For all 4 people who care, Clampdown is available at Walmart, I picked him up while shopping for supplies. Seeing how I'm the first one to talk about this figure, let's not waste anymore time. This is my first time handling the Sideswipe/Red Alert mold. Clampdown is a redeco of the Kingdom Red Alert mold, and he is great. Definitely one of the best figures in the past 5 years for the mainline. Clampdown looks phenomenal, I love his colors and the police deco. I handled the MP Sideswipe mold (a crappy ko verison atleast), and I can say this figure is literally mini-masterpiece. The transformation is similar, the articulation and the headsculpt is phenomenal. Flaws? I really don't have any, other than I think the tabs for the rifle is really small. Also, I wish the alt-mode had a spoiler, I know lambos without spoilers exist, but that's just a personal problem. Should you go out and get him? If you own the other thousands of redecos, not really. But, if you want to fill out your Diaclone collection, never got the Lambo mold, or you just really like Clampdown, go get him.
I picked him up because I already had Deep Cover, and adding more Lambos is definitely good. Already getting Earth Red Alert from Walgreens, that just leaves Siegeswipe, G2 Swipe, Tigertrack, the Netflix versions of the mold, and I guess Gigawatt?
It’s a great mold IMHO and this is a nice looking deco. That said, I don’t have the space for Diaclone or other non-g1 decos in my limited collection.
Have handled this mold so many times but I still like it. This is a good solid figure to pick up and mess with plus its still solid especially when transforming the shoulders. They are still solid. Worth a getbif you haven't picked it up previously. Can transform it in my sleep. Simple.
Didn't even realize there was a feedback thread for this guy. I know he's probably the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel as far as exciting Velocitron figures goes, but I think he may be the best version of this mold... if for nothing else that this deco finally matches the shoulder joint block to the color of the car itself, giving it a clean deco not broken by a random block of unpainted plastic. Playing around with this toy also shows off how much you can do to set Clampdown apart from the others just with his weapons, the lightbar especially. I like to give him the cannon part from one of the other repaints and use them as taser weapons with Rung's effect parts - feels like a proper cop kind of weapon.
I got Clampdown, Kingdom Red Alert and Kingdom Sideswipe. I gotta say the Earth Lambros are the absolute best. I like them more than the Siege Lambros. Clampdown has such a sharp deco he's the best looking of the three, but they all look phenomenal.
Got Clampdown on the recent Pulse sale, he just arrived. In hand, he looks pretty good, and I like the use of gray for the parts that would have been red if they hadn't already done that with Red Alert. Speaking of, I didn't realize this figure used RA's remolded head, nice to not just be white Sideswipe. Most of the paint looks really adequate, my sample has a bit of slop around the headlights, and the white paint on the canopy doesn't match the plastic. It would be nice to get more paint in the back half of the car, he does get small police logos behind the doors which is more than Sideswipe got, but without a spoiler and paint, it feels a little abandoned. Strangely, the waist panel is a strong fit for once with this mold, but on my copy the front end barely holds in place on the car, it's a very light connection. Also, the lightbar in the roof port is super loose on Clampdown but ER Sideswipe it's tight, so I'm guessing it's just a one-off with my sample. All in all, a decent release, I'm not particularly a fan of Red Alert so this works for me. It's as good an example of the ER Sideswipe mold as any, the vehicle mode colors match up better than the other releases, and the bot mode stands out as something a little different.
Siege Sideswipe was a very average deluxe, little really wrong with it, but also kind of unexciting in it's dull competency. Anyway, I got Clampdown since I was curious about the Earth mode retool of this same framework. My joints could be better, and the roof paint definitely is sloppy on mine, however they did finally colour match the shoulder hinges to the rest of the car. And he has a good accessory complement. It's still very wide feeling, and sort of squat too, but reshelling it hasn't made it bad by any means. The light grey is a strange choice though, in my opinion it's too similar to the white so it looks more like a mistake than a good colour scheme. More contrast in the colour choice would have helped I think. As I think I said at the time, this is basically a deluxe class spychanger car, and 4 years on I am surprised that they didn't go the route of exploiting that potential for all it is worth.
