(Femme-Bot Friday #74)
Because of course I was going to buy this. It's Femme-Bot Friday's raison d'être, innit?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.
Well, props to Big Firebird Toy for being so... er... up-front about what they see as this toy's main selling point(s). The front of the box is largely blank white space, with an image focussed on Nicee's chest taking up most of the righthand side, and the figure's product number and name stamped in pink metallic foil off to the left and centred vertically. Just above this is a highly sophisticated logo for the toy consisting of two opposing crescents... Can't imagine how they came up with that...
The rest of the box is a bit more traditional, with a cropped closeup of the robot on one side, and her vehicle mode on the other, while the back features a small array of product shots demonstrating the accessories and display options. It's actually quite an understated box - apart from the overstatement of robo-boobs on the front - as well as being nice and sturdy. Generally well-presented, though there is an undercurrent of seediness thanks to that close-up boob shot. It reminds me of something... the focus on those particular 'assets', when only a fraction of the face is shown, reminds me of something I've seen elsewhere, but I can't place it... possibly one of the action figure/miniature sex dolls from Phicen? It also occurs to me that the fact that the box is basically white with a pale colour print - where a lot of other Third Party figures tend to have largely black or grey boxes - that it looks a little bit like the TransFormers Kiss Players boxes, albeit square rather than having a corner cut off, and without any windows to the figure inside.
Inside the box, Nicee is in a two-part plastic tray, with a small sheet of protective plastic between the upper and lower parts of her torso, I'd guess to prevent paint rub. All her accessories are stored in their own two-part plastic tray, to one side of the figure. Her instructions and a Collectors' card are in a separate plastic bag. I've bought quite a few Third Party figures over the years, but few have been presented in so lavish and self-assured a manner. Big Firebird Toys are clearly very happy with their product, and wanted to ensure its container had presentation to match.
Vehicle Mode:
Now, by this point in my TransFormers collection - 36 years and still, broadly speaking, counting - I've seen a lot of Arcees... From the unproduced prototypes of Generation 1 to the limited run repaints in and from the ongoing Generations line, to the reimaginings in the movies, TF Animated and TF Prime, to the myriad Third Party offerings already available. It's safe to say, though, that I've never seen an Arcee as slick-looking in vehicle mode as Nicee. She's equal parts reimagined G1 and gritty reboot of Penelope Pitstop's iconic Compact Pussycat from Wacky Races, with a subtle nod to the positively alien-looking Misuoka Orochi. Whoever designed this vehicle mode really needs to get a job as a concept car designer for one of the more adventurous manufacturers because, while Nicee's vehicle mode is clearly not flawless in the service of its robot mode, this is an utterly gorgeous car. Remade as a scale model car without the need to accommodate any shifting robot parts, even by Matchbox, I'd certainly consider buying something that looked like this.
The natural thing to do here would be to compare it to the likes of TF Legends Arcee and FansToys' Rouge, as the closest official and Third Party alternatives I currently own. The most obvious thing to note is that a side view of Nicee bears an uncanny similarity to the Generations/TF Legends version because their legs and wheels are handled in much the same way. Rouge covers her entire, tangled robot mode in vehicle shell, and has a more complete-looking back end, but then has the robot's head peeking out from under the front of the car, where both this and the Gen/TFL toy keep her head better concealed. On balance, this looks like a stylised take on the Gen/TFL toy, but that's not as disappointing as it might first sound, because it's such a beautiful car.
When I referred to the Mitsuoka Orochi, it's mainly the front that calls that car to mind... Though Nicee admittedly looks even more stylised - perhaps less snake-like, and more a sort of robotic Hammerhead Shark or Manta Ray because it's the outer parts, rather than the central section of the bonnet, which protrude furthest forward. The bonnet itself is styled very much like the Gen/TFL toy, with a raised central trapezoid that has a slot cut into the front and a vent at the back, just ahead of the windscreen. Her front wings look quite organic, the headlights looking more like eyes, with translucent turquoise plastic shells over teardrop-shaped indentations, containing raised, circular 'lamp' details resembling irises and pupils. The front grille is split between three sections - the main grille, with its sculpted grid design, occupies the central section, but the front wings sweep inward to what look like small 'scoops' to supplement the grille. I also like that the front wings feature 'stepped' ridges leading from the headlights to these scoops, adding to the organic look.
