BingoToys BT-06 Spider Lady

(Femme-Bot Friday #86)

It's a curious thing that, as a long-time arachnophobe, I've enjoyed the character of Beast Wars' Blackarachnia and, more recently, Airachnid from TransFormers Prime. The obvious answer is that both characters are very much in the tradition of the Femme Fatale, whose allure would tend to outweigh any sense of danger or unease that might come from the 'spider' aspect.

And, of course, they're not crawling about on my bathroom ceiling... but that's neither here nor there, right?

BingoToys weren't particularly on my radar until BT-06. Their previous output - including a Bumblebee movie Shockwave with an alternate mode every bit as dubious as his robot mode, and a Windblade analogue that didn't tick enough of the right boxes for me - hadn't inspired me, both because the aesthetics were unappealing and the transformations were lacklustre. That all changed with Spider Lady, who is a stylised take on Blackarachnia in much the same way as Big Firebird's Nicee was to have been a stylised take on Arcee.

Is this going to be a case where the temptation of a Femme-Bot Fatale outweighs my typical preference for a halfway decent transformation and a suitably robotic robot mode? Saddle up, folks, 'cos there's only one way to find out!

First New Purchases In Quite A While - AKA Not An Unboxing Post IV

When I started this post, I wasn't quite sure how long it had been since I last ordered anything TransFormers related. Having subsequently looked it up, it's technically only about five months... but that was a non-transforming model kit (Flame Toys' Furai Model Kit Arcee, specifically).

It's been a touch over a year since I bought an actual Hasbro TransFormers toy... Which probably tells you everything you need to know about my opinion of Legacy as a toyline. I (technically) still only own a single Legacy toy, and that was Tarantulas, from the second wave of Legacy's first year.

However, after successfully completing a couple of freelance jobs earlier this year, I decided to order a couple of Third Party figures I was keen not to miss out on... Both of them are Femme-Bots, so look out for some Femme-Bot Fridays coming 'soon' (though that's absolutely in the Fun Publications/TFCC sense of the word 'soon').

The box they arrived in was significantly battered, though thankfully there's only minor damage to Red Fantasy's box. Before even opening either, the first thing that struck me was how heavy Metagate's latest offering is - I knew there were die-cast parts in it, but she's much heavier than I'd expected. Conversely, Spider Lady is surprisingly light, especially in comparison.

Can't wait to get these out properly and have a fiddle with them before eventually taking some photos. Their arrival gives me a bit of motivation to tidy up the coffee table in the lounge, so I can set up the light tent... But I have to admit, I'm still struggling to find the motivation to photograph Furai Model Kit Arcee - which I put together before Christmas - or even finish the post about Furai Model Kit Windblade, which I photographed almost six months ago.