Generations Selects Legacy: Evolution Antagony

Femme-Bot Friday #90

These days, even now I'm back in full-time work, impulse buys of TransFormers toys are few and far between, because my abiding impression is that overall quality has dropped substantially versus toys from a few years ago. Where a new figure is a remake of an earlier Generations toy - especially something like the Kingdom Waspinator mold feeling like a cheap knockoff of the 30th Anniversary toy - I'm even less inclined to pick up the newer version.

However, Legacy Inferno was the first new toy of the Beast Wars character since the 1997 original, which I've never owned, and Antagony was a BotCon 1998 exclusive repaint as a Femme-Bot, which I've also never owned... The new toy appeared to be such a hopeless simplification of the original, losing most of its impressive features, so Inferno was among the majority of Legacy toys that I skipped.

And yet... when I happened upon Generations Selects Legacy: Evolution Antagony - ostensibly a limited edition repaint by Hasbro themselves - at a branch of Game inside a Sports Direct in Eastbourne, that old impulse arose. Could this be another case of buyer's remorse? Let's take a look...

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.

TransFormers Legacy: Evolution Deadeye Duel 2-pack - Kaskade vs. Javelin

(Femme-Bot Friday #87)

It struck me in the afternoon of January 1st that, as of this year - and, more specifically, yesterday - Femme-Bot Friday has been a feature of this blog for ten years. That being the case, I thought it appropriate to try to post something special... which might have been easier if the franchise had offered a greater quantity of worthwhile Femme-Bots. It would have been wonderful to hit FBF#100 for this anniversary, but that could only be achieved by re-posting Femme-Bots that I'd posted about before FBF became a thing.

And, while it would have been ideal to celebrate 10 years since I kicked off this feature with a post about Flame Toys' Arcee model kit, I haven't yet taken sufficient photos for that figure (lack of time, motivation and daylight over the last few months being largely responsible), so we're just going to have to make do with a Legacy: Evolution versus set that - miraculously - pits two unique Femme-Bots against each other. Little did I know, before I started writing all this, but this set actually refers to a specific story in the IDW comics, though the two featured characters don't exactly face off.

Is this unprecedented boxed set worth the investment? Well... That's an especially astute question, given my opinion of Hasbro's current output...

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!

MetaGate G-05 Red Fantasy

(Femme-Bot Friday #85)

The Bumblebee movie didn't just bring a new, unprecedented coherence to storytelling in live action TransFormers movies, but a whole new aesthetic. Gone were the overcomplicated, oddly-proportioned Autobots and the insectoid Decepticons seemingly made of needles, knives and random metal shavings; the overabundance of grey and bare metal. The framing of each shot gave characters breathing room, allowing for physical characteristics to shine through, and individual robots were easily distinguishable at a glance, even in the thick of the action. No longer were we, for example, stuck looking at Optimus Prime's armpit as he cut a swathe through legions of Decepticons in the middle of a city, or watching Starscream gob up some lubricant in hyper-sharp, ILM-crafted detail.

Sure, the movie only really featured two Decepticons for the bulk of the story, but what Decepticons they were! Shatter and Dropkick were the ideal - not to say archetypal - pairing of brains and brawn, with the former even convincing the proto-Sector 7 team to work with them, despite representing themselves as "Decepticon Peacekeepers", a flagrantly oxymoronic description if ever there was one. Silver-tongued Shatter was the standout villain, exhibiting intelligence, cunning and a keen mind for strategy, with the dulcet tones of Angela Bassett breathing life into her. To cap it all, both she and Dropkick became Triple Changers, which naturally made it difficult for Hasbro to make toys of them.

To make them viable, Hasbro essentially made two versions of each in as many size classes as possible... The Deluxe class Studio Series car mode Shatter was a clumsy, flimsy mess, but the jet mode toy was excellent, if a little overburdened with vehicle mode parts on its backpack. However, it wasn't long till Third Parties started teasing their plans to make (loosely) Masterpiece scale figures that would actually feature both car and jet modes all in one. Toyworld announced theirs first, back in 2019, but relative newcomers MetaGate - creators of the stunning, triple-changing movieverse Drift, Haiku - were the first to actually ship theirs and, even at first glance, it looked substantially better.