The sides and central section are a bit of a mixed bag, but the decision to follow the template of Takara Tomy's excellent Deluxe class figure really pays off as, even with the pink, incongruously angular knee chunk, the curves running down the sides work pretty well. It's not perfect, and it really doesn't take a trained eye to identify the robot's shapely legs, but they're about as well-integrated with the back end as they are on the Gen/TFL toy. One feature I really appreciate on the front wings is that there are small vents on the pink sections with subtle highlighting in white paint, which complement the vent on the main bonnet section. The cockpit is a little odd, as the seat-backs are quite high, but then the seats themselves end up at about the same level as the steering wheel. It looks very weird from the sides but, viewed from an angle, perspective mostly corrects the obvious problem. The dashboard isn't excessively detailed, but there's enough there to make it look like the sort of futuristic instrument panel a vehicle looking like this would probably have. It could have done with some paintwork to highlight certain parts, or perhaps they're simply hoping that Reprolabels will produce a set of dashboard display stickers.
The back end is... somewhat less successful than the other views, as the robot's groin (specifically, her robo-knickers) and hips are on full display below the translucent turquoise tail lights and the rear grille, and it really does look rather untidy. Not to the extent of ToyWorld's disastrous Leia, but it's certainly an underdeveloped part of vehicle mode. It doesn't help that I took my photos after transforming Nicee for the very first time, and I can see that I failed to properly align either of her hips (the horizontal groove is supposed to line up with the tab protruding from the die-cast part of the leg), though this didn't actually cause any significant difficulties in getting her tabbed together. Some of the seams are quite apparent here - particularly the two tail pieces that plug into the robot's shield in the middle, and hook around the rims of the upper thigh armour - but it's a better result than I've seen with some other Third Party figures. The central section at the rear - the part that becomes the robot's shield - is nicely designed and complements the style of the front end well, with its own little grille section. Arcee's traditional nacelle is represented with a slender, ornamental fin/spike, though its fitting isn't perfectly straight on mine.
So, on balance, vehicle mode's design is a bit more engaging that the Gen/TFL toy, but not as 'complete' as that of Rouge... though that's not necessarily a bad thing, given the nightmare that is dealing with Rouge's vehicle shell during transformation. It's a whole lot better than iGear's ancient and horrific effort, and substantially better than ToyWorld's Leia and Mastermind Creations' Ocular Max version of Azalea, but it doesn't change my opinion that Rouge is the definitive Third Party, Masterpiece-scale Arcee figure.
Where it does improve on that figure, though, is the paint job. The metallic pink covering most of the vehicle body is very eye-catching, and the white is subtly pearlised to complement the metallic sheen. I'm not 100% sold on the use of translucent turquoise for the shells over the lights, or the windscreen, but even that adds character to the vehicle... I might have preferred silver paint - or chrome - behind the lights on the front and back, and perhaps having some translucent red for the tail lights, but the consistent use of turquoise was likely a choice dictated by the budget. There is a seam across the bonnet, roughly in line with the split between the white and pink sections of the front wings, but the two parts fit together quite well, and I'm not overly fussed by small seams, especially where the ridges on other parts, such as the central section behind the cockpit, have a similar effect. Vehicle mode overall is utterly gorgeous, and something Big Firebird should be very proud of.
Other thing worthy of mention is that Nicee has rubber tyres on wheels which roll reasonably well... though the collection of robot parts on the underside don't offer a lot of ground clearance. Looking at her from the underside reminds me a little of a scene from one of the Final Destination movies, where a gymnast slips off the uneven parallel bars, and ends up with her spine looped back on itself... This isn't quite so horrific, but you can clearly see Nicee's entire torso at the back, with the legs on either side, while her head and arms are up at the front of the car - her spine essentially pulled up out of her shoulders - with her hands reaching back and essentially cupping her robo-boobs... It shows that Nicee is really not significantly different from the Gen/TFL Deluxe class figure, even in the details like this.
