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.

Studio Series #85 Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #79)

Arcee doesn't have the greatest of histories in the live action movie series. Unceremoniously pulled from the first movie, she was pushed back in for the second - albeit in such a way that it wasn't clear whether she was a single consciousness split across three bodies or one of a team of three independent robots with superficially similar designs - only to be (presumably) killed off in the final battle. Fans seem to have been reasonably positive toward the original, unused movie design, but overwhelmingly unfavourable toward the so-called 'wheelsnakes' of Revenge of the Fallen.

She was then absent from subsequent movies, only turning up in the tentative reboot that was the Bumblebee movie, in the all-too-brief opening scene set on Cybertron. Even here, the reception to her design was not consistently positive, with many feeling that, while the overall design looked good enough, the uncanny appearance of her face was off-putting... And, of course, that brief CGI sequence only featured the movie protagonist's vehicle mode, so many were inclined to feel pessimistic about any toys that might come along.

But, when the toy was finally revealed, it looked surprisingly good... from most angles, at least. Let's give it the once-over, and see what we make of it.

Magic Square Toy/Mukudo MS-G01 Peach Girl

 (Femme-Bot Friday #76)

In one form or another, the Super Deform phenomenon has always had a connection to TransFormers. Many of the original Mini Autobots (such as my first TransFormers purchase, Cliffjumper) were based on SD-style Choro-Q/Penny Racer toy cars, and there have been several overtly SD TransFormers toys more recently - both official, like Takara's Choro-Q Robo subline or the more recent Q TransFormers, and Third Party, such as Master Made's SDT series or Hero Hobby's Tiny series.

That being the case, the only strange thing about Mukudo's take on an SD Arcee is how long it took to happen, and particularly that it emerged after not only a selection of mainline and other Third Party figures, but after the official Masterpiece as well.

So, let's take a look at this dinky, cutesy and surprisingly late addition to my Arcee collection and see how she compares to other contemporary Femme-Bots...

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.

Street Fighter II X TransFormers Arcee [Chun Li]

(Femme-Bot Friday #71)

So, having dealt with the Street Fighter II X TransFormers Convoy/Megatron set in one hit, I find myself having to split the second set to properly accommodate the main reason I was interested in either set: Generations/TF Legends Arcee repainted as Chun Li.

It's a bit puzzling that the two sets were made out of toys in different size classes (Arcee and Hot Rodimus being Deluxes), but I guess they felt either that both Ryu and Vega/M. Bison warranted partnering with the Voyager class leaders of the two Cybertronian factions, or at least that Ryu should be partnered with a robot of the same size class, even though he'd generally depicted as being much smaller than Vega/M. Bison in the games.

Still, is that any more strange than including a figure from an older, entirely unrelated line, when three out of the four crossover figures are from Titans Return?

DX9 War In Pocket #14 Leah

(Femme-Bot Friday #59)

My final purchase on the Sunday of the inaugural TFNation was a boxed set containing two of DX9's War In Pocket line of diminutive transforming figures. Toufold wasn't really of any interest to me, being based on Kup from the 1986 animated movie. Leah, on the other hand, was right up my street.

Considering Arcee was supposedly based on Princess Leia, the choice of name makes a fair bit of sense, and it's less flouncy than the names used by some other Third Party Arcee figures.

When I split a boxed set into multiple posts, I normally end up regretting it, but I figured it's worth the risk for this one, since Leah is a Femme-Bot and Toufold is actually a bit dull. No doubt I'll get to him eventually (2023, perhaps?) but, for the moment, let's take a look at Leah...

FansToys FT-24 Rouge

(Femme-Bot Friday #55)

Many Third Party companies attempted to fill the Arcee-shaped void in the TransFormers toy lineup in the years before Hasbro and Takara Tomy released their own, official Deluxe class figure... and, strangely, other Third Parties are still churning them out. Every single attempt has had its detractors, but none of them seemed to fully capture the essence of Arcee better than the TransFormers Legends version released back in 2015...

...Until, that is, I clapped eyes on images of FansToys Rouge - a Masterpiece-analogue attempt at creating an animated movie-accurate Arcee in both robot and vehicle modes. Toy World may have released their Leia earlier, but its proportions - and particularly the head sculpt - look pretty awful to me, and the vehicle mode appears to be missing its back end. Rouge, meanwhile, looked to be utterly gorgeous, well-proportioned... and was to come packaged with a variety of faces, including one version featuring the red visor she deployed all of once in the animated movie.

Recently, I've learned to be cautious when it comes to Third Party figures, owing to a few mishaps over the last few years... but the images of Rouge were enough for me to throw caution to the wind and preorder her. In the month or so leading up to her official release, several YouTubers were granted early access, and complained about flimsy joints and a ridiculously overcomplicated backpack. Undaunted, I awaited the arrival of mine and (partly thanks to cancelling another, delayed figure) the shipment containing Rouge arrived during the week after my birthday... So let's take a look, and see how bad (or, y'know, good) she really is...

