(Femme-Bot Friday #61)
Cleverly taking a leaf out of Takara Tomy's books, Iron Factory took their 'Pink Assassin' small-scale Arcee-analogue mold and very quickly turned it into their very own take on the G1 cartoon character, Nightbird. It seems like a rather niche move, and certainly strange as a standalone release when their Elita-1 analogue was packaged with another figure (irritating as it is to my OCD, their Combiner Hunters Arcee, IF EX-16H, being packaged with IF EX-24 War Giant Commander made much more sense), but it's another Third Party Femme-Bot, so it was on my want list as soon as I became aware of its existance.Packaging:
Much the same size as Pink Assassin's box, but in a darker, largely monochromatic colourscheme, this box features a grand total of five images of the figure inside - vehicle mode bedecked with some of her weapons, and an action pose for the robot on the front, and three robot poses on the back showing the full selection of weapons. The grey background features a similar texture effect to that on Pink Assassin's packaging, but the layers have been corrected, so the photos are nice and clear. With the pictures on the back of the box, I'm surprised how small they are considering the amount of space available - with better organisation of the images, they could have been made a lot larger...
There's a reference on the front and back of the box to 'The 8th SGC Celebration' which, I gather, is some sort of convention... though I've been unable to find out anything about it, not even an explanation of what 'SGC' stands for in this context. Not a single mention I've found of this figure online says anything more about it. Night Assassin was evidently an event exclusive, though.
Inside the box, the figure is contained within a covered plastic tray along with her weapons, an articulated stand and her instruction sheet. The stand is exactly the same as the one supplied with Pink Assassin, and the instructions are just as unnecessary... though they are at least well-printed.
Vehicle Mode:
It should come as no surprise to see that there are no remolded parts on Night Assassin's vehicle mode - it's the same Cybertronian-style shell at the front with the same legs wrapped over the back, just with a new paint job and a different selection of weapons. The vehicle looks great, fully and sharply painted over in silver and dark gunmetal, but the bright yellow cockpit canopy seems a bit stark and out of place, not to mention fuzzy around the edges. The only other vehicle-specific paintwork is a slightly lighter shade of gunmetal applied to the central part of the vehicle's front and to the recessed 'headlights' in the silver parts on either side. It's a simple, but effective paint job and probably better suits the look of the vehicle than the pink and white original.
The translucent yellow accessories - being somewhat larger and more plentiful that those supplied with Pink Assassin - detract from the vehicle and make it look even more untidy when they're all attached. Providing some stability to the back end in place of Pink Assassin's pistol, Night Assassin has a large sword, while her sai and shuriken plug into her ankles or hands. Since the sword's presence is a necessity to complete vehicle mode, she'll always have to have the long blade sticking out the back of the vehicle and, to be honest, plugging in all the weapons does serve one useful purpose: it serves as a distraction from the utter mess that is the back of this small, simple vehicle mode... but is causing one mess to distract from another a particularly good strategy?
The additional weight of her weapons makes her even more back heavy, so the fact that she can't attach to the display stand in this mode seems more than a little ridiculous... Certainly not Iron Factory's finest moment in terms of display possibilities, but I guess they can't be expected to have remolded the figure to compensate for the excess of armament on this one.
Robot Mode:
As with Takara Tomy's reworking of its Deluxe class Arcee into Nightbird, Iron Factory's Night Assassin is basically the same robot, but with a slightly remodelled, vaguely 'shinobi shozoku'-style chest piece and a new head. Both aim for similarity to the terrible animation model from the G1 cartoon, though the head doesn't go so far as to attempt to look as though she's wearing some sort of ninja hoodie. It's a very much simplified 'helmet and mask' design, revealing her two large, yellow eyes. Simple as it is, though, the sculpt of the helmet is surprisingly intricate, with the brow and cheek parts looking like additional layers of armour over the base helmet. They also seem to have tried to give her a more severe look with the angles of the brow section of the helmet, but the large, round eyes work against that and she still looks cute.
The biggest difference between the two Assassin figures is that there's barely any unpainted plastic on show here... at least, that's how it appears as the darker grey looks far too finely sparkly to be bare plastic. However, if there is any bare plastic on this model, that's it. The silver paint on the elbow joints shows signs of wearing away in places, but the darker grey is pristine everywhere. As one would expect with a Nightbird analogue, purple has been used on her waist and her mouthplate, but the animation model's star is absent from her waist because that part is common to all the variants of this mold. They could have added a blob of yellow paint anyway, I suppose, but the absence of supporting sculpted detail would have made it look odd.
Weapons-wise, Night Assassin is pretty much spoilt for choice, up to a point. Packaged with two sai, two shuriken and a long sword, she can wield any two weapons and store two more using the slots in her forearms. This will always leave her with one weapon loose, since she has no additional sockets or any other means to, for example, sheath the sword. The closest option is the socket on her backside intended for attaching her to the display stand, but only the shuriken fit there, and using it to holster any weapon means she can't use the stand. Also, while she can wield any of the the blades reasonably convincingly, the ninja stars have a single, long peg set off-centre on the back, so it doesn't look as if she's really holding them, more that she's getting ready to flip them, coin-toss style.
Night Assassin - and Takara Tomy's Nightbird - are fine examples of how different a figure can look with only a couple of changes to the mold and a completely different paint job. Were I more invested in Nightbird as a character, I might have more objections to the number of parts she shares with Pink Assassin, but it's all very neatly comparable to Takara Tomy's take on Nightbird using the Arcee mold. The paint job alone would have made them look sufficiently different, so the new head, chest and weapons are a bonus.
Iron Factory's Femme-Bots are something of an acquired taste - perhaps moreso than Mastermind Creations' Azalea and variants - not least because their aesthetic has so little in common with Iron Factory's other output thusfar. Personally, I'm a big fan... but I acknowledge that I'm a little biased when it comes to Femme-Bots. I currently have only one Iron Factory figure that isn't a Femme-Bot - IF ED-14 Ultimate Commander, which I actually only bought for the accompanying figure, IF EX-16A Alleria, another variation on this mold - and I can't say they all fit together particularly well. I like Iron Factory's work generally, and would quite like to own some more (not least Lord Scorpion)... but, so far, only their handful of Femme-Bots have felt like essential purchases for me
Weighing in at about £30 when I bought her, she was over 50% more expensive than the other Iron Factory Femme-Bots in my collection, but that's partly because she was an event exclusive. That said, I dread to think how expensive she may become on the secondary market, so I doubt I'd try to hunt her down now if I hadn't acquired her early. She's cool, and looks awesome posed alongside Shrike's Feather, but I have to admit she's more of an OCD purchase than a must-have.
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