Iron Factory IF EX-16A Alleria (aka The Lady Commander)

(Femme-Bot Friday #67)

There comes a point in my collecting where I realise that my OCD about certain things - particularly Femme-Bots in recent years - has led me to buy essentially the same damned thing over and over again, and I'm hit by a wave of buyers' remorse. It started to happen as I bought Mastermind Creations' original Azalea and several of the repaints (though I do find that I still rather want Eupatorium), so I really should have seen it coming with Iron Factory's Pink Assassin repaints... But when I saw that their take on Elita-1 would be a pack-in with their Ultimate Commander (a sort of combination of a Cybertronian Optimus Prime and the Godbomber accessory minus its own individual robot mode), I found myself mesmerised into ordering it, despite having no interest in the main figure in the box.

So far, I've fought off the urge to buy their Combaticon leader Onslaught-analogue just for its extremely tempting 'Pink Assassin Combiner Hunter' pack-in, so let's have a quick look at this one to see if any buyers' remorse is justified...

Vehicle Mode:
Pink Assassin lived up to her name quite admirably, but Iron Factory's take on Elita-1 takes it one step further into pinkness by having all Arcee's white parts replaced by pale pink. What was a sort of pastel pink on Pink Assassin is now a punchy, vibrant magenta, while the cockpit is painted over with a darker gunmetal colour versus the original's anaemic, pinkish silver. In many other ways, vehicle mode is quite lacking - there's no pearlescent paint applied anywhere, the light sections on either side of the nose are unpainted bar the gunmetal headlights, the central section of the nose is unpainted, the 'screw head' details on either side are unpainted, and every other paint application is primarily for robot mode. That said, the pink paint on the armour over the bridges of the feet and the raised strip down each shin do help make vehicle mode look a little more interesting.

The back end is, on balance, even more of a disaster area than on either of the other versions of this mold I own. It's a jumble of pale pink, magenta and silver painted parts - including the robot's extremely visible hands - exacerbated by the necessity to attach her rifle, as it's an important part of the vehicle's structural integrity. Sadly, due to the way vehicle mode comes together, the barrel of the rifle always ends up pointed downward over the vehicle's nose, so the handles of Alleria's twin axes - attached with their blades at the back - end up functioning better than the rifle as front-facing guns. The larger gun has the additional effect of making vehicle mode even more back-heavy than other versions of the mold, to the point where it's effectively impossible to have her laying flat on any surface... and the fact that she cannot be attached to a stand in this form makes that even more problematic.

I'd have to say that the axes make for better vehicle mode accessories than Pink Assassin's swords, because the spike on the back of each one ends up looking like a fin in the style of a 1960s Caddillac, but I'm a little puzzled by the choice of translucent orange plastic for these parts, given the preponderance of pink everywhere else. It's not that it clashes, it's just not an interesting contrast like the translucent cyan of Pink Assassin's weapons or the yellow of Night Assassin's ninja gubbins.

One of the main reasons I've thusfar held off buying Eupatorium (other than the ridiculous cost of the figure now on the secondary market) is that there's too little variation in colour on the figure, and that's most apparent in her vehicle mode, where even the translucent red blends seamlessly into the opaque. That's not the case with Alleria, thankfully, but I'd nevertheless have appreciated a greater variation in her colourscheme, or a few additional touches of paint to bring out the details.


Robot Mode:
One thing I really appreciated about Iron Factory's Night Assassin, versus Pink Assassin, was the fact that the upper body as well as the head were remolded so as to be unique to each variant. What's surprising here is that Alleria gets not only a new head and chest, but new shoulders as well, featuring Elita-1's traditional gunbarrels. They're angled inward, towards her head, so they look a little odd, but it's nice to see that level of attention to the original character model on what's essentially a quick and simple repackaging of an existing figure. Also interesting to note that, as well as the silver paint applied to the gunbarrels, Alleria has a third shade of pink, applied as paintwork to the forearm fins and chest. It's a sort of mid-ground between the super-saturated magenta prevalent on vehicle mode and the pale pink of her head and limbs, and so seems a little flat, but it does help define her forearms a little better.

With extensive applications of silver paint on her thighs, along with silver on her belly and hands, and the magenta on her shins the bridges of her feet, Allera appears to be the most elaborately painted iteration of the mold so far, though Night Assassin is still the prettiest thanks to her extensive coat of silver and dark gunmetal.

The rifle packaged with this figure is, in my opinion, rather oversized, particularly at the back. The purpose of a stock, after all, is to provide support for a rifle, by resting on the shoulder. The stock on this rifle extends too far back for that to be possible and, in a natural firing position, will have to rest on the outside of her upper arm. The arms are mobile enough that her other arm can offer support at the front of the rifle, but there are no other pegs for her to grip, so the open hand simply has to rest below the forend. The axes, meanwhile, look decidedly too vicious for such a cute-looking Femme-Bot, with their hooked blades and spikes. They also feature applications of gunmetal paint around the central section of the handles so, in overall form, they almost seem to be intended to suggest a weapon that can transform between Alleria's axes and Pink Assassin's swords.

The head sculpt is, for my money, the best interpretation of Elita-1 I've seen on a toy so far. Sure the face stereotypically cute and vacant, like Iron Factory's other Femme-Bots, but the proportions of the helmet and its protrusions actually suit the size of the head and the face, where even Hasbro's PotP Elita-1 - let alone the Elita-Infin1te/Orthia head - looked a little unwieldy. Granted, the animation model changed size from scene to scene, and her depiction in comics has been just as varied, but this is the first time I've seen a head that really fits. It has the same white face, blue eyes, and blank expression of Pink Assassin and Windsaber, but a slightly more elaborate helmet featuring the weird dome protrusions from her jug 'ears' and the blocky, angled antennae, as well as a central crest ending with a magenta-painted brow plate.


Surprisingly, there's a lot to recommend Alleria, despite her being essentially identical to Pink/Night Assassin in vehicle mode, with the only changes to its form being the paint job and the weapon attachment that holds her legs in place. The changes to the robot mode's upper body ensure she appears unique in a lineup with the other figures, and the head sculpt, while featuring the same bland face applied to all of Iron Factory's Femme-Bots, clearly expresses her identity as an Elita-1 analogue. I'm not entirely convinced by her weapons - either the style or the colour - but they're well-designed even if they don't entirely fit the figure.

I think my buyers' remorse in this case comes down more to the fact that I had to buy Ultimate Commander to get this figure than the fact that it's a minimal remold and recolouring of a figure I already owned two iterations of. Iron Factory really need to carefully consider how they release their Femme-Bots in future, though. If Pink and Night Assassin each got solo releases, and Windsaber gets a solo release both in her original form and her Combiner Hunters colourscheme, why was Alleria not considered worthy of a solo release? Or is she simply intended to be a strong purchase incentive for Ultimate Commander? I can almost understand releasing the Combiner Hunter version of Pink Assassin along with IF EX-24C Commander/Cannon Chariot (aka Onslaught), but surely the better option would have been to package the CH repaints of Pink Assassin and Windsaber together, perhaps giving Iron Factory a reason to produce a Chromia analogue?

Overall, I think Alleria might actually be my favourite of the Arcee-analogue bodytypes, if only because Elita-1 is a distinctly underrepresented character in the official TransFormers toyline. She certainly doesn't put me off owning the CH repaint of Pink Assassin but, if I end up shelling out for IF EX-24C, will I then feel compelled to seek out IF EX-22 and 23?