Robot Mode:
At first glance, Nicee cuts a very fine figure of a stylised Arcee - the requisite colourscheme is there, albeit not followed slavishly, and the backpack, while rather more extensive and elaborate than the basic G1 Arcee, has the required protrusions from her back, behind her shoulders, while being of a low-enough profile that it doesn't completely obscure one's view of the robot from behind. The robot is slender and shapely... but that's kind of where the most obvious deviations from the typical Arcee occur. Instead of having a modest, angular chest, she has a large, rounded chest with its pronounced cleavage barely contained within a skimpy, metallic pink armoured bustier. Instead of a simple waist featuring blocks of tech detailing, she has shapely armour panels with a few defined angles and curves, along with a shallow navel. The typical, angular style of groin has been replaced by a smooth, curved pair of robo-knickers with a suspicious-looking groove running between the legs. Aside from the large, angular collar, it wouldn't take much more than a different paint job to suggest this was a human action figure wearing an armoured bikini.
However, the arms and legs are rather more clearly robotic, with bulky armour on the shoulders and smooth, stylised shells for the arms, and the forearms in particular resembling those of TF Prime Arcee, just with a few more sharp edges here and there - a cross section would be almost diamond-shaped. The legs have been designed to look as if they're made up of a greater number of separate layers of intersecting and overlapping armour parts, and the effect is very well done. Strategically placed grooves and gaps between plates really bring her to life, along with the exposed inner workings of the hips, knees and ankles (all of which feature some die-cast parts for - one would hope - enhanced durability) really helps to balance things out given how organic her upper body looks. The backs of the legs - so often empty voids on Hasbro's current output - are equally well done, with the vehicle mode's rear wheels embedded in the backs of the thighs and a protruding armour plate on the calves giving the illusion of simulated musculature inside. I was a little dubious about her high-heeled feet at first, particularly due to their overtly pointy-toed shoe-like design, but they're well detailed and offer a surprisingly stable footprint. While the armour plate over the bridge of the foot is not a separately-articulated piece, it's located in a position where it looks convincing whatever the feet are doing.
Paintwork retains the vehicle mode's sheen for both the metallic pink and pearlised white, and there's very little of any other colour present. The die-cast metal parts were given a dark, glossy finish, and the grey plastic visible at the hips and elbows, as well as in the structural parts of her backpack, is about all there is on the body... With a less spectacular choice of finish, she'd look quite dull since she lacks the typical tech detail on the belly and the variation in tones of pink. Big Firebird have made some very wise choices, and gone for what could almost be described as a 'less is more' approach. The ability to pose not only the main 'nacelle' components of her backpack, but the bonnet/windscreen section and rear wing/tail light parts means she can look more traditionally Arcee-style, or go all-out for a feminised anime mecha look with very little effort.
The nacelles and the rear wings are all on ball joints which are tight enough to hold whatever position they're arranged in, yet not so tight it feels as though they might break if handled too roughly. Each of the three 'levels' of backpack is hinged to one degree or another, so they can hang down close to her back or stick out like some kind of propulsion system. The front wings of the car can also be detached from the car bonnet piece and plugged into the underside of the dashboard part of her backpack, to create a bulbous 'skirt' effect. Naturally, this hampers the movement of the legs in some directions, but it actually looks surprisingly good, particularly once aligned with the wing sections, and with the shield replaced in its vehicle mode position behind the car seats, creating a five-segment skirt that wraps around the back from one side to the other. The backpack isn't perfectly adaptable, but it's low-key compared both to other Third Party Arcees and most of Hasbro's attempts at the Deluxe size class... It's also, arguably, better looking than the official Masterpiece version's backpack.
