Name: Flipsides
Series: e-Hobby exclusives
Allegiance: Destron
Function: Sleeper Agent
Alternate Mode: Microcassette
CASSETTE MODE
Height: 3cm Length: 5cm Width: 0.5cm
A crimson and white microcassette with blue and silver on her cassette stickers, Flipsides is a repaint of Rewind/Eject. She has side "A" printed on the top right and along the bottom it indicates she's metal position. There's a robot schematic sticker on the bottom right over the cassette sticker itself, the image appears to be of Scorponok. Other than this sticker, she's pretty much a brighter repaint of Rewind & Eject.
The tape mode has holes, and the spools have moulded teeth in them. There's a sticker in the centre resembling the tape window, and below this is a time counter gauge. Turn her over and he's white with some crimson, with chrome pink paint. In other words, don't look at the other side. Oddly, the rubsign is on this side of the tape, although Flipsides lacks the indent that Eject & Rewind had. Unusually, she's sold with a Cybertron (Twincast but the rubsign tells us she's a Destron). The bio information actually states that she's a sleeper agent - unaware of her own allegiance until her hidden programming kicks in.
There's one thing about this tape mode that's always bothered me - the spring loaded head locks into place thanks to the shoulders being pushed in, but these shoulders were always quite loose. Flipsides seems to have sorted this issue out. I'm not going to take her and Eject apart to compare inside, but there may be a deliberate mould change at play here. While the colours are unusual, Flipsides is a decent little cassette, and I'm glad her head stays in place.
TRANSFORMATION TO ROBOT MODE
Slide the bottom edge apart and extend the two halves out to the sides. Fold them down, rotate them so the smooth edges face away from the cassette side. Flip out the feet on the bottom of these legs, stand her up. Pull the shoulders out to the sides and her head will pop up. Her shoulderpads actually extend - sliding out a little from the crimson pieces inside them. Pull the crimson forearms down, and rotate them. Flip out her hands and give Flipsides one or both handguns. The holes in the forearms on Eject and Rewind were officially meant to be at the front, but official pictures I've seen of Flipsides seem to suggest hers are at the back - it's up to you, I guess.
ROBOT MODE
Height: 7cm Width: 5cm
In this mode, Flipsides is now dominated by white with the crimson as a supporting colour. Her torso, shoulderpads and lower legs are white while the head, forearms, hands, thighs and feet are crimson. Her face is painted pink and there's pink chrome paint on her chest. Her guns are also chrome pink. I'm not sure this colour scheme could work on a general release toy, but as a limited edition female toy, it's kinda nifty despite being gaudy.
Short and small looking, Flipsides looks umimposing, which is what you ant from a sleeper agent I guess. Her guns are quite big & bulky in comparison, and sit behind the main plane of the robot mode thanks to the holes being behind her forearms.
Poseability is okay. Her shoulders rotate and have some friction to allow the guns to be held in a natural position. Her elbows also rotate, essentially allowing her hands to rotate (which is more a function of the wrist in most Transformers). You can bend the knees but they're not really meant to - you're actually taking advantage of the slide mechanism in her transformation, and the lower legs are likely to detach (but easily reattach).
VARIATIONS
I doubt there are any, since she was likely limited to one production run. As already mentioned she's a repaint of both Rewind & Eject.
OVERALL
On the whole I still prefer Rewind & Eject to Flipsides - her colour scheme really is quite confronting. The mould isn't the strongest amongst the cassettes, although it's not without a charm. The colour scheme firmly establishes her a female character - how often do we see Transformers with pink chrome - and as a limited edition she works fairly well. Having said that, I don't know that she's up to the usual standard of the E-Hobby repaints - if you get this toy you'll do so since she comes with Twincast - 4/10
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