(Femme-Bot Friday #47)
This almost certainly isn't the first time I've made myself look like a bit of a hypocrite, having repeatedly denounced the very concept of Dinobots, only to buy one and find it's actually quite good, objectively speaking.FansProject started their Lost Exo Realm series of unofficial Masterpiece Dinobots, surprisingly, with their own take on Sludge - where most other Third Parties seemed to start with Grimlock - and only got to the Dinobot commander after their versions of Slag and Swoop... But the bigger surprise was how they followed him - not with their version of the final G1 Dinobot, Snarl, but with a pair of original characters built around the same basic structure... Dino-Femme-Bots, no less.
Naturally, that piqued my interest, so I ordered the first of them, Comera, toward the end of last year, with a view to potentially getting the second, Echara, if it turned out to be good... Because if I'm going to make myself a hypocrite, I want to go full-on about it.
Packaging:
Comera comes in a fairly standard display box, every face covered with images of the figure inside. Somewhat surprisingly, all appear to be photographs of the physical model rather than CGI of any kind, giving the impression that FansProject were very proud of the end results of their work, not just the design. The front of the box is a flap with Comera in an action pose, surrounded by special effects, while all other sides feature simpler images on a textured background, somewhat reminiscent of both G1 and Beast Wars packaging in the use of gradients. The flap - sealed by two dots of velcro - features wireframe images of Comera, front and back - and photos of her weapons, opposite a large window revealing the figure itself, packaged in robot mode. The back of the box features a perfunctory selection of photos of the figure showing off her poseability and is the only face of the box that doesn't feature the LER-05 Comera logo.
Of all the FansProject boxes I've seen, this is probably my favourite, as it shows the figure off well and looks like a proper collectors' box - sturdy, cleanly printed, glossy - a huge improvement on the boxes for their earlier products, such as the City Commander upgrade set for Classics Ultra Magnus, the Function-X and Warbot boxes with their plastic slipcases, and even the Causality boxes, thanks to the flap on the front. The photos could probably have done with a little adjustment to the contrast as they all seem a little flat, but they serve their purpose. Not that I think the boxes are particularly important, but they certainly reflect the evolution of some of the Third Parties and their confidence in their product.
Beast Mode:
Taking some colour and design cues from the G1 Dinobots, Comera transforms into a robotic Velociraptor. Straight away, it's obvious that this is just the robot mode hunched over with the beast's head and tail swung into position - a very basic Beast Wars trick, but particularly reminiscent of Superlink Dinobot/Energon Cruellock.
Like the other Lost Exo Realm figures, Comera is cast mainly in a metallic grey plastic with the head and claws painted gold and the tail given a coating of gold chrome. It's not quite the same effect as the G1 system of chromed plastic covered over with a transparent, colourless plastic shell shaped like the dino head, but it works well enough in context. The central part of the body and the tip of the tail are molded in red plastic, while there are a few matte red and metallic blue details painted in on the arms and legs.
The overall look of beast mode is a little basic, certainly, and marred by the visible robot parts - the head, albeit turned inward, sticks out at the base of the neck thanks to her helmet's crests and the pair of cannisters just below (though this latter detail actually made me think of the robo-dinos from Horizon: Zero Dawn), and the robot's hands hanging out below the raptor claws. This point is a little confusing, as I'm sure early images of the figure - either photos or CGI - had the hands folded up in some way to vaguely conceal them and allow the claws to wrap around them more completely but it seems the black connecting piece on the wrist has had its hinge bulked up since then, so perhaps the original arrangement was prone to breaking?
The sculpted detail is appropriately minimal - kind of a halfway point between the G1 Dinobots (minus their detail stickers) and Masterpiece Grimlock, but probably tending more toward the former and, in some respects, even simpler than that. Comera's head is very much an armoured raptor head, rather than the 'transparent canopy over gold chromed tech detail' of G1 Slag, Snarl, Sludge and Swoop, so she's closer to the style of Grimlock, but with a gold head rather than metallic grey. I like the way the neck is made to look fully segmented - like the LER Sludge-analogue, Columpio - despite not being as fully articulated due to the neck and head splitting down the middle for robot mode. That sort of attention to consistency of detail is always appreciated... and sadly lacking from Hasbro's output sometimes.
The most baffling thing about this figure is that there's no interaction with any of her accessories in this mode. Whether this is intentional or simply a result of dodgy manufacturing, I'm not sure. Her pistols have pegs on either side, but they're too small to stay in the sockets just above the hips and, while they sort-of fit in the sockets on her jaw, they don't fit consistently well or look very good. Mind you, in this mode she has large claws on her hands and feet, so guns would seem a little excessive anyway.