Nicee's accessories are nothing particularly special, but they're well designed to fit the aesthetic of the figure and, in some cases, stow effectively within it. The sword, molded in the pearlised white plastic and painted with touches of pink, looks OK, but a little weedy, like a fencing foil, rather than the beefy blades we've come to expect these giant alien robots to wield. The pistol has very little scuplted detail, so it looks like a NERF gun... though, at the very least, it's designed to look like one of their proper guns rather than one of those silly Rebelle guns intended to be specifically 'for girls'. For storage in either mode, it slots in to the back of the shield, and can remain there even while it's attached to Nicee's arm. The only clearance issues seem to come from the hands, which aren't that easy to angle out of the way. Curiously, the attachment peg is on the underside of the stylised fin, which can be reoriented such that the point hangs over the top of the shield, pointing back along the robot's arm... but this struck me as increasing the potential for accidental breakage, so I tend to leave mine in its vehicle mode position. The front section of the car can unpeg from her backpack entirely, via the grey plastic connection behind her neck. With the addition of a grey plastic handle part, pegged in behind the car's central grille, this then becomes Nicee's 'bow' weapon. Given its size, it can be awkward to pose her with - I didn't do a particularly good job, and will need to study photos taken by others, as the instructions aren't very clear on the orientation of her hand (the best fit would be the least comfortable for a human), or which hand to use for best results. The opposite hand, meanwhile, simply acts as something for the back end of the arrow to rest on, as none of them are really designed to hold it.
Along with all of this weaponry is another of the controversial aspects of this figure: an alternate chest section, replaceable by pulling up the shoulders and head, as if for transformation. This piece is essentially the same sculpt, but rendered with a soft rubber upper surface, for those individuals who prefer their robo-boobage to be squishy. Since the sculpt is the same, the real downside to substituting the default chest is that the rubber is stark white and lacks the pearlised finish of the hard plastic version, and thus looks incongruous with the rest of the robot.
The head sculpt is the next source of controversy, because Big Firebird Toy originally publicised this figure with a very G1-influenced head sculpt, which was later dropped from the package, following the much-discussed police raid on Chinese KO supremoes WeiJiang. Now, personally, I didn't think much of their 'proper' Arcee head - the proportions seemed a bit odd and the face a little pinched. It was never the selling point for me, so I wasn't upset by its omission. Several other fans, meanwhile, apparently cancelled their preorders in disgust, only for the design to be either conveniently 'leaked' to, or remade by an enterprising fan, so they could be released in limited quantities, and at additional expense. The default head is a cute, roboticised spin on the 'Magical Girl' look, with parts of the helmet resembling hair drooping around the face. It's actually remarkably reminiscent of the RAcaseal androids from Phantasy Star Online in terms of the overall shape of the head, but also particularly the face and eyes, with their wide-eyed, yet inscrutable expression. The downside is that, like the body, it's basically just white and pink, with a couple of touches of painted turquoise above the 'ears', and the eyes are translucent turquoise. Since there's no light getting piped in from outside, they end up looking dark and somewhat dead, but they can catch light from the front or sides to a small degree. Get the angle right, and one eye actually manages to pipe light toward the other.
At first glance, Nicee cuts a very fine figure of a stylised Arcee - the requisite colourscheme is there, albeit not followed slavishly, and the backpack, while rather more extensive and elaborate than the basic G1 Arcee, has the required protrusions from her back, behind her shoulders, while being of a low-enough profile that it doesn't completely obscure one's view of the robot from behind. The robot is slender and shapely... but that's kind of where the most obvious deviations from the typical Arcee occur. Instead of having a modest, angular chest, she has a large, rounded chest with its pronounced cleavage barely contained within a skimpy, metallic pink armoured bustier. Instead of a simple waist featuring blocks of tech detailing, she has shapely armour panels with a few defined angles and curves, along with a shallow navel. The typical, angular style of groin has been replaced by a smooth, curved pair of robo-knickers with a suspicious-looking groove running between the legs. Aside from the large, angular collar, it wouldn't take much more than a different paint job to suggest this was a human action figure wearing an armoured bikini.
