Revenge of the Fallen Swerve

Back when I wrote about the original Deluxe RotF Sideswipe, very nearly eight full years ago and less than a year into this blog, I noted that the Corvette Stingray would look awesome in red, since that would have been a far more fitting colour for Sideswipe. It didn't take too long for Hasbro to release a red repaint, albeit as a difference character... Though, in a lot of ways, it looks more like a cheeky way of producing a more G1-referential version of movie Sideswipe considering Swerve had traditionally been a truck rather than a sports car...

Generations (30th Anniversary) Swerve & Flanker

Back when I first started collecting TransFormers toys, the bigger toys tended to be birthday or Christmas presents, and the vast majority of my own purchases were the likes of the Mini Autobots - small, affordable, carded vehicles with simple transformations into dinky little robots. Up until the 1986 wave, there were few I didn't pick up, but Swerve was one I didn't bother with as he was a rather dull repaint/remold of Gears, who wasn't one of the best from the original 1984 lineup.

These days, of course, we have IDW turning all sorts of terrible G1 toys into super-cool characters, just so Hasbro can release new, super-articulated updated toys, and Swerve seems to have become a fan-favourite among IDW's readership. However, rather than release today's Mini Autobots on their own, Hasbro have started including TargetMasters, so Swerve is partnered with Flanker, a mis-named, mis-coloured G1 Micromaster reference

Universe (Chevrolet Dealership Exclusive Aveo) Swerve

Something interesting happened in the wake of the 2007 live action TransFormers movie - the concept of 'robots in disguise' as real-world cars suddenly became cool. Sure, Takara Tomy and Hasbro had tried a similar thing with the Binaltech/Alternators line, with a fair run of success, but GM's involvement in Michael Bay's movie seemed to be the thing that really whetted their appetite for transforming versions of their cars... And when they had a new version of the Aveo to launch, they teamed up with Hasbro to organise a dealership exclusive toy for a special offer: Test drive the car, get a transforming robot based upon it. Of course, that offer was only open in the States but, since it evidently proved quite popular, the model was later made available in Chevrolet Europe's web shop... which was pretty darned cool of them.