Animated Swindle (2008)

When I learned the sad news that legendary comedian Fred Willard passed away a couple of weeks ago at the age of 86, my immediate thought was to do a re-post of his contribution to the Transformers franchise, Animated Swindle, believing that I had featured the toy when I did a spate of Animated toys in the lead-up to BotCon 2011 (if not elsewhere). Of course, I quickly learned that I had not done a feature on Swindle at that time, so I've pulled the toy out to rectify that error now.

BotCon 2007 Dreadwind

BotCon 2007 is well-remembered among Transformers fans for the boxed set of exclusive toys that came with it. While these toys were extremely popular, they were also extremely controversial. As I've written regarding Thundercracker (and elsewhere), most of the controversy surrounds the use of the "Seeker" jets in the set, thus consigning them to exclusivity rather than allowing them to be regular retail releases. I don't agree with this interpretation for a whole host of reasons, but this article isn't about the Seekers. Rather I'm looking to discuss a figure that has largely been ignored in this debate for over a decade now: Dreadwind.