Flame Toys FuRaiModel Kit Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #88)

So, after enjoying the Windblade kit, it was a foregone conclusion that I'd want the Arcee kit as well. This model kit seemed to take a while to arrive - first revealed back in 2022, it wasn't available (in the UK, via my usual channels) till late 2023, at which point I snapped her up and, unlike with Windblade, started building her soon after she arrived... and, instead, this draft has been sitting around waiting for me to complete it for more than two years now.

Just like Windblade, Flame Toys' second Femme-Bot kit met with a mixed reception but, Arcee being dearer to the hearts of fans of a certain age, it was perhaps even more vitriolic. It's a strange thing to observe, frankly, that the 'mom/babysitter' character from the 1986 animated movie - who was clearly designed with the male gaze in mind - is somehow not 'allowed' to be sleek and feminine, even though Hasbro's most recent versions of her have been precisely that, just with an entire car shell stuck on her back.

As I've said before, the very idea of non-transforming TransFormers is anathema to me, but it's been apparent for some time that Hasbro themselves - and even Takara Tomy, to a degree - are incapable of designing good Femme-Bot figures, and it's really been up to the Third Parties to innovate. And, while this isn't a Hasbro or Takara Tomy product, it is officially licensed... and, because I really enjoy model kits, they've become an exception... as future Femme-Bot Fridays may continue to demonstrate.

For the moment, though, let's take a look at this new interpretation of Arcee, to see how she compares to other depictions of the character.

Packaging:

The box and contents are much like Windblade - a nice painting on the front that's very strongly based on the finished figure, with hints of other characters (Seekers, mainly) flying over the background scene of devastation. It's vastly brighter and more vivid than the artwork on Windblade's box

The back of the box shows off the figure and its poseability, along with the sprues included. Inside, the sprues are collected in a set of plastic bags, as is always the case, and her instructions are the expected full colour artwork, and of much the same quality - in terms of clarity of instruction - as Windblade's.

Build:

Clearly my experience with Windblade left me keen to put this one together as soon as possible after it arrived. Once again, though, I've left it rather too long to make any meaningful comments about the process of putting this kit together, except to say that several more parts of this kit required glue. Most notably, the pink armour panels on her shoulders refused to stay together without glue, with both halves of either bouncing away the moment I tried to pose either arm. They would have been very difficult to clip on after gluing, so I had to be extra careful to ensure I didn't end up sticking them together in such a way as to render them - and, by extension, other parts of the shoulder - completely immobile. On top of this, the backpack would fall off at the slightest provocation, because it didn't even clip onto its articulated stalk. It's not as if the tab/socket connection wasn't deep enough, it was simply too loose. Lastly, the pink chest panel - which is intended to be removable to reveal her petite white robo-boobs - seems to be slightly warped, and will only clip in on one side or the other, never both, making for another part that will fall off if I so much as look at it funny.

Still, this is a mostly quite straightforward kit, and I don't recall any particularly confusing parts to the process except, for example, where I couldn't understand the specific choices in the way the thighs are designed. The hips have the traditional joints for mobility, including an embedded thigh rotation joint, but then there's another rotation joint just above the knee... that doesn't really offer a great deal of rotation, so it feels essentially superfluous. Other than this, there was nothing that I had to pull apart and re-do because I'd connecting things the wrong way round, or completed a part in the wrong order. 

One thing Arcee has very much in common with Windblade is the sheer frustrating stupidity of her stickers. Some of them are barely 2mm long and 1mm wide and, wouldn't you know it, one of the smallest stickers - to be applied to a tiny slot in her shin - tore as I tried to get it off the backing. That, and the insanely fiddly belly button sticker were among the most annoying parts of completing this kit, while the most disappointing part was that the two wheels included - protruding from her backpack nacelles - were unpainted white plastic. Since almost all the images I'd seen of the kit prior to buying it gave the impression that they were chrome straight out of the box, pretty much the first thing I did was cover them with chrome paint.

Figure:

Once again, the finished figure is a stunning example of what you can do with a character when you don't have to worry about all that pesky 'transformation into a believable vehicle' nonsense. That said, in many ways, this really doesn't seem like the powerful yet motherly character from the 1986 animated movie, nor the forcibly-transitioned killer, hell-bent on revenge upon Jhiaxus. She looks too young and 'cute' for either role, placing her in a wholly separate continuity. Even the parts that are ostensibly 'vehicle mode kibble' are only present as visual cues to remind us that this is definitely the Cybertronian robot known as Arcee because, aside from those two chunks with embedded wheels hanging off her back, there is no indication at all that this was ever supposed to be a robot who can turn into a car.

Although perhaps that's unfair... Ultimately, this is an exercise in artistic license, after all, and the idea (I'd imagine) was to create a feminine action figure kit that uses Arcee's colourscheme and her (ahem) most iconic features (#NotHerTits) to represent the character, and that's always something I can get behind. Furthermore, considering the figures I own that barely transform and mostly just conceal a feminine action figure inside large chunks of car shell, it wouldn't surprise me if some enterprising customiser eventually figures out how to do just that with this kit.