Robot Mode:
At its core, Comera is a fairly slinky, very feminine action figure... and that core is adorned with two halves of the beast mode's head/neck and tail parts, which just hang off the shoulders and hips/backside respectively. The proportions are mostly perfect, to my eyes, except for the upper arms, which seem remarkably short compared to the forearms, though this is partly because of the large, bulky disk section right on the shoulder messing with the impression of the overall size of her upper arm - it's not that the upper arm is too short so much as it is that the shoulder mass is so large, the 'bicep' section looks disproportionately small.
There's not much by way of unique paintwork to robot mode, as the painted details on the limbs are just as visible in beast mode. What you do get is some matte grey, not-quite-metallic paint over the red plastic on the upper chest and just above the waist, as well as some red paint on the metallic grey plastic of the flattened-out groin section. It's all fairly simple, and very consistent with the look of the G1 Dinobots, not to mention FansProjects own Lost Exo Realm range of figures. It's amusing, also, to note how similar she looks to Hasbro's own Power of the Primes Slash... albeit with a few more curves and a generally better, less blocky aesthetic. What detail there is to Comera either looks like outer armour shell, or something functional, either sticking out, or showing through from within.
It's only struck me, looking at my own photos, that there are actually two shades - or two types - of metallic grey plastic in use - the lighter, shinier kind for the upper body and the thighs, the darker, flatter kind for the kneecaps, lower legs and feet. Not quite sure why this would be, and it does end up looking really odd once noticed - like she's wearing armoured boots over her... armour? It might almost make sense had the mid-thigh rotation joint been molded in the same darker plastic, and the thigh part leading up to the red-painted details painted a darker gunmetal colour to match, as that would have given the impression of armoured stockings with red suspenders... as it is, it almost looks as though she has the lower legs from either a different figure or a different version of the figure... but I'm now on my second pair of legs for this figure (explained below) and both have the same difference between the upper and lower sections.
Comera comes with two small pistols, two massive blasters - which can also be slotted together to form a stand for the figure, if your choice of pose isn't particularly stable - and a G1 Dinobot-style energy sword. The guns are molded in plain black plastic and are really nothing special - the pistols are functional, but not especially detailed and, as previously mentioned, while they do feature pegs on either side just above the grip, they don't fit the sockets on the hip skirts particularly well, so they can't be reliably 'holstered' when she's not using them. The larger blaster are, frankly, more than a little unwieldy - almost as large as Comera herself - and seem to have been designed with their usage as a stand primarily in mind, as they're basically made of gappy extrusions from a central, gun-shaped slab of plastic with a gun barrel at one end. I've not found them overly necessary to keep the figure stable in either mode, so I've put them back in the box. The energy sword, meanwhile, is molded in translucent orange plastic, with the hilt painted a sort of charcoal colour. The spray seems to have been a little haphazard toward the base of the blade, but this gives the impression of the glow of heat from the blade onto the very top of the hilt.
The head sculpt fits in well with the G1 Dinobot style, featuring a black helmet around a dark gunmetal face - it's very similar to Sludge and Snarl and, to be honest, Comera doesn't have the most feminine of face sculpts. Thin, certainly, but the face would work equally well on a more masculine robot body. I do like that they haven't given her excessive, pouty lips but, then, Echara has a battlemask, so it's almost as if the designers were deliberately avoiding feminising their faces.
Switching Comera from one mode to the other is almost insultingly simple given the size and complexity of the model - at its heart, you simply adjust the legs and feet, get the the head and tail into position, switch the beast claws between the wrists and shoulders (minor partsforming is forgiveable, particularly as they can just as easily stay on the wrists in robot mode), then rotate the robo-boobs into view. There are a few additional steps - the hip skirts shift up and down between modes, for example, and both head and tail can either be left together, dangling off the back, or split in half down their length and swung out to either side and positioned according to personal preference - but that's essentially it. There is also a truly worrying step where the two side pieces of her groin section flip 180°, peg together and clip into the top of the central groin panel for beast mode, but I don't see why it's necessary (it has precious little effect on the mobility of the legs in raptor mode) so I tend not to bother for fear of breaking the minuscule ball joints.
