DSC_4787
To the surprise of nobody who's ever talked to me, I have eclectic tastes when it comes to collectibles. Yeah, I'll get the things that are generally universally liked, but ultimately shock value and general tastelessness (by puritan US standards) are what kind of guide my collecting path.
About a year ago, there was a company with a dream - Big Firebird Toy - and that dream was to make a transforming Arcee figure that was more Senran Kagura than G1 Autobot. Her name would be Nicee, and would share enough characteristics with her licensed namesake so you could help Hot Rod live out his high school fantasies including a familiar alt mode and a very G1 Arcee head.
People complained, of course, but in this day and age, what else is new? At least this wasn't Flametoys where they were selling licensed figures... this was the Wild Wild West of Third Party Transformer figures. I'll admit the window dressing was might attractive, but the Engineer in me also wanted to know.. just how would they pull off such an ambitious design?
At any rate, preorders were placed and all was well for a while.
First it was COVID causing mayhem and delaying production of everything across the board. Then, rumour has it that Hasbro started actually cracking down on Chinese bootlegs of their figures, and so Big Firebird Toy dropped the Arcee head, and just stuck with their own original content. That all passed, and I finally received my copy of the figure.
So just how did they do? Lets look at the Big Firebird Toy EX-01: Nicee figure.
I ordered mine from TF-Direct, who were the lowest price point at the time. Prices have since jumped up from the $95 USD I paid, which included EMS shipping, but a cursory glance at eBay shows you should still be OK. The figure came in it's own brown shipper, with an art box contained within which houses all the fun stuff.
A quick glance at the art box should very quick establish that no... this is not a kids figure. It's not quite Skytube hentai PVC material, but it is at least Teen territory. Also nice is the Pink foiled letters.
I also have to giggle at the security seal and the quality assurance foil sticker because, well... China.
Nicee is packed in robot mode, and comes in a single layered tray with her accessories. By the time things are said and done, the box is gigantic, effectively 12" x 12" x 4", like something out of the old Toys R Us MP boxes. Accessories include an extra Aheago head, a breast plate with soft rubbery breasts, a laser pistol, an energy arrow, a sword, part of her chasis, the handle for her bow, and six additional hands. Naturally, she has a set of instructions, as well as a nifty art card.
Nicee is a gorgeous figure, and I'm not just talking curves. I had two major concerns - crappy paint work, and crappy build. I've done the best I can on my photos, but one of things I couldn't make out on other photos I've seen is the fact that Nicee has a nice pearl finish on all her painted parts. Try as I might, I could not find any areas of overspray or bleeding, with the only bad paint being a fibre or something being embedded into the forehead of my Aheago head. Even the pink on the wheels are pearl finish. Now, I would ADD some colours to a few areas, such as the blade of the sword and maybe to the face to make the lips turn out better, but that's another discussion - what paint work you do get is pretty damn good and is generally resistant to most forms of contact.
I'm not saying you should break out the sand paper, but you can at least be assured you don't have to worry about actually handling the figure without gloves.
Build quality is a bit tougher to explore, but to put aside any immediate worries, overall things are very good. Nicee has rubber tires, which is becoming more and more of a rare thing. There are some die cast metal parts, though these in high stress structural components. The plastics they used feel like the same stuff you'd get on a Takara Tomy MP figure, but perhaps a bit thinner, maybe due to the sheer number of curved parts on this figure.
The finish on these parts is, without a doubt, phenomenal. very few rough surfaces or mould lines found. My mind is blown at how well the pieces fit together, and that truly the finished product matched the CG renders almost perfectly. QC with regards to accuracy of tabs and slots is almost perfect, but isn't quite up to Takara Tomy standards, so it can be a bit of pain to get things aligned correctly but it can be done, at least, and the parts come together with tolerances that wouldn't be out of place on an MP figure.
Joints in general tend to be a bit on the stiff side, especially the neck and head joints, which can make posing Nicee a bit of a headache..
Finally I feel the hands should have used the more popular method of connection, that is having the ball on the wrist joint itself and the socket on the hand, as opposed to the opposite. This would make things connect more securely, as well as improve range of motion here.
Nicee herself is 19 cm tall, which puts here out of MP scale, as she's supposed to be slightly smaller than Hot Rod. On the plus side, she's that much more visually impressive and has that much more shelf presence.
Articulation is impressive, and is in line with what I'd expect from an MP figure. You get full ankles (two separate points of movement), double jointed knees, thigh twist, hips with pull down for greater range of motion, waist, mid torso, shoulders with lateral movement (so arms can come closer together), bicep swivel, single jointed elbows, wrists, neck, and head. Provided you can get the joints to cooperate, you can put the figure into many, many poses, though for next time Big Firebird Toy, double jointed elbows, please.