However, the arms and legs are rather more clearly robotic, with bulky armour on the shoulders and smooth, stylised shells for the arms, and the forearms in particular resembling those of TF Prime Arcee, just with a few more sharp edges here and there - a cross section would be almost diamond-shaped. The legs have been designed to look as if they're made up of a greater number of separate layers of intersecting and overlapping armour parts, and the effect is very well done. Strategically placed grooves and gaps between plates really bring her to life, along with the exposed inner workings of the hips, knees and ankles (all of which feature some die-cast parts for - one would hope - enhanced durability) really helps to balance things out given how organic her upper body looks. The backs of the legs - so often empty voids on Hasbro's current output - are equally well done, with the vehicle mode's rear wheels embedded in the backs of the thighs and a protruding armour plate on the calves giving the illusion of simulated musculature inside. I was a little dubious about her high-heeled feet at first, particularly due to their overtly pointy-toed shoe-like design, but they're well detailed and offer a surprisingly stable footprint. While the armour plate over the bridge of the foot is not a separately-articulated piece, it's located in a position where it looks convincing whatever the feet are doing.
Paintwork retains the vehicle mode's sheen for both the metallic pink and pearlised white, and there's very little of any other colour present. The die-cast metal parts were given a dark, glossy finish, and the grey plastic visible at the hips and elbows, as well as in the structural parts of her backpack, is about all there is on the body... With a less spectacular choice of finish, she'd look quite dull since she lacks the typical tech detail on the belly and the variation in tones of pink. Big Firebird have made some very wise choices, and gone for what could almost be described as a 'less is more' approach. The ability to pose not only the main 'nacelle' components of her backpack, but the bonnet/windscreen section and rear wing/tail light parts means she can look more traditionally Arcee-style, or go all-out for a feminised anime mecha look with very little effort.
The nacelles and the rear wings are all on ball joints which are tight enough to hold whatever position they're arranged in, yet not so tight it feels as though they might break if handled too roughly. Each of the three 'levels' of backpack is hinged to one degree or another, so they can hang down close to her back or stick out like some kind of propulsion system. The front wings of the car can also be detached from the car bonnet piece and plugged into the underside of the dashboard part of her backpack, to create a bulbous 'skirt' effect. Naturally, this hampers the movement of the legs in some directions, but it actually looks surprisingly good, particularly once aligned with the wing sections, and with the shield replaced in its vehicle mode position behind the car seats, creating a five-segment skirt that wraps around the back from one side to the other. The backpack isn't perfectly adaptable, but it's low-key compared both to other Third Party Arcees and most of Hasbro's attempts at the Deluxe size class... It's also, arguably, better looking than the official Masterpiece version's backpack.
Nicee's accessories are nothing particularly special, but they're well designed to fit the aesthetic of the figure and, in some cases, stow effectively within it. The sword, molded in the pearlised white plastic and painted with touches of pink, looks OK, but a little weedy, like a fencing foil, rather than the beefy blades we've come to expect these giant alien robots to wield. The pistol has very little scuplted detail, so it looks like a NERF gun... though, at the very least, it's designed to look like one of their proper guns rather than one of those silly Rebelle guns intended to be specifically 'for girls'. For storage in either mode, it slots in to the back of the shield, and can remain there even while it's attached to Nicee's arm. The only clearance issues seem to come from the hands, which aren't that easy to angle out of the way. Curiously, the attachment peg is on the underside of the stylised fin, which can be reoriented such that the point hangs over the top of the shield, pointing back along the robot's arm... but this struck me as increasing the potential for accidental breakage, so I tend to leave mine in its vehicle mode position. The front section of the car can unpeg from her backpack entirely, via the grey plastic connection behind her neck. With the addition of a grey plastic handle part, pegged in behind the car's central grille, this then becomes Nicee's 'bow' weapon. Given its size, it can be awkward to pose her with - I didn't do a particularly good job, and will need to study photos taken by others, as the instructions aren't very clear on the orientation of her hand (the best fit would be the least comfortable for a human), or which hand to use for best results. The opposite hand, meanwhile, simply acts as something for the back end of the arrow to rest on, as none of them are really designed to hold it.
Along with all of this weaponry is another of the controversial aspects of this figure: an alternate chest section, replaceable by pulling up the shoulders and head, as if for transformation. This piece is essentially the same sculpt, but rendered with a soft rubber upper surface, for those individuals who prefer their robo-boobage to be squishy. Since the sculpt is the same, the real downside to substituting the default chest is that the rubber is stark white and lacks the pearlised finish of the hard plastic version, and thus looks incongruous with the rest of the robot.
