(Femme-Bot Friday #18)
Very few people would ever accuse Hasbro of genuinely listening to fans, so when they announced their 'Fan-Built Bot' promotion, fans were naturally pretty sceptical. I honestly wasn't paying attention at the time but, during the early part of 2013, Hasbro asked fans to vote in nine polls to determine various characteristics, then revealed the 'finished' character at that year's San Diego Comic Con. Some suggested that the polls had been designed to fit a set of preconceived ideas that Hasbro had in their catalogues, but that seems rather unfair in retrospect. It took about a year for the Windblade toy to make its first appearances, and the end result seemed a little lacking... But then some bright spark decided to hand Windblade to writer Mairghread Scott and artist Sarah Stone and, from that point on, I was hooked. The Windblade comic originally lasted only 4 issues, but has since been fully rolled into an existing IDW continuity, and Windblade appears to be a major player in the new Combiner Wars series.When Hasbro finally got the toy out on the streets, it seemed disappointing on a number of levels - the colourscheme tended too far in favour of black, where the character seemed more red in the comic, the head barely resembled Stone's gorgeously expressive interpretation of the character, and... it was another high-heeled femme-bot with stability issues. Then Takara Tomy released images of their take on Windblade, which paid proper homage to Stone's artwork...
