DAY 03- Aveo Swerve (Transformers GM Promotional Campaign)

January 3rd, 2015. Day 3 of 365

You know how sometimes a toy comes along with some sort of weird exclusivity or rarity where demand shoots up into completely unreasonable numbers and then it turns out that the toy isn't exactly anything special?

Welcome to Aveo Swerve.

The history of Aveo Swerve is the most awkward and unnecessarily complex in Transformers history: At BotCon 2008, Hasbro revealed that Aveo Swerve was a promotional item designed for Chevrolet promotional campaigns in Europe to anyone who took a test drive of the actual Chevrolet Aveo car, and was designed at cost as a measure of goodwill between Hasbro and Chevy. At the peak of rarity, Aveo Swerve went for $200+ on the aftermarket before the demand for him crashed hard. Eventually some Canadian guy who is a fan of General Motors or something got a hold of it and hey now I have one.

Aveo Swerve's biggest draw is easily his transformation, with some neat tricks in hiding his front wheels inside the pectorals of his chest and massive panel flips that turn his rear end into his robot mode legs. (Note: I didn't manage to get photos of this specifically. I would check out @Vangelus' video review of Aveo Swerve to see what I mean.)

Oh right, forgot to mention: There's an Autobot logo on his chest painted in nearly the exact same shade of red as the rest of his car mode. No matter how I angled or focused the camera, it wouldn't show up properly. It's almost as if red on red is a bad decision?

The entire silhouette of Swerve might be the highlight of the robot mode, combining the blocky robot aesthetic of the 2006 Classics line with the 2007 Transformers Movie line aesthetic. Unfortunately, that's all you might get out of this guy, as his range of motion is outright sad with the only highlights being his shoulder ball joints, elbows and the pseudo-ankle joint thanks to various hinges in his transformation. His hands are on swivels that are super limited thanks to the sculpt, and his knees can barely bend thanks to the various car kibble wrapped around his legs.

And that's all there is about Swerve, and that's kind of the problem. He has no accessories or weapons to speak of, and thanks to his articulation being super limited in his legs, there's not really any dynamic or action-style poses you can pull of with him. Swerve's entire draw is his transformation and to be honest, that makes him incredibly sad to me especially knowing what he used to command in the aftermarket. It's underwelming and even at his current price, he is extremely overhyped and overpriced.

Day 3 complete. 362 more to go.