The head sculpt is the next source of controversy, because Big Firebird Toy originally publicised this figure with a very G1-influenced head sculpt, which was later dropped from the package, following the much-discussed police raid on Chinese KO supremoes WeiJiang. Now, personally, I didn't think much of their 'proper' Arcee head - the proportions seemed a bit odd and the face a little pinched. It was never the selling point for me, so I wasn't upset by its omission. Several other fans, meanwhile, apparently cancelled their preorders in disgust, only for the design to be either conveniently 'leaked' to, or remade by an enterprising fan, so they could be released in limited quantities, and at additional expense. The default head is a cute, roboticised spin on the 'Magical Girl' look, with parts of the helmet resembling hair drooping around the face. It's actually remarkably reminiscent of the RAcaseal androids from Phantasy Star Online in terms of the overall shape of the head, but also particularly the face and eyes, with their wide-eyed, yet inscrutable expression. The downside is that, like the body, it's basically just white and pink, with a couple of touches of painted turquoise above the 'ears', and the eyes are translucent turquoise. Since there's no light getting piped in from outside, they end up looking dark and somewhat dead, but they can catch light from the front or sides to a small degree. Get the angle right, and one eye actually manages to pipe light toward the other.
If I had a complaint about the presentation of this figure, it would be the use of multiple, swappable, fixed-pose hands rather than a single pair of articulated hands. Granted, the supplied poses are reasonably dynamic - open handed, balled fists, and then those designed to accommodate her weapons. Even these latter sets are awkward, though, as the handgun has to be split into two parts so the handle can be inserted into the hand, then put back together around it. The hands designed to accommodate the sword do their job, but the ones intended for use when she wields her 'bow' weapon are not quite so successful - the thumb clashes with the weapon's framework on the hand designed to hold the weapon, while the sword-gripping other doesn't really hold the arrow, it just gives it somewhere to balance.
Strangely, while the head can be disassembled to attach the alternate face, the alternate face came pre-installed in a secondary head, so it's actually far simpler to unplug and replace the head. It features the sort of 'happy cat-girl smile', yet somehow found itself labelled 'O-Face' by some folks on Twitter and/or the fan forums. I mean, seriously, compare and contrast:
I could possibly understand it if Big Firebird had given her makeup of any kind but, like the Phantasy Star Online androids, Nicee's face is completely and deliberately unadorned. In fact, when questioned on why they hadn't painted her tongue, their response was essentially "because she's a robot... duh". And it's not as if FansToys painted the inside of Rouge's obvious O-Face - inside the area of the lush red lipstick, it's all unpainted pink plastic.
Nicee's transformation is ultimately not dissimilar to the Generations Deluxe class Arcee, particularly in how the legs are handled - they bend 90° at the hip, then swing up on either side of the torso to become about two thirds of the sides of the car. The main difference is that the front of the torso doesn't flip up around the head to become the front of the car - the head simply turns 180° and gets pressed up against the underside of the front section of bonnet, which remains on her backpack when not being used as a bow. The head and shoulders then detach from the torso, extending up on a concertina'd 'spine', which then allows the shoulders to be pinched inward such that the arms can rotate 90° at the shoulder and peg into the underside of the car's seats with the hands essentially cupping her robo-boobs. The most difficult parts are getting the two parts of the bonnet to peg together, then getting the front wings to tab in under the bonnet, and then getting the rear wings plugged into the central section at the rear, while also slipping around the rims of the robot's hip armour. Some of the tabs - particularly those on the bonnet - don't align very well... though I gather part of the problem I had may have been due to not having the hips properly aligned: there are grooves on the insides of the hips that are supposed to be aligned with each other and with grooves on the inner part of the thigh.