But let's have a closer look and see exactly what kind of dark magic had been brought to bear on this character...

Flame Toys FuRaiModel Kit Windblade

(Femme-Bot Friday #84)

I've affirmed many times that I am very much against TransFormers merchandise - and particularly in the form of action figures - that does not transform, but model kits are something of a grey area. I went through a phase, some years back, of collecting Gundam and Macross model kits, because I found building them to be quite therapeutic. Some Macross models can even have the bonus of being transformable, since the variable fighters have been part of the anime from the very beginning.

My exposure to Armor Girls Project, Frame Arm Girls, Variable Fighter Girls and Eastern Model ATKGirl brought an interesting new angle to both action figures and model kits, blurring the line between them at least to the same degree as the Gundam kits I've built, and with just enough 'mecha' vibe to pique my interest.

All that said, when Flame Toys started producing licensed TransFormers model kits, I wasn't overly impressed by their exaggerated take on G1 and Beast Wars. They were all weirdly-proportioned and unpleasantly angular - different from the source material, yet cartoonish enough to put me off. IDW-based designs, such as stealth bomber Megatron and Hot Rod, looked better but I didn't feel compelled to buy into the line because, ultimately, they were non-transforming TransFormers, and that didn't sit right with me.

That was, until they showed early photos of their proposed Windblade kit. Windblade has, so far, got the short end of the stick. Created during the 30th Anniversary, her first toy was flimsy, unstable and showed signs of features having been trimmed to fit a budget. Remixes for RID2015, Titans Return and Cyberverse just seemed to get progressively worse, and improvements in Takara Tomy's versions were largely limited to additional paintwork. The problem was that Windblade was seemingly conceived as a robot, first and foremost, meaning her jet modes were invariably tacked-on rather than designed around her. This alone made her ideal for the model kit treatment, and Flame Toys took a markedly different tack in her design, versus the more established characters.

The bottom line seems to be that Hasbro and Takara Tomy are still having trouble creating feminine robot forms out of jet aircraft without dumping most of the nose on the back and leaving the lower legs rather hollow. Thus, a model kit for a non-transforming figure of Windblade's robot mode seems to be about the only way to present her as a solid-looking character, at least somewhat based on the interpretations of her from the comics... So, let's take a look...

Ocular Max (MMC) Infinite Finity IF-01A Eris: Kultur Subjugation Alternative

 (Femme-Bot Friday #83)

I'd be the first to admit that my knowledge of IDW's TransFormers comics is sorely limited. I used to get the Marvel comics back in the 1980s but, as an adult, comics just don't appeal to me quite so much. First and foremost, they take up space that I'd prefer to use for other things. Secondly, the individual paper comics require much more careful handling and storage than graphic novels (what Marvel UK used to refer to as 'Collected Comics' back in the day) so, on the rare occasion I buy anything comics-related, it will be in that form. But, more than that, my interest has always been mainly in the toys, not any of the associated fiction, so the comics never seemed especially important... Especially after they started following the US version in messing up all the characters in both appearance and portrayal.

I acknowledge that this has probably led to me missing out on some excellent stories, as well as the introduction of new characters who had not been part of G1 or G2 in the Marvel comics... but media-only characters always feel like a waste of time to me, considering any and all TransFormers media is, fundamentally, advertising for toys. I may have encountered analogues to some of them via the TransFormers Collectors' Club, but they carried no special significance to me because I hadn't been following the comics.