Articulation in both modes is excellent, with the same joints performing essentially the same function, with barely any unexpected restrictions. The hip skirts can easily be moved out of the way of the legs in robot mode, though having the tail pieces flopping around can make posing her a little frustrating. The raptor claw shoulder pads also have a tendency to pop off when posing the arms. I've seen several complaints about the lack of a bicep rotation joint but, honestly, I don't spend a lot of time trying to to get a figure's arms crossed, so I don't see what the fuss is about. I'd concede that it's a strange omission in this day and age, but as long as the arms aren't prone to breaking, I'm happy with ball jointed shoulders. Comera does also have a very slight shrug, thanks to a joint which is ostensibly there to open a space for the raptor's neck to clip into in beast mode, but raising the shoulders for robot mode restricts the movement of her head with the shoulder claws in place. There's also a small amount of ab crunch to supplement the full waist rotation, accessible by pulling the torso up above the waist. It looks as though her diaphragm should be able to lean further forward, given the gap underneath, but I'm not inclined to try forcing it. If I had a complaint about any of her robot mode joints it'd be over her neck, which is hinged at the base for some forward/backward tilt, then the head itself only rotates at the top of the neck - a ball joint may have been preferable, and I don't see why it wouldn't have been possible. Honestly, though, she's probably still more poseable than some of Hasbro's figures, and easily able to adopt poses which are dramatic, powerful and/or faintly sexy... if you like that sort of thing.
Beast mode has two double-hinges in the neck, as well as an opening jaw, and the tail has another pair of double-hinges, plus the additional joints available to robot mode if the tail is unpegged from her backside. These joints only allow the tail to be lifted or lowered - no side-to-side movement - but it's enough for a certain amount of expressiveness. I've found that she stands perfectly adequately on her feet in either mode, but the stand does allow her to stand on one leg, or more easily adopt a 'running' pose.
When the two Lost Exo Realm Femme-Dino-Bots were first revealed, and particularly when the first painted versions were shown, there was an outcry from certain quarters of the fandom about how unnecessarily and overtly sexualised their bodies were... and I don't entirely disagree. Comera's paint job suggests a red bustier, knickers and suspenders set over a metallic grey chassis, while Echara's appears to be a black bra, knickers and suspenders set over a matte red body, with metallic, thigh-high boots. Both have obvious robo-boobs, which cannot be mistaken for functional detail and are rotated 180° to be concealed within the body in beast mode, and both have very deliberately sculpted robo-buttocks of equally dubious purpose. Neither really attempts to be subtle about it but, let's face it, Hasbro were even more overt with their original dominatrix-styled live action movie Arcee... and if people are going to start complaining about 'sexy-looking' femme-bots, then all of 'em will end up looking even boxier than RID2015 Strongarm, rather than sleek and curvy, like TFPrime Arcee, and there would be far fewer people bemoaning that it took thirty years to get a 'proper' G1 Arcee toy when her animation model's transformation was just plain impossible... And don't go trying to tell me G1 Arcee was a maternal figure unless you're willing to concede that just made her a robo-MILF.
I really like Comera, despite her being a bloody ridiculous Dinobot, to the point where I'm seriously considering getting Echara as well - both would display very well with my MP Grimlock, I think, and would form an excellent counterpoint to the likes of MMC's Feral Queen and Nero Queen, or Perfect Effect's Aranea. The only thing holding me back is a QC issue that led to one ankle on mine breaking within about 24 hours of first getting her our of the box:
The entire ball joint sheared off at the root, just from rotating the foot during transformation, and it's actually easy to see why: the ball joint is attached to only one half of the lower leg, and the socket was just that little bit too tight. It was a very similar issue to the one I had with the neck joint on Perfect Effect's Leonidas, which remains unresolved to this day. The good news is that I'd bought Comera on import from TFSource, so I got in touch with them to ask what could be done. They quickly responded that they would contact FansProject and request a replacement leg, even agreeing to replace both legs when I later found that the other ankle showed signs of plastic stress at the same point. It ended up taking about three months, but they kept me up to date with their progress all the way, the replacement parts arrived safely, earlier this month, and Comera is now back on display on my shelves... Even so, I'm a little reluctant to order Echara if there's any chance I'll have the same problem with her simply due to the way that part of the leg was designed, and it seems unlikely FansProject would redesign part of a figure that's been available for well over a year. That said, based on what I've seen on the fan forums, my issue is hardly widespread - I don't recall seeing any other complaints of breakages at the ankle. And, on the upside, if I do choose to pick her up, and if I can get her from TFSource as well, at least I know the after-sale support will be exemplary, if I need it.
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