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| Are they not as different as night and day? |
I could possibly understand it if Big Firebird had given her makeup of any kind but, like the Phantasy Star Online androids, Nicee's face is completely and deliberately unadorned. In fact, when questioned on why they hadn't painted her tongue, their response was essentially "because she's a robot... duh". And it's not as if FansToys painted the inside of Rouge's obvious O-Face - inside the area of the lush red lipstick, it's all unpainted pink plastic.
Nicee's transformation is ultimately not dissimilar to the Generations Deluxe class Arcee, particularly in how the legs are handled - they bend 90° at the hip, then swing up on either side of the torso to become about two thirds of the sides of the car. The main difference is that the front of the torso doesn't flip up around the head to become the front of the car - the head simply turns 180° and gets pressed up against the underside of the front section of bonnet, which remains on her backpack when not being used as a bow. The head and shoulders then detach from the torso, extending up on a concertina'd 'spine', which then allows the shoulders to be pinched inward such that the arms can rotate 90° at the shoulder and peg into the underside of the car's seats with the hands essentially cupping her robo-boobs. The most difficult parts are getting the two parts of the bonnet to peg together, then getting the front wings to tab in under the bonnet, and then getting the rear wings plugged into the central section at the rear, while also slipping around the rims of the robot's hip armour. Some of the tabs - particularly those on the bonnet - don't align very well... though I gather part of the problem I had may have been due to not having the hips properly aligned: there are grooves on the insides of the hips that are supposed to be aligned with each other and with grooves on the inner part of the thigh.
In terms of articulation, Nicee is very much a figure of two halves. The legs are phenomenally poseable, with enough ankle movement - forward/backward and side to side tilt, as well as a full 360° rotation - to grant her a stable base in a variety of poses. The knees are double-jointed, and the complementary sculpting of the backs of the upper and lower legs grants them approximately 135° of bend (90° on the upper joint, an additional 45° approx on the lower). At first glance, the range of the hips isn't great, thanks to the upper edges of the armour quickly clashing with her groin, but the hips can be pulled downward via joints inside the groin for some additional clearance. It's not enough to give her a full 180° swing forward and backward, and she can barely make 90° in splits, let alone the so-called 'full Van Damme'. There's no waist articulation, as such, but there is a mid-torso joint that offers a small range of rotation and tilt, though this can end up looking quite awkward due to the fixed curve of her lower back. The neck has a very tight (slightly creaky) ball joint at the base which, in itself, can rotate a full 360° and tilt a little in any direction (limited mostly by the squared off bottom edges of the neck). This is supplemented by a hinge at the top of the neck, which allows Nicee to raise and lower her head through something close to 45°. The arms aren't quite so good, in my opinion. They lose points just by having static hands, but the ball jointed wrists don't offer a great range of tilt in any direction and, while the single-jointed elbows have a greater-than-90° range, I feel that it wouldn't have been too difficult to add a second joint to increase the range further. Her upper bicep swivel is unrestricted, but the shoulders are terrible. They are two-part joints: ball joints on the arm side, connected to hinges in the body. In theory, they can rotate a full 360°, but the armour clashes with various ridges on her upper body, and the arm would end up clashing with the upper section of her backpack. I gather this can be improved by flipping the armour upside down, but I don't feel the need to try - in spite of her limits, she's good enough as she is. Given the trouble I had getting Rouge to stand, with all her die-cast parts, the surprise with Nicee was that her stilettos offer such a stable base, even just on one foot, supported with just the point of the toe on the other. I've not been able to get her standing on one leg yet, but I'm pretty sure it's possible with a bit of time and effort. While taking photos, I did not make a concerted effort to put her in any particularly sexy poses - there are more than enough photos like that already around on the internet - but I'm certainly impressed by what she's capable of.
It should be clear by this point that I'm quite keen on this figure. As Arcee-analogues go, it's certainly less wasteful of the vehicle shell in robot mode, build quality is fantastic, the paintwork is stunning, and the overall design is very appealing both in vehicle and robot mode. I understand and respect the opinions of those who voiced concerns about the hentai fever-dream styling of the torso, but I'd argue that this sort of idealisation/objectification of the female form is so common in popular culture that, in the grand scheme of things, it's no better or worse than any other design, and very much on a par with many Superheroine costumes in comics. Granted, that just shifts blame to popular culture as a whole, but I'm not going to argue that it's not justified.
