It's a damn good thing I don't like G1 cartoon accuracy in most cases. Keeps me away from MP figures.
Ouch, upon getting a better look at Arcee - yeah, that's a pass for me. I hope this is due to bad angles / transformation errors and that it turns out to look better, just for the people who wanted this character in MP-form for so long.
By "toy," I mean "G1 toy source material." Not even the MP fandom would expect, say, a hypothetical MP Springer to be accurate to FansProject Defender.
Yikes this Arcee looks like a nightmare to transform. Seems all of the car rear folds in on itself with myriad tiny panels to disappear under the car front. And with those tiny dainty feet, I am sure the reason there is a stand there is that she won't be able to stand without toppling back with such a huge backpack. Her chest looks pretty weird, while I appreciate that it is finally formed from the car hood, it just looks weirdly angular. I dunno, I love them both. Wonder which one will be bigger, though. Long Haul is a giant and the CW Constructicons are easily taller than SS Voyagers. But the movie Devastator will have 2 leaders for a torso. Masterpiece died for me after Ultra Magnus and his ridiculous fake grey knob wheels, really. I got Tracks and Road Rage later and Wheeljack, but that's that. I don't need anything that came after. The cheating and panelforming and nonsense adherence to blank underdetailed cartoon models killed my enjoyment of the line. Compare MP Grimlock or Rodimus to what we got now, the big flat panels, the lack of intricate details, the clever ways to keep the G1 cartoon look WHILE also updating it. Never got the new MP Megatron either, I am fine with the first one, problems aside.
So the chest plate is not mistransformed but they could redesign it and stretch it out so it covers up the white parts more and is in line with the shoulders. Hopefully this is still work in progress and they've got time to work on it some more.
Bloody hell those 3p ones have some really shaky looking car modes. Bot modes are much closer, I think the mp does look the best overall but needs some more work as I just said in a previous post.
Wow, that's an eye opener Cheem. They all nail the correct distance from the collar except the official MP! I think (hope??) I'm becoming more adept at looking for the silver lining when I don't get the characters cropping up in the official MP line that I want. In this case there are two: 1) They basically just confirmed they'll be committing to the core '86 movie character roster, so Kup & Springer almost a cert (at SOME point) now. 2) More time to divert my cash for FT-44 Thomas/Astrotrain this summer, then return to the official line for whatever they've got cooking later on this year (hopefully Cliffjumper or Galvatron.)
Or they could have done what the Generations toy does, and NOT turn the whole car back into a backpack. Put some of it on the legs. Stop sacrificing the toy design on the energon-soaked altar of cartoon accuracy. I mean this is not as horrible as the atrocious spider mode of Blackarachnia, but close.
On the flip side..... The MP line went off the chart for me when they started paying attention to those little details from the show I loved as a kid and have such nostalgic pull for. If fake parts and panels help achieve that then long may it continue. So they've already done what you want in the chug line, that's good, no? So we can say MP is not chug, MP is now clearly slavish cartoon and if that's how it was on screen then it's safe to say that's how the MP figure will look. Whether you like it or not that's how it is now and if you hate the cartoon as much as you are inferring it's probably best to walk away. Vote with your wallet.
She kills the 3rd party versions, and I'm very much a 3rd party supporter. She's beautiful, especially in alt mode. Her collar is fine, she has upper body movement it appears which should be pretty cool. Hard for something not to be slightly off considering her design was wholly made up and never really engineered to work in 3 dimensions. Seeing her next to the others, I can't see how the collar could bother you when each and every one of the others has at least 10 glaring inaccuracies.
Seems like the transformation is going to be similar to Hot Rod where the legs are their own complete parts (as well as the arms) while most of the car parts are folded away into the torso/backpack. The chest seem to be faux and is positioned low making the collar look very long which throws of Arcee's proportions - as well as the small feet which bothers me the most. All the backpacks look ugly in their own way but TT's is definitely the largest one and stability seems to be a legitimate concern considering the display model and the image show her having a stand supporting her backpack. Alt-mode looks the cleanest and most toon-accurate, Robot-mode is either tied or slightly worse than MMC's though sculpt-wise it's more toon- accurate. I like the headsculpt so far, it's a bit skinny but yeah we'll have to wait and see. For a fembot, this isn't the worst they've done... first MP fembot too if you don't count Blackarachnia whose beast-mode isn't amazing. Though compared to 3rd parties it's not as well-proportioned. Regardless, this'll probably be the Arcee for me but I understand if people don't like it. Excited to see if they'll do more movie bots soon.
