Swerve A Gears Retool Transformers Age of the Primes Deluxe Class Item No.: Asst. G0474 No. G2011 Manufacturer: Hasbro Includes: Blaster Action Feature: Converts from robot to not-a-Jeep Retail: $27.99 Availability: April 2026 Other: Presumably toy and/or comic deco to follow, this one is more or less based on one cartoon appearance
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A real nobody from the old days, Swerve achieved fame like so many other obscure characters - through the comics.Ê He had a couple of appearances in The Transformers cartoon in the 1980s, but he was a bigger player in More Than Meets the Eye and The Lost Light comics from 2012-2018. Given that it wasn't really a tie-in to any specific toy line, it was a pretty impressive run with more issues than the original US Marvel comics run in the 1980s. As such, it has some pretty intense fans who want toys - and this comes sort of close.

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This particular Swerve chest seems to be modeled from a very specific shot from Five Faces of Darkness Part 5, with a head that matches another specific short. You see, about 3 minutes in, he has a gray face, blue visor, and a chest that looks sort of like the toy stickers. Around 5 minutes in, he has a red visor, and the chest that inspired a fan-made animation model. It's a weird level of specificity I've seen a few times in the toy industry where you could pick from two or three good ideas, and then someone opts for a compromise that doesn't really make a lot of sense - but unless you're the kind of person who would freeze frame a cartoon to look at a character who generally has nothing to offer or say, you wouldn't notice. But it also leaves the door open for future exclusive variants, if you're in to that sort of thing.

But how is the toy? It's pretty good. It's a lot like Gears [FOTD #2,744] from a few years ago, with the same blaster, a few shared parts, and more or less the same transformation. All of the parts seem pretty new, so you won't be able to swap one part for another easily. He has a similar build, with the double-jointed elbows and extra panels that tuck in the feet that allow for more dynamic posing. I was especially pleased to see they added faux shoulder wheels to his arms, complete with paint, to match the original toy. Even Gears didn't have those! It's a pretty vibrant toy, and it looks a bit like the comic book version. But just a bit - because it's not a space vehicle. If you liked Gears or Smallfoot, you're going to like this figure just fine. Having said that, he's only 4 1/4-inches tall, so he's a small Deluxe. It's nice that Hasbro didn't skimp on articulation, but on this sample? They left a pin out of one of the shoulders, so the arm slides out of the socket. It's not ideal, but it seems like a one-off assembly error so I've got no reason to ding them. It's really good otherwise.

The head design seems to be one of artistic license - the head on the cartoon doesn't seem to have the moving goal posts on the side. I'd have been plenty happy with a full helmet inserted in the white brackets, or if they had a fully-jointed head (like Gears) where the side elements moved at the neck. I don't dislike what they did, but I assume it'll result in modders trying to iterate on it because it's not exactly like an existing thing. It works, though - it's a bright head, with nice coloring, and it can move a bit. It's great to be at a point when we're able to complain how it moves, rather than like so many older toys which couldn't even move at all. That, my friends, is progress.

Transformations is just like Gears. It's a pretty simple thing, but a lot of parts have to be moved to make it happen. You have to move the hood over the head, and open the chest, and fold back the legs, and tuck in the arms, and push the chest over the back of the truck. It's not boring, and in the process you'll see the extra shoulder articulation and note the extra moving parts on the feet that make this toy a little more fun to fuss with. I was generally impressed, even though I've got the exact same transformation on three other toys.

The vehicle is a perfectly good update for modern Swerve. The shoulder wheels tuck out of the way, the real wheels spin about as well as any modern toy can expect, and the colors are bright and cheery. There are a few 5mm sockets on which you can plug the blaster, and generally feel as if you got a decent and sturdy vehicle. I was pleased with how the wheels tab into place and generally hold together. With so many robots emphasized over their disguises, it may seem like faint praise - but they did a really good perfectly normal car here. It's about as good as we get on our current era of robots-first designs, so you have to make do with the chest hanging over the back of the truck.

This is currently the best Swerve you're likely to get. I assume we're all placing bets on a comics More Than Meets the Eye version on the horizon, and/or a Walmart-exclusive version with a different chest and an all-red head. I was impressed that they left the "M" detail on the truck hood, and I don't find the robot to be disappointing. It's a decent pastiche of 1980s design and fan art, resulting in a figure that is going to be good enough for most collectors to tick the box next to Swerve on their list of minicars while we await Tailgate and another set of these guys at yet another new scale. Other than the bum shoulder on my sample, I'm pretty happy with this figure. If it's the last Swerve we ever get, the least we can say is that they tried to include enough varied specific details to please a number of very small groups of fans. I'd recommend it unless the current price tags are too rich for your blood.

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