouring for Bluestreak, which was used for the Universe version as well.)
If Sideways is anything, he's the perfect example of Movie Aesthetic. He's a bitty car that explodes into a much bigger robot. He's also got 'all kinds' of fiddly bits that you can basically position whatever way you want to. Sure, somewhere there's an "official" orientation, but nothing says you need to do it that way. After about a year of Universe's easily-defined and static robot forms, it's an almost refreshing change of pace.
Sideways' backpack is probably the biggest example of this. Both
Hasbro's own pics and
Seibertron's photos are Doing it Wrong. There's a pair of slits in the kibble, see, and the intuitive thing that you want to do is just fold the kibble up the whole way--and doing so causes these slits to align with the back of his chest/hood kibble, which makes you *think* "Oh, that's the way it goes, then." But it's not. In reality, you fold the backpack around so it ends up looking like, say, Universe Prowl's, and align the tabs in his backpack with two red tabs in his lower back. Doing so not just makes it look ten times better, but it allows you to fold up two panels in his chest and move the insecty wings forward--to make giant demon pincer shoulderpads.
It looks awesome.
And yes, lots of fiddly bitses. There's his chest, which you can leave mostly folded up to closer resemble a more standard grille chest, or split it apart to resemble a Movie model more. As time's gone on, I've gotten into the Movie designs more, so I prefer to split it apart.
There's also his legs. They're very much digitigrade, but in an odd way. Most digitigrade Movie TFs, like Movie Starscream or Barricade, could straighten their legs out to approximate regular TF legs, if you so chose, and in many cases (Longarm, for example) it seemed like they were designed to do that in the first place. Sideways can't do this, though. He's got one joint, and then a digitigrade portion that's moulded permanently bent, and then he has another joint. It's not hindering at all, though, which is kind of impressive.
What 'is' hindering to his legs is the kibble. It's very much designed to fold over to the inside of his shins, and then there's a peg on the kibble and a hole in the digitigrade leg portion. Attaching these, however, will totally disable that second lower leg joint from being useful at all. On top of that, it doesn't look as good on the inside of his leg as it does on the outside, which is more Traditional TF anyway.
His arms have lots of geary bits in them. I suppose for some kind of Mech Alive gimmick, but it's *really* unnecessary. Gears in his elbows make some bits in his biceps turn around when you move his elbows. It's not an *intrusive* gimmick, other than beefing up his arms a hell of a lot (especially when compared to his positively chicken-like legs) so I'm not going to give it any shit.
What I 'am' going to give shit to, though, is a gimmick in his transformation. It's a definite Automorph, no question about it. During transformation, you press on his grille and his wheels spring down into his chest. The wheels on his hands are faux ones (and I'd expect so, since one is a 'saw.') The problem is that, first off, the grille doesn't immediately look like you should press on it, and second off, when you do press it (at least on mine) you need to press it slightly off-center, instead of in the middle, to trigger it. It's not a problem once you figure it out, but it's kind of non-intuitive and you can't transform him otherwise. The instructions clear it up, but I don't 'use' those.
Also, his arms have doorwings. This is in addition to the window-wings he's already got. However, the doorwings don't really have any place to go, and if you fold them back (like wings) they kind of bump into his backpack a little bit. It's not too horrible--certainly not the worst kibble problem we've ever had with a TF--but it's there.
If this guy's got one obvious flaw, it's paintapps. His entire stomach and crotch have loads of detail but are done in one big solid red colour. Thankfully, the detail goes deep enough and the red isn't annoying enough that it actually swallows all the detail--but this is one case where a blackwash would definitely help, and make *sense* as these kind of things are mostly on the dirty underside of a car. Also, the fingers on his left hand are painted, but not his thumb, and not on his right hand. The hell?
So here's the big question. Do you get him? I'd say yeah. He's not particularly flawed in any kind of way that stops you from enjoying the toy itself. His legs are kind of thin, so occasionally he has a balance issue, but usually a little bit of fiddling can clear that right up, and once he's in a good pose, he'll usually stay that way unless you knock him over. If you look at him and he appeals to you, grab him. In a line that, thus far, appears to have lots of abandoned ideas (Starscream, Prime) and downright weird and flawed designs (Herp and Derp, Demolishor, Rampage), Sideways is a 'really' safe bet. You can definitely do worse.
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I dunno, part of it stuck to me. It's a better name than "The Twins," for Primus' sake.