Swerve (Chevy)

From MediaWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is about . For other uses of "Swerve", see Swerve (disambiguation)|The name or term "Swerve" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Swerve (disambiguation).}}
Swerve is an Autobot from the Robots in Disguise continuity family (via the 2003 Universe toyline).
International Bot of Mystery

"A mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma, blindfolded and dunked in delicious milk chocolate" would be a charitable way to describe Swerve. He is the result of the most unusual toy release in the history of the brand.

Fiction

[edit]

Shell Game continuity

[edit]

In Viron 704.31 Epsilon, Swerve was one of Optimus Prime's loyal Autobot soldiers, but on the eve of a vital confrontation with Megazarak, Swerve and several of his comrades disappeared, having been abducted by Unicron to fight in the Universe War. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/07/30 He succumbed to Unicron's mental influence and arguably became a Minion of Unicron. Ask Vector Prime, 2015/09/13

Toys

[edit]

Universe (2003)

[edit]
  • Swerve (Deluxe, 2008)
The very last toy released under the 2003 Universe banner (kinda? we'll explain in a moment), Swerve transforms into a licensed Chevy Aveo LT. He has a light-piped head modeled after the Autobot faction insignia. His transformation is fairly intricate, with the car shell being formed mostly from folding panels, and his aesthetic is similar to that of the original characters created for the the 2007 live-action movie toyline. In terms of articulation, the toy notably has ankle tilts, but like many toys of the time he lacks bicep swivels, meaning his lower arms can only move forwards and backwards. Unmentioned in the instructions, Swerve's neck is double-jointed, allowing it to raise up a bit so his head isn't as buried into his chest hood... but just by that much.
Also unusually for toys of the time, Swerve lacks any kind of gimmick or accessory, and he is not compatible with 5 mm posts. By chance, weapons with 3.5 mm posts fit relatively well in his hands.
Despite his alternate mode and the timing of his release, he has no relationship to Aveo, Sphinx, or the rest of the Chevy Autobots. For all intents and purposes, the toy was designed as if it were a live-action movie product—but as a promotional item, there was no incentive for Hasbro to pay licensing fees on the product, so it was instead branded with the logo of the original 2003 Universe line on the instructions (which otherwise used design elements from the 2006 Classics line and the then-upcoming 2008 Universe line, plus the General Motors logo typical of movie toys). For organizational purposes we've stuck to the logo.
The toy comes in a two-piece plastic tray, molded to its shape and taped shut, sealed inside a polybag (written in English, with a Hasbro copyright), stickered with a barcode labelled "PROOF OF PURCHASE". On the inside of Swerve's chestpiece, behind the bumper, is a small white sticker with a seemingly-unique ID number.

Creation and release

[edit]

Polybagged samples of Swerve originally surfaced on Asian websites in August 2007. All "final" samples were the same red color; one specimen appeared to be yellow, but in fact had been hand-painted. The instructions lacked an assortment number, leading to the conclusion that it was a standalone release, presumably an exclusive, though the venue was unknown; for that matter, whether it would even be released at all seemed uncertain for a long time.

When the first samples turned up in China, some of the dealers claimed the toy was supposed to be available as a freebie for buying a Chevy Aveo, which would have made it far and away the single most expensive official Transformers toy. However, contradictory rumors claimed the toy would be available as a freebie for test-driving a Chevy Aveo, or that it was a promotional Chevy exclusive to be only available in China. None of those reports were ever verified, and it is unclear whether the toy was ever officially available in China or whether all the samples from Asia were of the usual stolen "leaked" variety.

