TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Name: Sideways
Allegiance: Decepticon
Size Class: Legends Class

The Decepticon Sideways appeared only in the opening Shanghai battle in the Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) movie, and even then his function is only to showcase Arcee, the Twins and Sideswipe in action. Mostly Sideswipe. Sideways’ whole personality basically amounted to ‘that Decepticon who got bisected by Sideswipe in Shanghai’, and indeed that was a memorably awesome scene! It’s the type of fluid, complex action scene which made watching ROTF a fun thing to do. Unfortunately, being a minor character Sideways didn’t get much in lieu of good toys.

I mean, his name is basically slapped on just to keep the trademark, I reckon. Sideways’ name was first used in the tail-end of Robots in Disguise as a random repaint of a G2 motorcycle toy, and then used as a relatively major side-changing antagonist (also a motorcycle) in the Armada franchise, and then again in its purported sequel, Cybertron, where another side-changing Sideways (this one a faceless jet) who may or may not be the Armada Sideways appeared.

ROTF Sideways got a Deluxe class toy released alongside his killer Sideswipe in one of the first ROTF waves, which surprised me and also put me off – two entirely silver cars in the same wave? Hell, Sideways was supposed to be coloured black through his entire centre! This, I think, was why I picked up neither of them, settling for their more colourful repaints Swerve and Dead End instead. And while I ended up buying a DOTM Sideswipe, I remained without a Sideways, and being a huge movieverse fan, it didn’t feel right not to have all the characters in at least one version. It’s like part of my OCD thing.

So I bought the Legends class toy. I didn’t have high hopes for the movie legends, on account of them being generally terrible – which can’t be faulted, as the hyper-complex movie designs are difficult as it is to compress into Deluxe or Voyager Class toys, let alone Legends Class affairs! But buy this toy I did.

Alternate Mode:
Sideways transforms into an Audi R8, although unlike most of the movie line’s vehicles, the Audi R8 is unlicensed. It’s quite odd, because Audi actually approached the studios in the first place to sneak one of their cars into ROTF, but I bet they weren’t too pleased when the all-new Chevrolet Stingray completely destroyed their car onscreen and quite literally. But although Sideways is unlicensed, he still bears quite a likeness to the R8 design, although it’s got certain details changed to dodge the trademark – remarkably less, though, than the likes of the Universe toys.

Sideways is entirely gray. The movie’s prop vehicle has a thick, black stripe running across the length of the centre, and there is space molded where the black paint should go, but the paint’s notably absent. Did they think no one would notice? Or do they just not care, because Sideways is basically a nobody? Either way, Sideways looks very bland – his windows are pink, his headlights are silver, his front grill is black, and, for some odd reason, a significant portion of the car’s rear where the rear windows should be are replaced by mechanical details which are painted silver… which probably ate up the paint budget allocation for this toy. What these details are for is unclear, because they end up in the back and out of sight in robot mode, so this bunch of mechanical detailing only serves to make the vehicle mode even less film-accurate. Audi trademark dodging?

A Decepticon insignia sits in the center of the hood, and a bit of black tampograph (upside down compared to that of the real Audi) mark either side. He rolls pretty well, and doesn’t have any obvious robot mode parts showing.

Robot Mode:
Sideways’ robot mode is very, very blocky. His show model basically took the classic ‘hood as chest’ transformation used by many car Transformers (G1 Prowl, Jazz, Movie Bumblebee, Barricade…) and ended up with a robot mode that was suspiciously similar to Barricade which fooled loads of news-fishers back in the day. But while it seemed to be a simple robot mode – certainly good Legends-sized toys with that transformation had surfaced – Sideways was not one of those good toys.

His robot mode is a huge, blocky mess. His arms form a huge chunk of the car mode, and are not so much arms as huge blocks of car hanging off his side, with the hands molded in. Yeah, the wheels ended up near the hands, or rather, vice versa. The arms are connected to the chest with ball joints, although they can’t articulate much – they are too heavy and cumbersome to do anything other than hang awkwardly at his sides. From the waist down all he got are joints that help him unfold, so unless you want the knees to bend the other way (i.e. forwards), he doesn’t have any useful leg articulation. And his legs are skinny too, like the deluxe class toy, making him pretty top-heavy. His headsculpt is a very simplistic, generic version of Sideways’ CGI-model head, not that you’d remember what it looked like without checking it up in the internet.

