Let's show some love for Earthrise's most poseable 'bot!


"But quit the macho bit, eh? It just doesn't suit you."
From TF:UK#186 'Space Pirates'

 

"I'd like to stay and help Arcee..."
Seems like she's alright on her own, pal.
From TF:UK#187 'Space Pirates'

 

"You are not SERIOUSLY going to replace ME!"





No, but I am getting ER Arcee this Friday from Amazon. The T30 isn't going anywhere, though.

 

Addendum to my old ramble.

Has the clock struck three and bit years already? Then it’s time for Arcee to get another take! Let’s hope it’s hope it has the fandom up in arms. Oh, no need to worry. They’re already on it.

Ok, it can be easy to take the mickey out of the fandom’s…shall we say…more vociferous responses, but it is usually borne of something truly faceplam worthy. And we all saw that backup-cum-hoverboard you could feel continents wobble from that collective faceplam.

Yeah. ER Arcee was going to be a shell former with an enormous backpack. Yay! I remember how much people hated the T:30 version’s back pack, and that had nothing on this. Adding…something to injury some of this shell forming backpack could detach to form the aforementioned hoverboard. You know. Arcee’s famous hoverboard. None of this bode well for a good figure.

Turns out that in hand, Arcee is more than a good figure. She’s a great one! They’ve really gone to town on the articulation on her. Truth be told, she hasn’t got that much more than the T:30 version (a wrist swivel here, and waist swivel there) but the engineering is much more elegant and stable. It felt like there a million fresh and exciting poses to find, all of which she held so well.

The deco, while being a bit plainer than the T:30 version, works very well. I always felt the pink faced and lipstick of the T:30 version was a little OTT. That said, her pistol has suffered a little through being transluscent plastic. A bit of paint could really have jazzed this up a little. And it’s a meager comparison to the arsenal that came with the T:30 version. Where’s my sword?

ER Arcee’s proportions are also a lot better. Looking at her with fresh eyes, T:30 Arcee looks like a different figure either side of her waist. Those legs just seem so crazily big compared to the rest of her. ER Arcee gets the balance just right. Unfortunately

I couldn’t stop playing with this figure when I got it. And what could be a better recommendation than that? “You couldn’t stop playing with her and she wasn’t a shellformer” replies the shrill greek chorus.

So, hey. She’s not the first shellformer we’ve had in WfC. and I don’t know about you, but I kinda liked those tertajets. So let’s give her a chance and see if it’s all worthwhile.

Ho’way man, it looks like a pink slipper. As I sit here at my desk, quill in hand and laudanum within reach, I compare this with the T:30 version and truly shake my head in despair. Where the T:30 version is sleek and shapely, the ER version is blocky and ill defined. Where the colours of the T:30 version provide eye-catching contrast, the ER version looks like the cheap Morrisons vodka where they wouldn’t splash out for 3rd colour on the label (‘Moskova’, as I recall). Where the windae on the T:30 version is clear, the ER version is cloudy. I could go on, but you get the idea; this does everything worse. Including the transformation. The panels don’t even tab together solidly.

But despite how crappy that vehicle mode is, I can’t dislike the figure. The’bot mode is just too good. There really isn’t another Generations figure I own that can sit cross-legged so confidently and comfortably. I know I’m going to have plenty of fun posing this ER Arcee over the months and years ahead. So there we go; she’s a toy of two halves, one much better than the other. A lousy Transformer but a fantastic action figure.

 

Would you be willing to take a picture of ER Arcee in car mode without the hoverboard/backpack section? (I'm aware this will probably just look like half a car). I truly hate partsforming and I'm curious if she can turn into anything passable without the extra parts.

 

As long as you don’t mind waiting 12 hours or so (just about to head into work) then sure!

 

I can't believe how much this corner has transformed in just a week or so.  

 

Thank you!

 

Great review! As to the deco, the ER is only missing some grey on the lower bodice buttons, some lipstick, and some white on upper back kibble to match the animation model. The T30 deco was made after the IDW comics, but the black does help the contrast and helps the details pop.