Early reports throughout the fandom, tepidly verified by Hasbro sources, suggested that the mold's creation had been commissioned by Chevrolet for that company's exclusive use; neither Hasbro nor TakaraTomy could use it in their own lines. This amounted to the first time that a "mainstream" Transformer mold was created to be an exclusive (as opposed to things like Happy Meal toys, which are distinct from standard product and cost far less to design and produce). In 2025, Hasbro designer Aaron Archer corroborated this, confirming that the item came about specifically as a result of their partnership with Chevrolet on the first live-action film.<ref>{{#if: So this ties in a little bit to movie stuff... but it is kind of separate, and that's why it wasn't in the movie packaging. That would have incurred a bunch more royalties that we didn't need to pay for a promotional item. So, that's why I think it ended up in Universe. So, what that was, was... Chevy was working with Michael Bay—and thus Hasbro—on the movie stuff, at least in early discussions, and somebody in the marketing department thought it would be a great idea to promote their new car that's coming out in Europe with a Transformer toy! And to your point, it went through many iterations as far as how it got released in various markets. But what I can tell you is that item was a exclusive, paid-by-Chevy toy to get made for their needs. And that is why to this day you haven't seen it redecored. Hasbro/Takara doesn't own the tooling for that item. For them to get the volume they wanted, and have the control that they wanted, they wanted to buy the tooling. So that they essentially made a boutique toy for themselves. It started you had to really like... I think buy an Aveo, test-drive and buy an Aveo, then it just kept backing off from there. [...] Yeah. I think they committed to a certain production run, and then it was up to them to distribute it, and all of that. So, you know I think in hindsight we all know that car didn't become a... daily driver epic brand kind of car. [...] So, I can only imagine that the promotion didn't work the way they had initially thought it was going to work. So, I'm sure they had plenty of them. [...] So, for us, that was always the way it was, it was always going to be shipped to them in a bag with instructions, there was never a backer card or nothing. Any of that. That was it was a very unique promotional item. I mean, that's how Hasbro looked at it. It was a promotional tie-in. |"So this ties in a little bit to movie stuff... but it is kind of separate, and that's why it wasn't in the movie packaging. That would have incurred a bunch more royalties that we didn't need to pay for a promotional item. So, that's why I think it ended up in Universe. So, what that was, was... Chevy was working with Michael Bay—and thus Hasbro—on the movie stuff, at least in early discussions, and somebody in the marketing department thought it would be a great idea to promote their new car that's coming out in Europe with a Transformer toy! And to your point, it went through many iterations as far as how it got released in various markets. But what I can tell you is that item was a exclusive, paid-by-Chevy toy to get made for their needs. And that is why to this day you haven't seen it redecored. Hasbro/Takara doesn't own the tooling for that item. For them to get the volume they wanted, and have the control that they wanted, they wanted to buy the tooling. So that they essentially made a boutique toy for themselves. It started you had to really like... I think buy an Aveo, test-drive and buy an Aveo, then it just kept backing off from there. [...] Yeah. I think they committed to a certain production run, and then it was up to them to distribute it, and all of that. So, you know I think in hindsight we all know that car didn't become a... daily driver epic brand kind of car. [...] So, I can only imagine that the promotion didn't work the way they had initially thought it was going to work. So, I'm sure they had plenty of them. [...] So, for us, that was always the way it was, it was always going to be shipped to them in a bag with instructions, there was never a backer card or nothing. Any of that. That was it was a very unique promotional item. I mean, that's how Hasbro looked at it. It was a promotional tie-in."—|}}{{#if: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE-MKJDLkNc&t=2145s |Aaron Archer|Aaron Archer}}{{#if: The Toy Armada |, The Toy Armada|}}{{#if: 22 - The CREATION of Transformers Universe |, "22 - The CREATION of Transformers Universe"|}}{{#if: 2025 |, 2025{{#if: 07 |/{{#switch:{{#len:07}}|1=007|07}}{{#if: 09|/{{#switch:{{#len:09}}|1=009|09}}|}}}}|}}{{#if: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE-MKJDLkNc&t=2145s ||}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE-MKJDLkNc&t=2145s%7C7%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE-MKJDLkNc&t=2145s%7C8%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE-MKJDLkNc&t=2145s%7C7%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE-MKJDLkNc&t=2145s%7C8%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#if: | (dead link)}}</ref>

On March 25, 2008, the Chevrolet online store began to offer Swerve as a "special featured item"... but only from its branches in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. Swerve officially sold for €12.80, which, depending on the order location and currency conversion rates, translated into to approximately $20~$30 before shipping. However, orders from customers in the United States were subject to a "processing" fee of over $50 and a "trans-Atlantic shipping fee" of almost $100(!). Less than two days later, the order page was taken down without explanation. By the end of the month, purchasers reported that their Swerves were indeed arriving—but the toys had sold out so quickly that some customers who had placed acknowledged orders never got them.

A month later at BotCon 2008, Hasbro explained that the toy had been produced for Chevy at cost as thanks for their successful partnership. It was designed for a promotional campaign in European markets, with the toys given away to people who took a test-drive of a Chevy Aveo (but it's unclear if, when, and where this promotional campaign actually happened). The toys were never meant to be sold; a handful were left after the promotion had ended (assuming it happened), and they were shunted onto Chevy's website.

Over a year later, Chevrolet/GM made Swerve available again through a contest promotion at several mall displays in Ontario, Canada, running from June 18 to August 2, 2009. Swerve figures were one of several incentive prizes used to entice customers to fill in an entry form for a contest (the ultimate prize being a 2010 Chevy Camaro).<ref>Message board announcement of the 2009 Canadian release</ref> As before, numbers were extremely limited—contest managers reported that they had fewer than twenty Swerves to distribute each day, with a limit of one per customer—but this time they were given out for free.

After about another year, the toy surfaced officially for a third time, when Hasbro supplied some to the popular online dealer BigBadToyStore in May 2010. The initial price there was $75, though this dropped before the full stock sold out.

In 2020, over a decade later, a few dozen Swerves surfaced in a dollar store in Ontario—perhaps scavenged from the mall promotions—still in their original bags. With no knowledge of how many Swerve figures were actually produced, there could be any number out in the wild, waiting to resurface one day...

Notes

[edit]
  • Alex Kubalsky designed Swerve's robot mode and transformation under a four-week deadline.
  • Chevrolet themselves seem to think that the idea of a transforming Aveo isn't exactly the best marketing strategy, based on a 2008 commercial for the Aveo.<ref name="commercial">Chevrolet Aveo commercial, featuring a transforming and dancing Ford Focus and a non-transforming Aveo.</ref> Although the truth probably is that they were just jealous that Citroën had beaten them to the idea by several years, before GM even got involved in the Transformers movie.<ref name="citroen">Citroën C4 commercial featuring a transforming and dancing C4, the commercial spoofed by the Aveo one.</ref> (The commercial was also the work of Chevrolet's European division and produced in the Netherlands.<ref name="comback">Background of the Aveo commercial</ref><ref name="comdetails">Production details about the Aveo commercial</ref>)

References

[edit]

<references/>

Retrieved from "https://tfwiki.duckdns.org/index.php?title=Swerve_(Chevy)&oldid=1851065"