Again, he is almost entirely gray, with the obvious wheels and lower legs cast entirely in black. It’s a lousy robot mode, and the alternate mode looks bland.

Marks out of ten for the following:

Transformation Design: 2 – It’s a relatively simple design, and yet they got it all wrong, making him turn from a toy car into a stationary gimpy-legged gorilla thing.
Durability: 7 – He’s reasonably durable, although the pin joints holding his knees together seem pretty weak. He’s survived rough treatment, certainly.
Aesthetics: 2 – Sideways’ vehicle mode is very, very bland, but that’s nothing compared to the extremely messy robot mode. I ended up painting my eyesoringly bland Sideways to match the film deco, but while the vehicle mode was improved the robot mode is too bad to be saved by a paintjob.
Articulation: 1 – Arm ball joints, and nothing else. All other joints are part of his transformation.
Fun: 1 – To be fair, I did have fun painting him, but that’s the only thing that’s fun about this toy. It’s a very, very bad toy.
Price/Value: 1 – Nope.
Overall: 1 – He’s got a brickish, extremely bad robot mode with unnatural proportions and zero articulation, and he turns into an unattractively bland car with random silver details. I’ve always regretted buying this toy. Movie-line legends toys have been notoriously bad, but Sideways is undoubtedly one of the worst Movie-era legends toys I own.

Nice review of an awful mould.



I still think the problem with this one was the designers for no understandable reason decided to try and get clever with what would have worked better as the tried-and-tested standard Transformers car transformation. Sure, it would have been a bit dull if they'd gone with that, but it would have been a much better figure than this mess!

Seems it's the time of terrible Legends Class figures being reviewed.

Looks like the mould works better for Sideways than it does for Dino, and I'd say Dino is better than Legion DOTM Topspin, so Topspin still takes the cake as perhaps the worst Legends/Legion Class mould I've encountered...

Perhaps I'll review Dino sometime.

I've been thinking about picking up the Deluxe Class Sideways toy, for my OCD completism, but the bright red on the robot mode is very offputting...

numbat wrote:I still think the problem with this one was the designers for no understandable reason decided to try and get clever with what would have worked better as the tried-and-tested standard Transformers car transformation. Sure, it would have been a bit dull if they'd gone with that, but it would have been a much better figure than this mess!

They could've copied Universe Jazz's transformation straight off to solve the long gangly arm and spindly legs problem, but no, they had to go and reinvent the shit. And give him paint applications on a randomly-applied mechanical detail thing.

Even the first movie's legends-class Barricade who I dug out of storage was a far superior toy than this!

numbat wrote:Perhaps I'll review Dino sometime.

Please do.

numbat wrote:I've been thinking about picking up the Deluxe Class Sideways toy, for my OCD completism, but the bright red on the robot mode is very offputting...

Mmm, out of the movie cast, I'm missing an Elita-One, who I didn't track down out of purpose because the deluxe molds are crap I thought I would buy the Sideways-and-three-Legends-bikes box set which eventually got cancelled.

I'm also missing Que and Dino, obviously, but I'm not really a fan of Que's design, and I'm not about to shell out the full amount of money to buy another version of this mould.

I've got the repaint of the deluxe class Sideways. He is a pretty serviceable toy, gorgeous alternate mode (except, you know, solid silver bodyframe) but the robot mode's got a wee bit of balance issues due to small legs. I quite like my Dead End, but he's not really that good a toy. Still better than Rampage or the bikes, though not as good as, say, Sideswipe.

Hard to beat ROTF Sideswipe - he's a gorgeous figure. (Although I may one day shell out for a Takara Sidearm Sideswipe...)

numbat wrote:Hard to beat ROTF Sideswipe - he's a gorgeous figure. (Although I may one day shell out for a Takara Sidearm Sideswipe...)

Mmm, DOTM Sideswipe is kind of cool as well. Obviously not as awesome as his ROTF counterpart, being smaller and all, plus the floor-less vehicle mode bugged me. Kind of wished instead of giving him a totally pointless giant blocky gun they had used the plastic to craft a floor for the car instead.

Huh, I've just realised how much of the original deluxe class molds in ROTF sucked. Rampage, the two bikes, Wheelie, arguably the Twins depending on how you like the hyper-fiddly transformation...

Hey! I like Deluxe Wheelie! He's pretty impressive, and quite different from anything else ever.