It's also good to see that the designer of this kit didn't fall foul of the urge to make her super-chesty. Yes, the pink chestplate is removable and, yes, she has individually sculpted robo-boobs beneath, but they're not the sort of egregiously pneumatic armoured funbags presented by Big FireBird's Nicee or BingoToys' Spider Lady. They're even more subtle that those on Flame Toys' own Windblade kit and, if anything, remind me more of something like Fei-Yen from Virtual On. Given the fandom's propensity for finding outrage in anything visibly feminine, though, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find that this design is viewed with even more suspicion due to the sense of physical immaturity in her appearance.

Because it's impossible to ignore that the pink plate is designed to look like a small tank-top, and the design of the pelvis clearly evokes tiny pink underwear on a robotic-looking pastiche of a largely naked female form. Much of her design gives the impression of white representing the robot's 'skin' with pink armour plating on her shoulders, forearms and knees... But that's really not significantly different from Arcee's animation model in the 1986 movie, which is somehow more acceptable (albeit only slightly, with its more modest, chunkier tank top and knickers). The main advantage this kit has, by way of rebuttal against these accusations, is that the act of assembling the kit makes it plain that the white parts are also armour, since it comes together in segments to facilitate her articulation. From my point of view, this figure is far less titillating than the average bit of fanart, and certainly less than some officially licensed statues.

Her weapon accessories are quite fantastic. The basic grey pistol can be upgrade with some pink frame parts which can then accommodate her energy bayonet to form an awkward mêlée weapon or the larger grey rifle frame, which accepts the bayonet below the tip of its barrel. I am a huge fan of modular weapons, and this is precisely the sort of thing I love, because it looks potentially functional. The simple grey handgun is nice and compact, the pink frame gives it one new mode of operation, and then the rifle frame upgrades the gun for range and firepower - all it's really missing is an attachable sight.

As Arcee head sculpts go, this one is quite puzzling. It's not precisely G1, and seems to take some elements from the IDW comics design. The original animation model for Arcee took some design cues from Princess Leia's 'space buns' hairstyle from the first Star Wars movie, but this design takes its cues from more contemporary reworkings, and is all the better for it. This is particularly apparent in the smaller, flatter 'ear' pieces and the more elaborate and angular framing of her face by the helmet, pushing in over the cheeks. The face, however, is pure anime-style blandness, with large blue eyes and an expression so neutral, she barely has any facial features. There isn't even any panel-lining instead - the face is entirely smooth, bare pink plastic. The nose is a tiny, snubbed protrusion in the middle and her mouth is flat and narrow, without even a hint of Arcee's traditional bold, red lipstick, even though the eyes have the equally traditional heavy black liner. Problem is, even if this face had the more 'male gaze' elements of other Arcees, it'd still look weird, because a face this bland and featureless looks childlike. One bonus this figure has is that, along with the modular weapon, she has a visor that can be tabbed into her forehead by opening up the top of her helmet. However, it deviates from the traditional look of Arcee's visor in the it's blue, matching all the other translucent parts on this figure.

The range of motion offered by the complete figure is quite stunning, though it's not without its quirks. Starting from the top, the head and neck are on separate ball joints, offering a wonderfully expressive range, but the neck joint is comparatively stiff and, once moved, can be difficult to recentre. The shoulders offer the usual 360° rotation, at least 90° to the sides, and a butterfly joint which allows her to cross her arms reasonably well. Curiously, the pink armour panel on her shoulder is hinged which, normally, would allow for an improved range of movement... but it has little to no effect here. She has unrestricted bicep swivel, double-jointed elbows, while the hands have a combination of ball joint in the wrist itself - allowing both unrestricted rotation and slight tilt in any direction - with a sort of mushroom peg to connect the hand, allowing a small range of additional tilt, at the risk of popping apart. The waist is every bit as bizarre as Flame Toys' Windblade kit, with a combination of hinges and ball joints between her chest and pelvis allowing for a decent range of movement back and forward, but sideways rotation seems to be more in the chest than anywhere else. The hips don't seem to have quite the same range as Windblade, with this small hip skirts and butt plates being rather more limited/limiting, but there's an odd ball-jointed part just above the knee which can supplement the range of the hips to a degree. The knee itself is not quite double-jointed, and the upper shin plate is designed to pop out once the knee is bent beyond a certain point. The ankles are on ball joints, but very much limited by the armour on the feet, and the feet themselves are reasonably stable despite their small size. The backpack it also articulated in several ways: the nacelles can 'flap' back and forward slightly, and they're mounted on an arm with two separate hinges, all of which allows for a good range of options in positioning.

I'm obviously biased because I'm both a fan of Femme-Bots and model kits, so a combination of the two is always a winner. By and large, I think this is a fantastic kit, which creates and excellent action figure... but I have to admit I'm weirded out by the face. It's not just that it doesn't look robotic, it looks too young and too neutral, like an early draft of a humanoid face on a newly-built, commercial android, yet to be powered on for the first time, rather than the face of a seasoned Autobot warrior.

Other than that, my only major complaint would be on the requirement for glue to keep the backpack and shoulder armour in place, the latter in particular due to their small size and fiddly shape. On top of that, the stickers - while fewer and mostly less fiddly than Windblade's, are equally small and frustrating to apply. Nevertheless, this is a great kit, which I found fun to assemble, and the end result is mostly fun to pose and lark about with (once those loose, fussy parts are glued). On balance, I think Windblade is the better kit, but I'm looking forward to Flame Toys' take on Blackarachnia.