HasCon 2017/Titans Return Arcee, Leinad & Ultra Magnus

(Femme-Bot Friday #46)

Hasbro clearly understood that, by ending Fun Publications' license to act as the TransFormers Collectors' Club, they'd have to come up with some sort of replacement for BotCon but, for the inaugural HasCon, at least, TransFormers were only one small facet of the event, given no special consideration.

The absence of BotCon naturally meant the absence of BotCon exclusives, which rubbed a lot of fans up the wrong way (probably those same fans who were regularly rubbed up the wrong way by some aspect - present or lacking - in the BotCon boxed sets, let's face it). That's not to say there weren't any HasCon Exclusives - by the looks of it, there was one for each of Hasbro's major product lines - just that they weren't really 'exclusive' so much as they were 'early access'... And their TransFormers boxed set was contentious for a laundry list of reasons.

But I tend not to let that stop me, particularly when Femme-Bots are involved...

Iron Factory IF EX-16 Pink Assassin

(Femme-Bot Friday #42)

When the first few figures in Iron Factory's line of miniaturised transforming robots appeared, there didn't seem to be much of interest to me. I'm not overly keen on smaller, more simplified models of anything, particularly if they go for the Cybertronian aesthetic (often quite lazy and of inconsistent appearance) or if I already own a larger format version. Of course, that all changed when the first of the line's Femme-Bots - Windsaber/'Miko for IronTitan' - and suddenly I was hooked.

But, when it comes to Femme-Bots, Arcee is pretty much always the starting point, and it wasn't too long before Iron Factory revealed 'Pink Assassin', their impossibly cute but heavily armed take on the franchise's most poorly represented character.

MorphBots Final Battle Megabolt vs Hell Cat (aka Flamefeather vs Carroll)

Like most collectors, it's a rare occasion (and/or a special case) that I will intentionally buy a knockoff, but some seem too good to pass up. It was a few years ago that I first saw Meng Badi's 'AlteraTion Man' Carroll, knockoff of the first live action movie Arcee mold, released both in the original colours and in blue, possibly in reference to the newer TransFormers Prime incarnation. I was never able to find the individual versions, but recently discovered that the blue version was repackaged in a two-pack with a knockoff of live action movie Swindle, a mold I never bothered picking up because it looked a bit crappy.

Then, more recently, I found the 2-pack (which turned up in Thew Adams' Knockoff Beatdown IV) was available on Amazon and on eBay. Finding a suitably low price (£16 including shipping!), I ordered the set hoping that at least one of the figures would be of reasonably decent quality... but that's the thing with knockoffs: however low your expectations, there's always room for disappointment.

San Diego Comic Con 2015 Combiner Hunters boxed set

(Femme-Bot Friday #32)

One of these days, I hope to get myself to either the San Diego Comic Con or the New York Comic Con (or both), but I fully expect that the TransFormers exclusives available at whichever event I manage to attend will not be my cup of tea. They tend to be rather 'hit-and-miss' (moreso than BotCon, even) with only a few - since I've been aware of the phenomenon - really catching my attention.

With Combiner Wars in full swing, though, the SDCC exclusives were something special: a premium Devastator (with a positively obnoxious amount of purple chrome) and the all femme-bot team of Combiner Hunters - Windblade, Chromia and Arcee all in one box, with new oversized weapons! I considered spreading this out over three Femme-Bot Fridays but, since they come as a set, I may as well cover them as a set...

3H BotCon 2001 Universe Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #26)

Once in a while I get a bee in my bonnet about a particular mold, or just a particular iteration of a particular mold... Especially if that iteration is an exclusive. For example, having spent many years thinking Beast Wars II Lio Convoy was the most ridiculous TransFormers creation in all history, I suddenly decided it was awesome and set about collecting as many instances of the mold as I could (currently the original and black versions of both the Robot Masters mold and the Beast Wars II version... Flash Lio Convoy I haven't bothered with thusfar because he looks rather like he's made of sparkly wee).

The latest example of this strange mania is the Beast Wars TransMetals version of Blackarachia which, thankfully, has only two iterations. One was the mass release in the TransMetals toyline... The other was this limited edition (1200 pieces, according to TFWiki.net) from BotCon 2001, back in the days when it was run by 3H Enterprises...

Mastermind Creations Reformatted: Azalea * (Asterisk Mode)

(Femme-Bot Friday #24)

While I love the standard Azalea figure, I can't help thinking it went through an explosion in the pink factory and came out rather too thoroughly empinkened. It could have used a few more non-pink painted details in some places, considering the character it was based upon - Arcee in IDW's Spotlight story - features touches of orange/gold to break things up a little.

When Mastermind Creations decided to make a couple of even more exclusive versions of their short run model, one was a sort of Nemesis version, featuring darker pinks, purples and greys, and the other took its cue from one of the other colour options in the early concept artwork options by Alex Milne...

And, knowing what a sucker I am for limited editions, it's predictable enough that I'd go after one or the other (or both, eventually)...