Glancing back through my Femme-Bot Friday posts (and those individual posts which predated the introduction of the titled series), there is a wide spectrum of Femme-Bot styles, both within Hasbro's toyline and the wider, Third Party universe, and Nicee is a fine addition to this range, with as valid an artistic style as any other. And that is the attraction for me: the wide range of aesthetics, the differing levels of technical intricacy in terms of visible inner workings, and the very concept that a machine can be considered 'beautiful'. And, let's not forget, this is coming from a Collector who described Masterpiece Starscream - not to mention dozens of vehicle modes - that way. There was a chance that the first official Arcee toy would have been a repaint of the G1 Headmaster Chromedome, while the Titans Return version was a reworking of Blurr, both of which are considered broadly masculine molds, so I consider Nicee to be a celebration of the opposite end of the mechanical spectrum.
Nicee is, in my opinion, a beautifully-designed and very well-made figure with a surprisingly decent, if simplistic transformation. For a time, I seriously considered putting my write-up of the figure on my other toy blog because, in some respects, she's not as much of a Third Party TransFormer as many of the others in my collection - more on a par with Perfect Effect's Motobot RC than even Mastermind Creations' Azalea. Eventually, I figured that I should include her here because she was originally designed as an Arcee analogue, and that is clearly still the case, even without the G1-style head sculpt.
In closing, I had started writing a long rant about one of the controversies surrounding this figure here but, upon reflection, that might be better off kept to another, separate post... I'm also, as mentioned at the start, hoping to get my girlfriend to write her own opinion piece about this figure. She's already expressed to me that she doesn't really see a problem with Nicee, but I'm curious to know what she makes of it compared with other Femme-Bots in my collection.
It should be clear by this point that I'm quite keen on this figure. As Arcee-analogues go, it's certainly less wasteful of the vehicle shell in robot mode, build quality is fantastic, the paintwork is stunning, and the overall design is very appealing both in vehicle and robot mode. I understand and respect the opinions of those who voiced concerns about the hentai fever-dream styling of the torso, but I'd argue that this sort of idealisation/objectification of the female form is so common in popular culture that, in the grand scheme of things, it's no better or worse than any other design, and very much on a par with many Superheroine costumes in comics. Granted, that just shifts blame to popular culture as a whole, but I'm not going to argue that it's not justified.
Glancing back through my Femme-Bot Friday posts (and those individual posts which predated the introduction of the titled series), there is a wide spectrum of Femme-Bot styles, both within Hasbro's toyline and the wider, Third Party universe, and Nicee is a fine addition to this range, with as valid an artistic style as any other. And that is the attraction for me: the wide range of aesthetics, the differing levels of technical intricacy in terms of visible inner workings, and the very concept that a machine can be considered 'beautiful'. And, let's not forget, this is coming from a Collector who described Masterpiece Starscream - not to mention dozens of vehicle modes - that way. There was a chance that the first official Arcee toy would have been a repaint of the G1 Headmaster Chromedome, while the Titans Return version was a reworking of Blurr, both of which are considered broadly masculine molds, so I consider Nicee to be a celebration of the opposite end of the mechanical spectrum.
Nicee is, in my opinion, a beautifully-designed and very well-made figure with a surprisingly decent, if simplistic transformation. For a time, I seriously considered putting my write-up of the figure on my other toy blog because, in some respects, she's not as much of a Third Party TransFormer as many of the others in my collection - more on a par with Perfect Effect's Motobot RC than even Mastermind Creations' Azalea. Eventually, I figured that I should include her here because she was originally designed as an Arcee analogue, and that is clearly still the case, even without the G1-style head sculpt.
In closing, I had started writing a long rant about one of the controversies surrounding this figure here but, upon reflection, that might be better off kept to another, separate post... I'm also, as mentioned at the start, hoping to get my girlfriend to write her own opinion piece about this figure. She's already expressed to me that she doesn't really see a problem with Nicee, but I'm curious to know what she makes of it compared with other Femme-Bots in my collection.
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