(Femme-Bot Friday #72)
Having bought Comera and almost immediately broken one of her ankles, I was rather more dubious about picking up her slightly-remolded sister figure. Aside from a handful of cosmetic changes, they were identical, and it seemed likely that the ankles on Echara would be just as troublesome. Add my general disdain for Dinobots, and I'd pretty much convinced myself not to bother.Then TFSource had a sale, late in the summer of 2019, and she was essentially half price. Where a Femme-Bot is concerned, that's an offer I couldn't refuse.
Clever/Sneaky TFSource. Now I have another Dino-Femme-Bot in my collection.
Packaging:
Echara's packaging is essentially the same as Comera's in terms of size and layout but, obviously, has a unique character logo, product shots and CGI images. They really are nice presentation boxes, but I can't think of anything special to say about this one... It does the job.
Beast Mode:
There are very few changes between Comera and Echara's beast modes - the bodies appear identical, with only minor differences in paint applications - black in the shoulder details and kneecaps here, red on Comera; red and black at the hips here, smaller applications of red only on Comera. They even have identical tails and claws, both tails gold chromed and with red tips, both sets of claws have their talons painted gold. The only differences in sculpt are the heads and the toes, as that's broadly enough to differentiate between a Velociraptor and a Pachycephalosaurus. Echara's belly features more red than Comera's, but both feature the same strange turnbine-like details on the chest.
The new head features the characteristic 'skull cap' and a more beak-like snout, with the typical Dinobot style of gold paint over the majority of the head, red for the eyes and black paint for some of the surrounding linework, with the cap emphasised with silver. Of the two, I think Echara's head is probably closer to the source creature, though it's lacking the frill of small horns on the back of the head. Like Comera's head, the mouth can open, so she's quite expressive, but Echara has no scupted teeth. It's just a shame neither were articulated to let their heads turn as well as tilting, given that there are two 'bending' joints in the neck, which permit a decent range of 'curl'. The new toes are all the same size and unpainted, with the ankles and heel spurs featuring the same gold paintwork as Comera.
I think, on balance, I actually prefer Echara's beast mode... though there really isn't much in it. I think Comera looks a bit cartoonish, by comparison.
Robot Mode:
Where Comera's paintwork made her look like a robot in a bathing suit, Echara looks like a full-on Dominatrix in a mask. The colourscheme suggests a red body with a black bra, knickers and suspenders set, thigh-length metallic 'boots' and full, shoulder-length metallic 'gloves'. It's an interesting look, certainly, but not exactly subtle. I seem to recall both figures were pretty controversial at the time, though to nowhere near the same extent as more recent Femme-Bots such as Big Firebird's Nicee and Flame Toys' Windblade kit.
The first major difference between the two figures is in their armaments: Comera came with a pair of handguns and a pair of traditional Dinobot energy swords. Echara seems almost to be the Dino-Femme-Bot version of Nightbird, in that she comes with a pair of shuriken (rather oversized for ninja stars, if you ask me), a pair of kunai (short daggars often depicted as throwing weapons but, apparently, more correctly used as pitons for scaling walls) and a pair of sai (larger daggers/short swords with two large prongs on either side, which can be used to trap and deflect an opponent's weapon) each molded in much the same metallic grey plastic as Echara's arms and legs. These can all be held in her standard 5mm grip, stored on the hip armour, or on the sockets running along the insides of the beast mode's neck. They don't look as impressive as Comera's swords - I wonder why the sai or shuriken, at least, weren't molded in translucent orange/red - but they're pretty good for what they are, and I think Echara looks particularly impressive with her weapons fanned out over her shoulders. The shuriken, being held via 5mm pegs in the centre of one side rather than by the points themselves, look a pretty silly - even when Takara Tomy's Nightbird did much the same, the peg was offset from the centre of the star, which helped a little. She also has the two large, black rifles that were packaged with Comera, but these are more useful joined together as a stand than as guns, as they're very large and unwieldy.
All things considered, and particularly her Dominatrix colourscheme, I'm almost surprised she wasn't packaged with some sort of whip...
The head sculpt is not entirely unique, as it turns out - the helmet, in fact, appears to be identical to Comera's, albeit with a touch of metallic blue paint applied to the central crest. The face is of the more robotic, battlemasked variety and consequently quite plain, though the chin strap and eyes are painted metallic blue and stand out well against the black plastic. Despite the lack of overtly feminine features to the head, there's still no mistaking that this is Femme-Bot.
While FansProjects' Dino-Femme-Bots were in no way groundbreaking - either in terms of their engineering or their presentation of the Femme-Bot concept - and while both suffer from poorly designed ankle joints, they are decent figures, and just about distinct enough to warrant purchasing both, if they tickle your fancy as well as they did mine. The ball joints on this one are, thankfully, marginally looser than Comera's, but I'm still not going to risk too many transformations, I think - no doubt TFSource would be able to provide replacement parts should it become necessary, but FansProject have all but disappeared and shipping might be a problem at this point, so I'd rather not push my luck.
In general, their articulation is looking slightly dated these days, despite being only four years old... but, aside from bicep swivel and sturdier ankle joints with greater range, there aren't too many improvements that really need to be made. The partsforming aspect - particularly with the beast claws - is quite jarring, but even Hasbro have resorted to that old trick, even in their latest toyline.
Of the two, I think I prefer Echara's beast mode and robot head, but Comera's robot mode colourscheme and her weapons - at least in the presentation stakes. Had any of Echara's weapons been made to resemble Comera's energy swords, they'd have looked far cooler.
While I'm glad to have the two large guns that double as a stand, I've found that neither Echara nor Comera actually need a stand. As a general rule, if their articulation allows them to adopt a pose, they can normally be tweaked to balance sufficiently well on their feet... Pegging them into a large base would allow them to stand on one leg, but that's not something I'd generally do for display on my shelves.
I've actually been debating where to place the two of them on my shelves, considering my Third Party shelf is already overflowing, and I've already placed some of the Third Party movie figures alongside both Studio Series and Masterpiece Movie figures... Perhaps I'll place them with Masterpiece Grimlock...
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