However, there's always one sure-fire way to grab my attention with a tertiary character, and that's to make them a Femme-Bot. And here, Ocular Max - aka Mastermind Creations - have done just that. Some years back, they turned the character of Tarn - erudite leader of the so-called 'Decepticon Justice Division' - into a figure in their Reformatted line - Kultur. It looked interesting enough but, lacking any connection to the character or even the concept of the Decepticon Justice Division, it wasn't as interesting to me as the myriad repaints of Reformatted Azalea. While the majority of Ocular Max's output seems to have been G1 Animation-style figures, the Infinite Finity line seems to been created with the intention of branching out, possibly with an IDW focus, while maintaining a degree of continuity with Reformatted.

Eris: Kultur was the first figure from this line, revealed in 2020 and first released - available exclusively via web store Planet Steel Express - in 2021, with its original colourscheme being a very limited run specifically for that web store. I wasn't really in a position to order it at the time, but MMC/Ocular Max hinted at a recolour to be released later, so I hedged my bets and waited.

And so, here is the result of my... patience..? Or, at the very least, the response and solution to my Fear Of Missing Out.

APC Toys Night Countess

(Femme-Bot Friday #82)

Way back in 2016, a 3D printed figure based on the TransFormers Prime character Airachnid turned up on my Facebook feed, courtesy of (seemingly former) YouTuber Daimchoc. Given that Hasbro's own Deluxe class toy was an absolute travesty, any new figure based on that character didn't exactly have a high bar to clear, but this looked to be phenomenal, even in its grey/white prototype form. A painted sample appeared not long afterward, looking incredible and, from the moment I first clapped eyes on it, it has been on my Want List, even though obtaining it seemed unlikely given its provenance. Then again, stranger things have happened...

Imagine my surprise, then, when APC Toys revealed images of their latest TransFormers Prime figure earlier in the year and, rather than being just another minor upgrade to an official TF Prime toy, it was that very 3D printed custom figure, fully painted and very much on the way to a full production run. The moment it became available, I put in my order... And, precisely 30 days later, it arrived, straight from China.

Is this new, Third Party take on the other alluring Femme-Bot Fatale actually any better than Hasbro's? Let's take a look...

The Other Half 4: On Femme-Bots!

Not long after I posted my write-up of Nicee, and followed it up with my post about Femme-Bots generally and the fandom's reactions to Nicee in particular, I asked my girlfriend if she'd be willing to write an opinion piece of her own. Not that I felt my overtly positive impressions of the figure needed any kind of legitimising, but because I was genuinely interested in what she might have to say.

After all, this is someone who sees my collection - on display in closed, glass-doored cabinets in our lounge - as part of the scenery in our home, to the point where she barely notices it at all. I know she's aware of my appreciation for Femme-Bots, and I get the impression she's neither offended nor threatened by it... but, equally, it's not something that we really talk about in any great depth. I tend to show her any and all new purchases - including Big Firebird's most recent transforming Femme-Bot, Mooka - but I don't exactly expect a detailed and discerning assessment, because I know she's just not really that interested.

However, I did say that I was going to get her to offer her thoughts on the matter and, while they've taken a couple of years to coalesce, they arrived just in time for Valentine's Day, so here we go...

Big Firebird Build EX Series EX-01 Plus Mooka (AKA Mocha)

(Femme-Bot Friday #81)

I know.

I originally said I wasn't going to write about this figure here, but on my oft-neglected, more general toy blog... However, sometime between Mocha/Mooka's announcement and actually receiving the toy in the post last year, I realised that was the wrong decision. While it still doesn't fit here in the sense that it's not a Third Party take on a TransFormers character, it doesn't fit there in that it's clearly an adult collectable rather than a toy. In many ways, posting about the Cyclion there was somewhat mistaken.

However, I've covered Go-Bots and myriad other Third Party figures, so the TransForm-A-Blog is clearly not wholly about TransFormers. Plus, Mooka is derived from a figure that was originally conceived as a stylised take on Arcee, so I've decided to post this here, and henceforth try to keep Toys, HEXcetera... focussed on things that are more general action figure material.

