(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...