TransFormers (Movie) AllSpark Power Black Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #22)

If there's one thing that's certain about TransFormers, it's the black repaint. These have been appearing quite regularly in the toyline, at least since the first Nemesis Prime, if not longer. Arcee seems like a peculiar choice for a black repaint, all things considered, and especially since she'd also been given a G1-homaging pink-and-white paintjob, but that sort of thinking had never been known to stop Takara.

TransFormers Legends (Takara Tomy 30th Anniversary) LG10 Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #20)

Back in 1986, TransFormers: The Movie was my first introduction to the phenomenon of the 'Femme-Bot'. In theory, had the UK airing of the G1 cartoon not been so damned patchy, I would have known about the team of Femme-Bots, led by Optimus Prime's old flame Elita-1, but 'Saturday morning kids TV' in the UK was still a fairly new - and, frankly, unreliable - concept that I would miss TransFormers for weeks at a time because it was never properly scheduled.

But I digress. TransFormers: The Movie introduced Arcee, the sassy, capable warrior who somehow seemed to be the only feminine robot in a war filled with large, boxy and overtly masculine Cybertronians. Virtually all the characters in the animated movie appeared in toy form - most looking nothing like their animated counterparts - but Arcee was notable by her absence from shelves.

In recent years, the internet has uncovered numerous - frequently terrible - early attempts by Hasbro and Takara at making an Arcee toy, all of which were mercifully cancelled, some barely even making it to the prototype stage. One - referencing Arcee's appearance in the Headmasters cartoon - was just a repaint of G1 Chromedome. The designer of this toy actually scratch-built a G1 Arcee model for a BotCon Japan competition, which ended up netting him a job at Takara Tomy. This led to the opportunity to revisit his scratch-build and turn it into a marketable toy, after several third parties had already released their takes on G1 Arcee.

It's quite stunning to think that it's taken almost 30 years to get a toy of a character from an animated movie based on the 1980s toyline... but here she is!

TransFormers: Prime Beast Hunters Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #17)

In the TransFormers: Prime TV show, when it's in the process of becoming 'Beast Hunters', Smokescreen and Bumblebee get new colourschemes. The former goes blue and yellow, almost a nod to Binaltech Smokescreen in his vehicle mode appearance. The latter reverses his paint pattern and becomes black with yellow stripes (aka Shadow Strike Bumblebee). Observing this, Arcee remarks, pithily "If I reversed my colourscheme, I'd be pink...", guaranteed to raise at least a giggle from G1 fans.

Of course, the toy range did things slightly differently... Most of the toys were at least partially remolded with spikes and other protuberances, which struck me as a bizarre waste of money when new colourschemes would have sufficed in almost all cases.

Clearly no stranger to irony, not only did Hasbro remold Arcee, but they (sort of) reversed her colourscheme as well...

TransFormers Animated Arcee

(Femme-Bot Friday #15)

Dearest reader, I am a bad person.

I have mentioned on my extended 'About Me' page that I once bought and then deliberately wrecked another collector's G1 Doubledealer to facilitate a custom of my own but, more recently, I have bought from another collector a fairly rare, MOSC, early, glossy version of TF Animated Arcee - a rare enough figure, regardless of which version - and opened it up with malice aforethought. I have never and probably will never understand the bizarre motivations of the MISB/MOSC brigade, so I am unrepentant... but it feels rather awkward to have received a message from the seller hoping that I 'enjoy the figure' as much as he did, when I'd always intended to open it up. To my way of thinking, he'd never really enjoyed the figure, only the idea of it, sealed away in its plastic bubble.

So, confessions of my depravity out of the way, what's it like to finally own one of the first official TransFormers Arcee toys?

New York Comic Con 2011 Arcee

Femme-Bot Friday #13

As you may have gathered from other posts, I'm a sucker for limited editions of any mold I like, but particularly G1-inspired repaints of new models/characters. When I first saw the New York Comic Con 2011 boxed set of Arcee and Bumblebee (with Jack and Raf), only one part of it really appealed to me. Thankfully, I have a friend with a collection of Bumblebees (and who, coincidentally, is quite fond of New York), so I hatched a devious play to acquire the boxed set and palm off NY Cab Bumblebee on her as a birthday present, keeping Arcee for myself.

Jack and Raf ended up staying with me, too...

TransFormers (Movie) Arcee (Target Exclusive)

(Femme-Bot Friday #12)

The first live action movie must have seemed like a license to print money for Hasbro. With such a limited cast of robots, they were able to make some additional toys of characters from the videogame but, beyond that, the toyline featured a lot of repaints. About a billion Bumblebees, and at least a couple of just about every mold, where a G1-inspired repaint was possible.

But beyond that, Hasbro looked into its back catalogue of Energon/Superlink toys and repainted anything that looked vaguely worthwhile... And so the Energon/Superlink biker femme-bot/Omnicon got two repaints... Having now written about this model four times already, there's not a great deal more to say, so this, like the Target Exclusive Elita-1 write-up, will probably focus more on the character.

On the upside, this will be the last time I write about this mold... until I get my hands on BotCon 2005 Flamewar...