So, prepare yourselves for another controversial and divisive Third Party Femme-Bot, this one seemingly deliberately reworked to play into some of the complaints made about Nicee when she first emerged.

Jurassic Park X TransFormers Tyrannocon Rex (& Autobot JP93)

(Femme-Bot Friday #80)

By and large, the very concept of TransFormers crossovers with other properties is not one that interests me. The pair of Street Fighter II sets won me over because I'm also a Capcom fan, and because it used the Generations Arcee mold - which I was quite keen on - for Chun Li. The movie crossovers - Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Top Gun and Universal Monsters - all looked low-effort and poor-quality.

And, to be perfectly honest, when the Jurassic Park crossover was revealed, I planned on skipping it. Sure, the new paint job for the Kingdom Megatron mold and its new head sculpt looked great, but the transforming Ford Explorer looked like the kind of knockoff toy sold in the London Zoo gift shops. With a price tag in excess of £120, I felt it was more overpriced garbage that I could happily live without, even though the absurdly-named Tyrannocon Rex was billed as a Femme-Bot. If Kingdom Megatron was overpriced at £52, and the equally absurdly-named 'Autobot JP93' (whom I shall henceforth refer to as 'Dickie Attenbot', per my girlfriend's suggestion) is very clearly not Leader class in terms of size or engineering, this boxed set was clearly a rip off, and not worth investing in.

But then I saw an announcement on Reddit that Zavvi had cut over £70 from the price tag, bringing it down to about £51 for the pair... and then saw that Amazon had followed suit... meaning that the cost of the boxed set of two figures was below Kingdom Megatron's RRP. That changed everything...

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.

Winds of Change?

Not really... But, having preordered Flame Toys' Furai Model Kit Windblade in March of last year, it finally arrived today:

I'm not going to start working on her immediately - I've got a few important things to do right now, and it feels as though it would be prudent to keep this as a 'reward' for having completed them.

Considering I tend to rail against any non-transforming TransFormers-branded product, it may seem strange for me to have bought this... But it's a Femme-Bot (this is as close as I'm going to get to a Femme-Bot Friday post until the Bumblebee movie/Studio Series Arcee turns up), and beautifully designed - very evocative of Sarah Stone's artwork in the original Windblade mini-series of comics from IDW.

I can see myself picking up the upcoming Arcee and Blackarachnia figures, but I don't think Furai Model Kits are going to be appearing on this blog with any real frequency... Much as I like their take on Hot Rod, I can live without a non-transforming sexy beefcake Hot Rod, and most of the others are nowhere near as appealing. If I do ever feel the need to lay my hands on a three-dimensional interpretation of that design, it'll be either the Mastermind Creations version, Calidus, or the one from SXS Toys, Hot Flame... But I'm honestly not that invested in the character, so neither are particularly likely acquisitions for me.

Buzzworthy Bumblebee/Worlds Collide Blackarachnia

(Femme-Bot Friday #78)

The Buzzworthy Bumblebee line has become a source of seemingly never-ending puzzlement for me. Quite apart from the fact that Hasbro still insist on pushing Bumblebee as somehow central to the TransFormers brand - perhaps moreso than either Optimus Prime or Megatron - they have created a whole new toyline whose express purpose is to put as many different versions of that single character on the shelves, and they somehow fail to see a problem with that.

But then, not content with shoehorning perfectly good Beast Wars reboot toys into yet another of their interminable ostensibly G1-rebooting toylines, they've created a Buzzworthy Bumblebee boxed set that takes two Kingdom beastformers and jams them in with a five-years-late Titans Return toy and a repaint of Earthrise Cliffjumper as Bumblebee, even though there was a perfectly good, dedicated Bumblebee mold in the War for Cybertron Trilogy line (released as a Walmart exclusive in the US, but seemingly more widely available in other territories) which they could have used.

Then again, this is the same company that made both a Bug Bite and a Shattered Glass Goldbug out of the Cliffjumper mold, neatly missing the point of the choice of molds used in the predecessors.