For all the effort put into the design of this figure, I feel that Big Firebird Toy put their C Team on weapons duty. The sword is a bit bland, but more importantly, there's one hand dedicated to holding both the Sword and the Bow, and neither of them are really held that well. The laser pistol is perhaps the only weapon where they did some homework as there's almost no way that gun will ever get loose from that hand, and I wish that they had given her a second pistol, in addition to more useful hands.
Another thing that might cool your enthusiasm for Nicee is that she is somewhat of a Partsformer, like most of the current mainline Transformers. In order to achieve a certain body shape, designers just made unwanted parts removable and convertible into accessories for the main figure.
In Nicee's case, that piece of the car body turns into a shield that is pegged in a way that you either can move the forearm it's attached to, or you hold it like a gun because there's no proper handle. Then there's the bow.... oh that bow.
It's made up of the front of the vehicle mode, which usually hangs on to her behind her neck, giving Nicee those wing looking things. Conversion to a bow involves plugging in a plastic piece that gives it a handle, then squeezing it into the hand that is meant for the sword. It's very, very awkward to say the least, and the fact there's no real dedicated hand for holding the arrow is also a major pain.
Oh right, in the event you don't fancy a bow, you can convert most of the parts into a skirt for... reasons, which unfortunately leaves you with a completely useless panel as well as reduced articulation.
Finally, coming full circle we have transformations, though before I go on I should probably mention that you swap out the breast plates by popping up the shoulders and head and replacing the part.
Conversion into vehicle mode isn't really that complicated once you decipher the instruction manuals mentions of degrees and misspelt words. To their credit, there is a link to a transformation video, which I didn't watch, but I'll presume is more helpful than the instructions. The overall methodology is kind of like TM2 Blackarachnia where you stretch out the body, wrap the legs around the body and cover the entire thing in a shell. IIRC the Generations version had this method and maybe even the other 3P Arcee I have, the Occular Max Zinnia.
I guess I should also mention there was controversy about how the vehicle mode had the visual making of a Vagina or something. I dunno.. I don't looking for the meaning of life in my cups of coffee, and I don't go looking for Vaginas in my vehicle modes.
So in conclusion, the base figure itself is very good, and I'm impressed with the excellent paint work and overall production values of the figure. Weapons really is where the ball was dropped, and even then things could have been saved if the variety of hands was greater and if the bow/shield had actual proper handles so they could do their job. But all-in-all, this is much better than any novelty figure has the right to be.
So if you're an open minded transforming robot fan, I'd highly recommend you give Nicee a try.
DSC_4787
To the surprise of nobody who's ever talked to me, I have eclectic tastes when it comes to collectibles. Yeah, I'll get the things that are generally universally liked, but ultimately shock value and general tastelessness (by puritan US standards) are what kind of guide my collecting path.
About a year ago, there was a company with a dream - Big Firebird Toy - and that dream was to make a transforming Arcee figure that was more Senran Kagura than G1 Autobot. Her name would be Nicee, and would share enough characteristics with her licensed namesake so you could help Hot Rod live out his high school fantasies including a familiar alt mode and a very G1 Arcee head.
People complained, of course, but in this day and age, what else is new? At least this wasn't Flametoys where they were selling licensed figures... this was the Wild Wild West of Third Party Transformer figures. I'll admit the window dressing was might attractive, but the Engineer in me also wanted to know.. just how would they pull off such an ambitious design?
At any rate, preorders were placed and all was well for a while.
First it was COVID causing mayhem and delaying production of everything across the board. Then, rumour has it that Hasbro started actually cracking down on Chinese bootlegs of their figures, and so Big Firebird Toy dropped the Arcee head, and just stuck with their own original content. That all passed, and I finally received my copy of the figure.
So just how did they do? Lets look at the Big Firebird Toy EX-01: Nicee figure.
I ordered mine from TF-Direct, who were the lowest price point at the time. Prices have since jumped up from the $95 USD I paid, which included EMS shipping, but a cursory glance at eBay shows you should still be OK. The figure came in it's own brown shipper, with an art box contained within which houses all the fun stuff.
A quick glance at the art box should very quick establish that no... this is not a kids figure. It's not quite Skytube hentai PVC material, but it is at least Teen territory. Also nice is the Pink foiled letters.
I also have to giggle at the security seal and the quality assurance foil sticker because, well... China.
Nicee is packed in robot mode, and comes in a single layered tray with her accessories. By the time things are said and done, the box is gigantic, effectively 12" x 12" x 4", like something out of the old Toys R Us MP boxes. Accessories include an extra Aheago head, a breast plate with soft rubbery breasts, a laser pistol, an energy arrow, a sword, part of her chasis, the handle for her bow, and six additional hands. Naturally, she has a set of instructions, as well as a nifty art card.
