Iron Factory IF EX-16A Alleria (aka The Lady Commander)

(Femme-Bot Friday #67)

There comes a point in my collecting where I realise that my OCD about certain things - particularly Femme-Bots in recent years - has led me to buy essentially the same damned thing over and over again, and I'm hit by a wave of buyers' remorse. It started to happen as I bought Mastermind Creations' original Azalea and several of the repaints (though I do find that I still rather want Eupatorium), so I really should have seen it coming with Iron Factory's Pink Assassin repaints... But when I saw that their take on Elita-1 would be a pack-in with their Ultimate Commander (a sort of combination of a Cybertronian Optimus Prime and the Godbomber accessory minus its own individual robot mode), I found myself mesmerised into ordering it, despite having no interest in the main figure in the box.

So far, I've fought off the urge to buy their Combaticon leader Onslaught-analogue just for its extremely tempting 'Pink Assassin Combiner Hunter' pack-in, so let's have a quick look at this one to see if any buyers' remorse is justified...

Iron Factory IF EX-27 Streamwing (aka Shrike's Feather)

(Femme-Bot Friday #63)

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I find the name given to Iron Factory's take on Slipstream interestingly coincidental: I constantly referred to live action movie Megatron as 'The Shrike', a reference to a robotic killing machine in a series of Sci-Fi books by Dan Simmons, since he fits its description ("composed of razorwire, thorns, blades, and cutting edges, having fingers like scalpels") surprisingly well... It will be obvious from the images in this post that this is not a movie-style interpretation of Slipstream, yet I can't see any other reason to call her 'Shrike's Feather'... Though it's very likely I'm missing something...

Iron Factory IF EX-16N Night Assassin

(Femme-Bot Friday #61)

Cleverly taking a leaf out of Takara Tomy's books, Iron Factory took their 'Pink Assassin' small-scale Arcee-analogue mold and very quickly turned it into their very own take on the G1 cartoon character, Nightbird. It seems like a rather niche move, and certainly strange as a standalone release when their Elita-1 analogue was packaged with another figure (irritating as it is to my OCD, their Combiner Hunters Arcee, IF EX-16H, being packaged with IF EX-24 War Giant Commander made much more sense), but it's another Third Party Femme-Bot, so it was on my want list as soon as I became aware of its existance.

Iron Factory IF EX-05 H Windsaber (aka Miko for IronTitan The Hunter)

(Femme-Bot Friday #54)

And here, we have another write up of a repaint within a month of dealing with the original iteration. I was honestly surprised to see this appear, given how niche the Combiner Hunters set was... Iron Factory have yet to tackle Chromia, but now both Windblade and Arcee have had their Combiner Hunters paint jobs reflected in this range of diminutive reimaginings of TransFormers figures, though this is the only one to get a solo release.

Iron Factory IF EX-05 Windsaber (aka Miko for IronTitan)

(Femme-Bot Friday #50)

You know a new character has made it in the popularity stakes when the Third Parties start churning out their own versions, and it didn't take long for the 'fan-built bot' Windblade. It actually also made a lot of sense for Iron Factory to produce their own, diminutive version of Windblade since none of Hasbro's own output really scales properly with the likes of Metroplex. After all, one of the character's defining characteristics is that she's one of the few able to communicate with these city-sized robots, despite being ant-like in comparison.

Since 50 Femme-Bot Fridays is a bit of a milestone, I'm going to celebrate it by kicking off a short run on the remaining Windblades in my collection. This will include a comparison between a Hasbro version of the character already covered in my FBF series and the Takara Tomy version I've picked up more recently, as well as a direct Titans Return/Legends comparison of the most recent model... but the first will be Iron Factory's takes on the original, and concluding part will be the SDCC2015 Combiner Hunters-inspired repaint...

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.