So. Worlds Collide: a Buzzworthy Bumblebee boxed set, exclusive to Walmart in the States (availability in the UK still to be confirmed) comprising Nemesis Primal (a character who did not appear in the Netflix show, and who may be Nemesis Prime cosplaying as Optimus Primal or Optimus Primal corrupted by Unicron), Fangry (a Titans Return retooling that was seemingly - and bafflingly - the main draw of this set for many fans), the aforementioned Bumblejumper (or would this be Cliffbee?) and a reworking of Kingdom Blackarachnia based upon the the appearance of the original Beast Wars Blackarachnia's toy.

As you can imagine 75% of this set was of zero interest to me... and when reports of the QC problems - ranging from insanely loose legs on Fangry to insanely tight arms on Nemesis Primal - emerged, I felt my lack of interest was vindicated. Naturally, though, those gullible fools who bought the set for just one of the figures started splitting it up and trying to make back their money via the secondary market. While I found one UK seller looking to offload his Blackarachnia, their Buy It Now price was seriously over the odds (approx. half the price of importing the full set from the US, with UK shipping on top of that? Seriously?) and they declined my offer (approx. one third the price of importing the full set from the US, so pretty fair, I thought). Thankfully, I found a couple of US sellers offering a much more reasonable price (slightly higher than a standard Deluxe) and with acceptable costs via eBay PackLink shipping, and so I snapped her up.

And so, coincidentally exactly nine months after I wrote about the Kingdom toy, here she is!

Not strictly TransFormers-related, but...

Since it's otherwise been a bit quiet hereabouts lately, I figured it might be worth mentioning that I've made another post on my other toy blog which may be considered at least somewhat pertinent by regular readers of this one, especially those who follow my Femme-Bot Friday posts.

Here, have a teaser:

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Airazor

 (Femme-Bot Friday #77)

It's beginning to look as though there will be very little of interest to me in the final chapter of Hasbro's War for Cybertron line beyond a handful of its Beast Wars remakes. Even those have generally been undersized remakes and, for better or worse, minus many of the play features of the originals. The one area of the toyline where the results have exceeded my expectations is its Femme-Bots, with Blackarachnia being both an early release and a (small) Deluxe class reworking of the Masterpiece figure that ended up being, if not generally better, then at least better value for money.

So, when Airazor was revealed, and looked pretty fantastic, she went straight to the top of my want list. Considering I only acquired the original Beast Wars version comparatively recently (six or seven years ago, I think) and, broadly speaking, still think it's a pretty good toy (even if it's not remotely 'screen accurate'), my main reasons for wanting this are the improved articulation demonstrated by other War for Cybertron toys and a head sculpt more in line with her on-screen appearance.

 

It also came into stock on Hasbro Pulse UK ahead of its arrival in other UK outlets (and we can't all be YouTubers, graced by Zavvi's largesse) so that gave me an excuse to sign up.

However, all of the Kingdom toys I've picked up have come with several significant caveats, so let's find out if Airazor swoops to conquer what I've come to regard as the 'Kingdom Curse'.

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...

War for Cybertron: Kingdom Blackarachnia

(Femme-Bot Friday #75)

A fitting follow-up to Big Firebird's inaugural entry into the 'sort-of-TransFormers-but-not-quite' market, since Beast Wars Blackarachnia was one of the first - if not the first - TransFormers TV show character to have blatant robo-tits, even though her toy was largely androgynous thanks to its original use as the male-coded Tarantulas. The TV show was able to better differentiate between the two Predacon arachnids, and the character designers clearly didn't want any ambiguity around her role as the Femme-Bot Fatale, giving her the proportions of a pin-up.

It's also interesting to see a mainline Blackarachnia toy so soon after the mostly well-received Masterpiece, since that figure's nigh-flawless robot mode came at the expense of a bulbous and hopelessly inaccurate beast mode.

What better way to begin, then, than by looking at how it's done with a Deluxe class toy?

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.