Nicee is a gorgeous figure, and I'm not just talking curves. I had two major concerns - crappy paint work, and crappy build. I've done the best I can on my photos, but one of things I couldn't make out on other photos I've seen is the fact that Nicee has a nice pearl finish on all her painted parts. Try as I might, I could not find any areas of overspray or bleeding, with the only bad paint being a fibre or something being embedded into the forehead of my Aheago head. Even the pink on the wheels are pearl finish. Now, I would ADD some colours to a few areas, such as the blade of the sword and maybe to the face to make the lips turn out better, but that's another discussion - what paint work you do get is pretty damn good and is generally resistant to most forms of contact.
I'm not saying you should break out the sand paper, but you can at least be assured you don't have to worry about actually handling the figure without gloves.
Build quality is a bit tougher to explore, but to put aside any immediate worries, overall things are very good. Nicee has rubber tires, which is becoming more and more of a rare thing. There are some die cast metal parts, though these in high stress structural components. The plastics they used feel like the same stuff you'd get on a Takara Tomy MP figure, but perhaps a bit thinner, maybe due to the sheer number of curved parts on this figure.
The finish on these parts is, without a doubt, phenomenal. very few rough surfaces or mould lines found. My mind is blown at how well the pieces fit together, and that truly the finished product matched the CG renders almost perfectly. QC with regards to accuracy of tabs and slots is almost perfect, but isn't quite up to Takara Tomy standards, so it can be a bit of pain to get things aligned correctly but it can be done, at least, and the parts come together with tolerances that wouldn't be out of place on an MP figure.
Joints in general tend to be a bit on the stiff side, especially the neck and head joints, which can make posing Nicee a bit of a headache..
Finally I feel the hands should have used the more popular method of connection, that is having the ball on the wrist joint itself and the socket on the hand, as opposed to the opposite. This would make things connect more securely, as well as improve range of motion here.
Nicee herself is 19 cm tall, which puts here out of MP scale, as she's supposed to be slightly smaller than Hot Rod. On the plus side, she's that much more visually impressive and has that much more shelf presence.
Articulation is impressive, and is in line with what I'd expect from an MP figure. You get full ankles (two separate points of movement), double jointed knees, thigh twist, hips with pull down for greater range of motion, waist, mid torso, shoulders with lateral movement (so arms can come closer together), bicep swivel, single jointed elbows, wrists, neck, and head. Provided you can get the joints to cooperate, you can put the figure into many, many poses, though for next time Big Firebird Toy, double jointed elbows, please.
For all the effort put into the design of this figure, I feel that Big Firebird Toy put their C Team on weapons duty. The sword is a bit bland, but more importantly, there's one hand dedicated to holding both the Sword and the Bow, and neither of them are really held that well. The laser pistol is perhaps the only weapon where they did some homework as there's almost no way that gun will ever get loose from that hand, and I wish that they had given her a second pistol, in addition to more useful hands.
Another thing that might cool your enthusiasm for Nicee is that she is somewhat of a Partsformer, like most of the current mainline Transformers. In order to achieve a certain body shape, designers just made unwanted parts removable and convertible into accessories for the main figure.
In Nicee's case, that piece of the car body turns into a shield that is pegged in a way that you either can move the forearm it's attached to, or you hold it like a gun because there's no proper handle. Then there's the bow.... oh that bow.
It's made up of the front of the vehicle mode, which usually hangs on to her behind her neck, giving Nicee those wing looking things. Conversion to a bow involves plugging in a plastic piece that gives it a handle, then squeezing it into the hand that is meant for the sword. It's very, very awkward to say the least, and the fact there's no real dedicated hand for holding the arrow is also a major pain.
Oh right, in the event you don't fancy a bow, you can convert most of the parts into a skirt for... reasons, which unfortunately leaves you with a completely useless panel as well as reduced articulation.
Finally, coming full circle we have transformations, though before I go on I should probably mention that you swap out the breast plates by popping up the shoulders and head and replacing the part.
Conversion into vehicle mode isn't really that complicated once you decipher the instruction manuals mentions of degrees and misspelt words. To their credit, there is a link to a transformation video, which I didn't watch, but I'll presume is more helpful than the instructions. The overall methodology is kind of like TM2 Blackarachnia where you stretch out the body, wrap the legs around the body and cover the entire thing in a shell. IIRC the Generations version had this method and maybe even the other 3P Arcee I have, the Occular Max Zinnia.
I guess I should also mention there was controversy about how the vehicle mode had the visual making of a Vagina or something. I dunno.. I don't looking for the meaning of life in my cups of coffee, and I don't go looking for Vaginas in my vehicle modes.
So in conclusion, the base figure itself is very good, and I'm impressed with the excellent paint work and overall production values of the figure. Weapons really is where the ball was dropped, and even then things could have been saved if the variety of hands was greater and if the bow/shield had actual proper handles so they could do their job. But all-in-all, this is much better than any novelty figure has the right to be.
So if you're an open minded transforming robot fan, I'd highly recommend you give Nicee a try.