Studio Series Sweep (2021)

I haven't exactly been kind to Scourge in the past few months. Despite being one of the most prominent of the new characters created for The Transformers: The Movie, I find that he was never given much of a personality. In my review of Scourge's Titans Return figure, I blamed some of that on his being given command of a group of identical troops, called "the Sweeps." But while I find Scourge's personality rather forgettable, the toys he's been given in recent years have been interesting takes on the movie's character model. So, given that Scourge's Studio Series toy was given a redeco (and slight remold) as a Sweep, this seems an opportunity to redress the balance.

Let's start by addressing the elephant in the room. If the Sweeps were identical to Scourge, how is it that a separate "Sweep" toy is even possible? Frankly, it shouldn't be, but I blame Fun Publications, the folks who used to run BotCon, who did this for the first time back at BotCon 2009. I've often talked about how Hasbro (and/or Takara) tries to keep costs down by reusing molds. The pressure to do this was arguably even greater on Fun Pub, who often responded by making "troop builders," usually a group of three identical toys, to be sold as a set among the convention exclusive offerings.^* In any event, when Scourge was included as part of the BotCon 2009 box set, the inclusion of three additional Scourge-like toys among the other exclusives was a fairly obvious way to go. But those three Sweeps, while identical to each other, were not identical to the BotCon 2009 Scourge toy (you can see the differences for yourself via this link). I've never quite figured out the justification for the BotCon Sweeps' color scheme, other than to be different from the toy they were canonically supposed to be identical to (albeit in a different universe, arguably).

The Studio Series Sweep toy is different from the Studio Series Scourge toy, but these differences seem to have a bit more justification, in that the Scourge toy was made in animation colors (as would be assumed for a Studio Series toy), while the Sweep toy is colored to resemble the original G1 Scourge toy, thus enabling fans to pick up the Sweep and simply consider it "Scourge" if they happened to prefer the original color scheme. The Sweep has one other change, which is decidedly more subtle, in that his right fist is open while his left fist is closed (the opposite of Scourge). This presumably gave fans who already bought Scourge a smidgen more reason to pick up the mold a second time (assuming they weren't interested in just buying multiples of the original to get a legion of Sweeps).

But if you didn't get Scourge back then, and didn't pick up this Sweep, either? Good news! Studio Series Scourge was re-released just a few months ago, and although it seems to have mostly worked its way through Target (where it was an exclusive this time around) by the time you read this, you might luck out and find one on clearance, or at Ross or a similar reseller in the near future. Even if that's not the case, one assumes that the aftermarket price has dropped with yet another iteration of this mold on the market. It's a good time to be a Sweeps fan!

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^*No doubt this move was inspired in part by the fact that Fun Publications had run the G.I. Joe club and convention for years before they picked up BotCon. Troop builders have been a mainstay for Joe for a long, long, time.