2020 Retrospective

To say I wasn't looking forward to writing a summing up of this year would be an understatement. Not only has everything this year seemingly conspired to take the wind out of my sails but, most of the time, if felt as though there was precious little good to balance it all out.

Still, it's a tradition, even if I did let it slip last year. Time to get back on track...

On Femme-Bots and Fandoms

I mentioned in my post about Big Firebird Toy's debut TransFormers figure and Arcee-analogue, Nicee, that I'd started to write a long rant about various issues surrounding the figure, but that I removed it to keep the focus of that post on the figure rather than the reactions it generated...

 

However, it was rather a long post, and I'd kept adding to it over the course of a few weeks, so I figured I should save it and make it a post of its own.

 

After all, I can't very well call myself a Femme-Bot Fanatic without having a few opinions on the subject, right?

...And so, for better or worse, here is that post...

Big Firebird Toy EX-01 Nicee

(Femme-Bot Friday #74)

Because of course I was going to buy this. It's Femme-Bot Friday's raison d'être, innit?

Big Firebird Toy seem to have been around for quite some time, but only recently decided to join the TransFormers Third Party community, thrusting themselves into fans' awareness with a unique take on Arcee which set tongues wagging and tempers flaring from the earliest concept images. To call it 'divisive' or 'controversial' would be an understatement, considering the backlash some fans faced for daring to point out that its design was... shall we say... a little racy? This is, of course, nothing new... but while most G1-style Arcee toys are, to a greater or lesser degree, criticised for being action figures hiding inside vehicle shells which inevitably just fold up onto the robot's back, this one doesn't even try to conceal the fact. Quite the reverse - it practically celebrates taking the easy route, confident enough that the allure of Nicee's robot mode and its ability to adopt all manner of sexy poses will make up for any perceived shortfall in her vehicle mode or the complexity of her engineering.

All of which to say that it's difficult to talk about this model without, to an extent, taking a side in an ongoing discussion which has seen at least one 'fan' forum ban photographic images of said model... And, me being a self-styled Femme-Bot Fanatic, you can be pretty certain before we start that I'm broadly in favour of it. All that remains is the details and caveats.

The only other thing to note is that I considered - for quite some time - posting a write-up of this figure on my other (somewhat neglected) toy blog, treating it as something apart from the TransFormers brand... however, in the end, I decided that would be disingenuous... Instead, I'm going to ask my girlfriend to write her own post about Nicee. Never let it be said that I'm not open to cynical, gimmicky posts.

A Valuable PSA

But not from me this time. While I'd imagine anyone making their way to my little blog will already be aware of YouTube and the myriad TFTubers operating therein, I feel it's worth drawing special attention to this very timely video from The Lazy Eyebrow.

I've only bought a handful of figures from the War for Cybertron series, and have been lucky to find only minor QC issues thusfar, but I'm genuinely shocked by the shoddiness of some of the figures I didn't buy. On the one hand, this video makes me feel glad I didn't waste my money on them but, on the other hand, it's a seriously shitty legacy for John Warden.

JustiToys WST Dino(ro)bots

Given that the current vogue in Knockoffs is to oversize everything, it seems strange to look back on what JustiToys decided to do in the mid-2000s, some years after the appearance of Takara's Smallest Transforming TransFormers line of blind-boxed, miniaturised G1 toys. STT ended somewhat prematurely, with only a handful of characters under its belt, but clearly captured the imagination of some of the Third Parties. None were as notable or as ambitious as JustiToys, who released a complete set of their own World's Smallest Dinobots over the course of three years.

But rather than being simplified versions of the original toys with even more limited articulation, these were downsized duplicates, scaled to fit alongside STT figures according to the G1 cartoon so that each of them towered over the official toys' robot modes.

I've never made any secret of my disdain for the very concept of the G1 Dinobots, but I was fascinated by the STT line, and these were just interesting enough to get my attention, not least because I'd never owned any of the original Dinobots myself, but had handled a couple of those owned by schoolfriends back in the day.

Since I don't want to prolong the agony of writing about more Dinobots, I'm going to deal with all five of them as a complete set, even though their releases were staggered and each was individually boxed.