I never bought the first Grievous from 2006 because I thought it looked like crap in bot mode. I'm glad I held out for this new version. The starfighter mode is pure badass on a stick. Looks very evil. It has storage for both of his lightsabers in the side compartments which is very cool, and you can also store his gun under the ship but it's kind of a pain in the ass to pull it back out from there so i just leave it on the side. Also the ship has retractable landing gear and an opening cockpit. Transformation is fairly involved but ultimately he's kind of a shell-former. Robot mode is cool but the back kibble is a bit much. It does look sort of like a cape / jetpack hybrid so that's kind of cool I guess. He's fairly articulated but the backpack gets in the way of some of his leg posing. Ultimately he's a cool display piece and I think definitely worth it to the true SW aficionado. Pics I took:
I was working on a review of this, but you beat me to it. And for the record, I too passed on the Wheel bike version. I concur, I think this is by far the best SWTF I own to date. I like the Transformation, the articulation, and the design. While the backpack/cloak bit is a bit of a drawback, the amount of usefull articuation is rather pleasant, especially with all the foot articulation he can achieve a wide variety of poses and balance well thanks to them.
I also grabbed this guy and like him as well. However I did get the wheel bike version recently and was annoyed b/c the mini-driver has no cockpit for storage. That problem has been alleviated by this new mold since he is missing the all to cool mini-driver, so I now have a solution to both problems w/ both of the Grievous molds. Anyway, I like the starfighter mode b/c it is pretty detailed and fits together ok, but all the paneling does show and it isn't quite as solid as the other SWTFs. The bot mode is really nice and a far better version of Gen. Grievous w/ the reverse legs and a better head sculpt. He seems to be the harder of the two new molds to find, so if you do see him and think you might want him, you should grab him. I had to look in 4 stores that had the TIE Bomber but no Grievous before I found this guy.
Spent the longest time deciding on this one , or the big SW one that holds the fig. Just needed a Grievous ship, so got this one. Better than the wheelbike, but still pretty flawed and kibbly. You can easily pop the whole backpiece off in bot mode though. Gave him the little Grievous fig that came with the wheelbike. He fits in, but a little roughly. Ship mode's pretty tight. Pics- front/back package http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/loebig/Star Wars/Star Wars Transformers/SWTFGenGrievous.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/loebig/Star Wars/Star Wars Transformers/SWTFGenGrievous1.jpg
Very tempting, especially since I too passed on the Wheel Bike. I saw this version twice but passed the first time and picked up the TIE Bomber the second time. I've tried to limit myself to only original trilogy SWTF's, but I already got Cody and both clone pilots...