Swindle having originally been a military jeep, this actually works pretty well on the surface... but let's take a closer look.
Vehicle Mode:
I'm pretty sure the original Swindle was more of a desaturated sandy colour rather than a sunshine yellow, but I have to say the Wrangler - specifically the Jeep Wrangler Sport, for this version - looks pretty good in this colour... and I'm not even that fond of yellow cars. The base vehicle is identical to Hound - even down to the grey plastic used for the interior - but, supplementing the spring-loaded suspension of this mold, Swindle has larger, puffier tyres and fully chromed bullbars on the front of the vehicle.
Naturally, the concealed insignia gimmick remains in the bonnet, albeit with a Decepticon insignia this time but, in every other conceivable way, this is the same vehicle as BT04 Hound. Given that the original intention for this mold was to make it Trailbreaker, it's disappointing that there's no canopy for the Jeep... But also, since it was turned into Swindle, it's disappointing to see that no additional weapons were included - nor accessories of any kind. I get that these were all supposed to be accurate models of street vehicles, but one has certain expectations of a character like Swindle... and, as far as I'm aware, this mold never received any Third Party accessories, like the Binaltech Arming sets produced for the Subaru and Mazda molds.
Robot Mode:
It comes as no surprise that, with a vehicle mode substantially the same as Hound's apart from colour, robot mode is also much the same. It first glance, there isn't even much difference in the application of colour, with the forearms and biceps getting the same stripes - albeit in black rather than yellow on the forearms. However, the shoulders now have gunmetal paint on the raised band over the main barrel part which, while only a small change, really provides a highlight for the detail. Keeping on-brand for Swindle, he has metallic purple paint all over the groin section, including the transformation hinge at the waist. The shins feature matte black paint in the raised trapezoid shapes as well. Other than this, he's just as plain as Hound, so the addition of the chromed bullbars on the chest make for quite an improvement to his overall appearance.
As mentioned previously, Swindle has no additional accessories on Hound, and shares the same, extremely disappointing weapon - the dinky handgun that folds up and gets holstered in his spare tyre casing, now molded in black plastic. It almost suits Swindle better to have such an innocuous-looking, concealed weapon... but it's still one of the most disappointing accessories in the Binaltech line, and Swindle deserved something better, perhaps even more than Hound.
Naturally, Swindle got a new head sculpt... and it's a bit of an odd one. Most of the Binaltech figures so far have had head sculpts that looked a bit like their G1 incarnation, albeit perhaps closer to a more detailed version of their cartoon appearance - Dead End's interpretation of Sunstreaker being a prime example. Strangely, the Trailbreaker head sculpt looks neither like the featureless G1 toy nor the wierdly boxy, humanoid-featured cartoon version... if anything, it looks like the IDW Comics version... Though that simply suggests that Alex Milne used this head as the basis for his movie-esque redesign of the character for those comics. Even the Generations toy based on Milne's artwork has a head sculpt that looks more like this than any other interpretation of Trailbreaker. Swindle's face is quite bland, as seems to have been the case with a lot of Binaltech figures, but I quite like the translucent purple visor - makes a change from the typical Decepticon red.
While the range of movement offered by his joints is identical to Hound, the larger tyres make for a slight complication in his movement as they have to be moved further out of the way to allow the waist to rotate fully, and they're more likely to clash with his arms. They also remain rather more apparent in robot mode than Hound's tyres, leaving him looking even more top-heavy.
Given that I wasn't a completist when it came to Binaltech - and never intended to be - I'm puzzled, in retrospect, as to why I bothered acquiring Swindle. I'm not especially attached to the G1 character, I wasn't overly impressed by BT Hound, and wasn't entirely convinced by the inclusion of Decepticons on the Binaltech line anyway... The new head and bullbars are OK, but nothing realy special. There's honestly not much that's compelling about Swindle, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people favoured the Alternators version as something that could be repainted as Trailbreaker.
Back in those days, I believe I was buying these on import, so they were far more expensive - if occasionally easier to obtain - than the equivalent Alternators... But I do remember I was intent on buying the Binaltech versions as what I'd seen of the plastic versions released by Hasbro wasn't very impressive. Whatever the reason for my buying Swindle back then, he strikes me now as a figure I could probably have lived without.
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