The Deluxe Twins though... They actually have great car and robot modes, so it's hard to fault them, but their transformations are very fiddly indeed. This could be forgiven as they have that usual caveat of complex CGI designs translated to small plastic toys, but they fall down on this one for one solid reason: THE HUMAN ALLIANCE TWINS HAVE SIMPLER TRANSFORMATIONS AND LOOK EVEN BETTER!

You'd expect the larger figures to have the better robot modes, but simpler transformations? I can see no reason why the Deluxe Twins couldn't have been way simpler and looked at least as good.

I never picked up Rampage - he looks dreadful. I might get the Takara red version if I ever see it at an affordable price (so that'll be never) but it would just be to complete the (available) Constructicons.

I have zero interest in any of the Autobot Biker-Bints.

Yeah, there are a few ROTF Deluxe gems, but there are plenty of misses too. I don't think DOTM was particularly worse for the quality of designs, unlike other folk (Jolt, for instance, is way better than the ROTF version, and the Wreckers are all great). There are some stinkers, sure (Voyager Prime, Voyager Sentinel...), but there were plenty of those in ROTF and TFTM. The major failing with DOTM was the small number of characters included in the line and the overloading with Bumblebees and non-screen characters at the expense of new characters that were in the film.

numbat wrote:Hey! I like Deluxe Wheelie! He's pretty impressive, and quite different from anything else ever.

Oh, I like Deluxe Wheelie enough, but he's not really that good a toy. The head looks quite ugly, the claws are too sharp, and I'm not a fan of the faction-changing rod that gets in the way of transformation.

If I had my way I'd have bought the Legends class instead... that Wheelie, at least, would be closer to being in scale with the rest of the Autobot cast. As it is, Wheelie towers over my deluxe-class Sideswipe and Ironhide, even with the head and legs folded down.

numbat wrote:THE HUMAN ALLIANCE TWINS HAVE SIMPLER TRANSFORMATIONS AND LOOK EVEN BETTER!

This. I was actually quite surprised when I held a Human Alliance Skids toy and found out that he was so much more easier to transform than the fiddly, messy deluxe class Skids. Goddammit, the roof feels like it's going to shatter and snap off! At least Mudflap wears his as a backpack, but that makes him look a bit more cheaper and less show-accurate than Skids.

numbat wrote:I never picked up Rampage - he looks dreadful. I might get the Takara red version if I ever see it at an affordable price (so that'll be never) but it would just be to complete the (available) Constructicons.

Get the legends class toy. Rampage at least have a great legends class toy]I have zero interest in any of the Autobot Biker-Bints.[/quote]

I'm a big fan of unicycle robots like BM Thrust, but the toys look so crappy I was sorry I brought Chromia and Arcee. For some reason I liked them at the time, which is stupid. Expect rewrites of those reviews as being at the top of my list, if only I can bother to dig the two out of the back of the shelves.

numbat wrote:Jolt

I liked Jolt's ROTF toy. His DOTM toy is far better, but he's coloured this dreadful shade of white which makes him look far uglier. Nonetheless I love Jolt and I picked up the DOTM toy, but the ROTF toy sits with the rest of my movie Autobot cast while the DOTM toy gets to fill the 'odds and ends' shelf.

numbat wrote:The major failing with DOTM was the small number of characters included in the line and the overloading with Bumblebees and non-screen characters at the expense of new characters that were in the film.

ROTF and the first movie had a longer life as a line, and the first movie had the excuse of only having about a dozen robots. Out of everyone that appeared in ROTF, only Scrapper doesn't get a proper, non-legends toy. We all know Reedman and Alice are unworkable into decent toys, so that means everyone who transforms into vehicles gets a new toy.

DOTM? Even counting Dino for licensing issues and the Driller for not having toys, the rest of the line seemed sub-par. I can almost forgive Hasbro for not releasing three nigh-identical toys of Dreads (although I'm surprised they didn't repaint Crankcase as Crowbar or Hatchet... but then again the Crankcase toy is pretty crap) but to make Soundwave, Leadfoot and Que so difficult to find when they comprise half of the new robots introduced in DOTM?

I mean, Roadbuster and Topspin are great, the leader class Sentinel Prime was great. Laserbeak is decent in that he's basically an Action Master Elite. I like the new Megatron toy... and both Starscream and Barricade are quite nice... but Crankcase is messy, the new Sideswipe has a hole instead of a floor, Shockwave has these gorilla shoulders... and poor distribution in general meant that many DOTM toys are difficult to find.