 

I put it like this in my review:
-If you wanted a near-perfect transforming Arcee toy, Generations Arcess is there for you.
-If you want the ideal robot mode Arcee that compliments the other WFC Trilogy Earthrise toys, ER Arcee is the clear winner.

I said something similar bout ER Megatron. I found Netflix-Siege Megatron to be probably the best looking main line Megatron we've ever gotten, but on your 1984 Decepticons shelf, it sticks out like a sore thumb next to the ER seekers, and soon Netflix Soundwave. Its paint job is a stylistic class. ER Megatron, by contrast, is the inferior Megatron but the ideal companion piece.

Something similar is going to happen with Studio Series '86 and Kingdom and the 1986 Autobots. If we start replacing old TR and Generations molds with SS'86/Kingdom ones, and leave a select few behind - say Arcee and CW Ultra Magnus - they'd stick out like sore thumbs. There wouldn't be the visual-styliistic unity between them. Kind of a counter-example going on with me with that right now is my 1986 shelf has Taraka Legends Kup, Hot Rod and Blurr and Wheelie (I didn't get the TR versions). Legends Arcee was there too. Of all my shelfs it had perhaps the most consitent visual style with their matte paint jobs and consistent molded detail. I've since replaced Legends ARcee with ER Arcee. The visual consistency is broken up. It still looks fine, but not nearly as good. Eventually they'll all be replaced with SS'86 and Kingdom figures.




We're in a fundamentally different period for CHUG Transformers than ever before when it comes to major characters. Up until this point (more or less0, the goal was to simply "get" all the original 1984/1985/1986 characters, which involved mixing and matching figures going back to Classics and Universe 2.0 and having them on the same shelf with Combiner Wars and Titans Return figures. I mean seriously, I think this was a mid-Siege 1984 shelf:





Yikes. Look at that. Everything from Sunstreaker and Ratchet released as part of Universe 2.0, to a terribad CW Mirage who is there just because he looks a litle more G1, to some siege figures, to a 3P Cliffjumper. Oh and a CW Ratchet that is decked out in Toy hax to not look terrible. But the point was to have the Ark crew.

But now as we go into Kingdom, with these and many major characters we're getting our 2nd or 3rd or even 4th pass, and not only do they have higher fidelity to the character designs, but unlike the carnival of horrors above (which was impressive not long ago), there will be a unified visual style with them.

Our collections, in a sense, are "maturing", as we move from checking off names on a list, to establishing themes. And now CHUG collectors collections will have (among them) two ways to skew:
-The collection that displays the superior transforming toy
-The collection whose constituent parts look like they belong with the other parts.

People will fall different places. For my part, I'm on the latter notion now, which is why I prefer ER Arcee. But the Generations Arcee answer is right too! But I'm also torn because I think those Legends 1986 characters look GREAT together, but once replaced with SS'86 figures, I don't know what I'll do with them. Sell them? I don't want to. Who knows.

This is a pretty funny place to be from a historic perspective. It wasn't long ago we were jumping up and down over Cyberverse Shockwave *GASP* looking like G1 Shockwave and maybe having it replace Cyber Battalion Shockwave (until it turned out he was too small). And now I look at shockwave, and I hope for a second release that's a bit more cartoon-purple so it looks good next to the other 1984 Decepticons. We're definitely at the end of something, and the start of something else.

 

Id definitely love a release with the white

 

For what it's worth...



"For the process to have accelerated this rapidly, something drastic must have happened to either Cyclonus or Scourge."
From TF:UK#202 'Time Wars'

 

It's funny because I bought it in a Rite Aid as a bored purchase during a time I wasn't actively collecting Transformers figures, and now I regret having him stored in a box for years while his colors were ruining.

 

Yikes. No matter how good the robot mode may be, there's no way to justify that.

 

She’s not a Transformer in my book.