And really, is it so important to release Air Raid? And while I appreciate new toys of Barricade, Jolt and Mudflap, should they really take priority over characters who actually appear in the movie? Should they really release another Mudflap when Que and Leadfoot should be filling the shelves? Bah.

Blackjack wrote:I can almost forgive Hasbro for not releasing three nigh-identical toys of Dreads (although I'm surprised they didn't repaint Crankcase as Crowbar or Hatchet...

Wouldn't that be, erm, identical to Crankcase? You know, a black Suburban?



You'd need a different head to make him look even a little different.

I was disappointed that they didn't make the three Suburbans - they did look quite different, but I guess they wouldn't sell well.

Not that Hasbro seemed to have sales in mind when they planned the DOTM line, of course. They clearly aimed for it to fail while spending as much money as possible designing onscreen figures never to see the light of day... Clever.

I was very disappointed by the lack of a proper Decepticon in Leader Class - I really would have loved Megatron. The DOTM design is the best Megs ever in my view. But I would have settled for Shockwave.

An Ultra Class Driller would have been awesome. Without a transformation to bog down costs, it could have been huge, and maybe even silver...

And, of course, there was a definite shortage of Decepticons in the ranks of figures, yet there were loads of awesome random ones running around the streets. Wasted opportunities.

Ah, what might have been had Hasbro decided to cash in on what became the fourth-highest-grossing movie of all time.

Bloody moopets. (Sorry, in the case they do not even deserve to be called muppets.)

numbat wrote:I was disappointed that they didn't make the three Suburbans - they did look quite different, but I guess they wouldn't sell well.

They look different in robot mode, granted, but I think it's a commercial suicide to release three identical black Suburbans in the same toyline... robot mode or otherwise it'll be a big put-off to kid buyers.

Although I'm very surprised Hasbro didn't at least do a half-ass redeco of Crankcase in grey or something and market it as Crowbar or something just for completists... I did eventually get Legends Crowbar (who is pretty crap) and Commander Hatchet (who is quite good, kind of) but I wanted them to be Suburbans, dammit. Why, if they don't want to release all three in deluxe size, why not call the Legion class Dread toy 'Crowbar' at least, instead of releasing a random police car mold?

Not that Hasbro seemed to have sales in mind when they planned the DOTM line, of course.

Not to mention that distribution was poor. While I appreciate new Barricade and Jolt toys, surely those who got actual screen time in the show (Soundwave, Leadfoot and Que) should get proper toys out in the first wave at least?

But then DOTM was so short and fairly low-key compared to the massive behemoths that are the first movie and ROTF.

numbat wrote:I was very disappointed by the lack of a proper Decepticon in Leader Class - I really would have loved Megatron. The DOTM design is the best Megs ever in my view. But I would have settled for Shockwave.

Dunno, Leader Class Ironhide was awesome but IMO it would be a commercial suicide. Kids would want Optimus Prime, Bumblebee or the lead villain (Sentinel Prime, in this case) and since parents are likely only to buy one BIG toy Ironhides would get left behind. Megatron and Shockwave don't really get that much screen time in DOTM to justify having Leader class toys.

Of course, I would love a new Leader Class Megatron and Shockwave, I would buy them... but it would screw up the line even more.

numbat wrote:An Ultra Class Driller would have been awesome. Without a transformation to bog down costs, it could have been huge, and maybe even silver...

Mmm, not sure if it would work. Scorponok, Ravage and Laserbeak get away with basically being permanently in beast mode with a half-assed alternate mode to justify the 'Transformers' brand, but they are Deluxe class toys, whereas Driller would be a massive Ultra class affair...

I've always thought that making random playsets and not giving us a Driller one is criminal. I mean, I get the Ark and the Decepticon gunship, but everything else is completely random. Why did Shockwave come with a half-assed gun emplacement when he could've come with a Driller playset in scale to Legends toys at least?

numbat wrote:And, of course, there was a definite shortage of Decepticons in the ranks of figures, yet there were loads of awesome random ones running around the streets. Wasted opportunities.

Dunno, the deluxe class had at least Laserbeak, Crankcase, Starscream, Barricade and the non-show Space Case and Thundercracker milling around the pegs...

I'd prefer, oh, Soundwave instead of the non-toys, mind you.

I'm very bummed Hasbro didn't dole out a Decepticon Protoform trooper for us. I'd army build that. Totally. I mean, ROTF had three of the Constructicons plus Starscream and Megatron made into Voyager class toys! Why could DOTM have more Decepticons?