DSC_3978
You ever ask yourself how could a company that does one thing, and one thing alone competently, some how screw it up? That, my friends, is the story of this particular figure, the Transformers: Prime Arcee from the RED lineup.
OK, so in recent years, there's been this.. demand, I guess for non transforming Transformer figures, though admittedly its the 1/6 scale stuff. They aren't cheap, but they do offer a generally better robot mode experience as the articulation is the sole focus, with no compromises made for an alt mode, and at that price point, making the figure look pretty isn't that hard either.
Somewhere along the lines, I guess Hasbro, you know, the guys who make Transformers, got the memo on this. They've recently expanded their action figure empire to include G.I. Joe and Power Rangers, both of which are not stellar, but at $20 USD, competent. Not having to pay for a license means more budget to make their baby equally good as those other two, right?
Boy did SOMEONE miss that memo.
So, as you have guessed, Hasbro follows the same formula as their other 6 inch figures. You get the figure, and a few character specific accessories. In the case of Arcee, you get a pair of trigger finger hands, her twin swords, two slashing effects, a pair of guns with built in wrist pegs, and what I'm guessing is the Allspark (I never watched Prime). Not mind blowing, but it's Hasbro so I'll let it be.
In case you too, missed Prime, it was an animated series that was created due to the success of the Bay movies, featured newly designed robot modes for classic characters, but generally using alt modes found in the films. This is why Arcee is a motorcycle - she showed up in the second movie, which I'm ashamed to say but I saw in the theatre.
I think the figure generally captures the look of her on screen counterpart (which... is the point of these figures) so it didn't fail at that part of the job. No comically large wheels and use of "imagination" - she's right there.
The colours are kind of off, and the number of paints apps are on the low side and the quality of them is a bit rough, but for a Hasbro release I'm willing to let that part of slide because at least you can touch these figures up,
I'm even willing to overlook the rough finishes on some of the parts, and the soft plastics used to make functional sharp point safe again. I'm even willing to overlook the horribly small slash effects and the fact they're no longer translucent purple like on the prototype.
But man oh man does this figure suck at it's primary job, namely posing.
Understandably there's no ankles but I don't get why range of motion on the toe is so limited tilting the foot forward.
The knee joints seems to made of the flimsiest plastic every, on par with the stuff used in the Lightning collection, but I guess because it's even thinner the bending is so bad the knees cannot support the weight of the upper body if you angle the legs out to the side. Also, because of the single knee joint design, you barely get 90 degrees out of the joint. Furthermore, due to the terrible tolerances and the knee joints ability to spin the lower leg, Arcee has a terrible case of noodle legs.
The groin area features the floating underpants that is supposed to push upward to allow for greater range of motion.. Getting her to sit down is possible, but it's a tight squeeze due to a very small clearance. Other leg positions are much easier due to lack of impediments.
Overall you'll have fun getting the legs into a dynamic looking pose, and when you do, have even more fun trying to get the damn thing to stay up right.
Thigh twist is functional. Floating underwear limits the waist rotation, understandable. Ab joint... we're talking Mezco levels of WTF here. Thanks to some design choices, she can only bend backwards because of course putting Arcee into an ass up or Superman flying position is why I got this thing.
Shoulders are surprisingly robust for a Hasbro figure, featuring a ball joint along with a butterfly joint embedded deep inside the torso socket. It's enough to cross the arms. Elbows, like the knees, are single jointed and limited to basically 90 degrees of rotation. along with forearm pivoting. There is a separate forearm rotation joint and the standard Legends style wrists where a stem embeds into the wrist for rotation, and a hinge on the heel of the palm allows for pivoting.
The head joint is a double ended ball joint, which would be fantastic for posing except the design of the neck doesn't allow one to take advantage of potential range of motion that such as system offers.
So overall, a company that can produce transforming action figures relatively competently apparently can fail this hard at making a non transforming action figure, even though they have a history of doing so.
Maybe I'm just unlucky with this particular figure, but based on previous experience I'm gonna guess this is a wide spread issue.
Sigh... you literally had one job to do.
DSC_3978
You ever ask yourself how could a company that does one thing, and one thing alone competently, some how screw it up? That, my friends, is the story of this particular figure, the Transformers: Prime Arcee from the RED lineup.
OK, so in recent years, there's been this.. demand, I guess for non transforming Transformer figures, though admittedly its the 1/6 scale stuff. They aren't cheap, but they do offer a generally better robot mode experience as the articulation is the sole focus, with no compromises made for an alt mode, and at that price point, making the figure look pretty isn't that hard either.
Somewhere along the lines, I guess Hasbro, you know, the guys who make Transformers, got the memo on this. They've recently expanded their action figure empire to include G.I. Joe and Power Rangers, both of which are not stellar, but at $20 USD, competent. Not having to pay for a license means more budget to make their baby equally good as those other two, right?
Boy did SOMEONE miss that memo.
So, as you have guessed, Hasbro follows the same formula as their other 6 inch figures. You get the figure, and a few character specific accessories. In the case of Arcee, you get a pair of trigger finger hands, her twin swords, two slashing effects, a pair of guns with built in wrist pegs, and what I'm guessing is the Allspark (I never watched Prime). Not mind blowing, but it's Hasbro so I'll let it be.
In case you too, missed Prime, it was an animated series that was created due to the success of the Bay movies, featured newly designed robot modes for classic characters, but generally using alt modes found in the films. This is why Arcee is a motorcycle - she showed up in the second movie, which I'm ashamed to say but I saw in the theatre.
I think the figure generally captures the look of her on screen counterpart (which... is the point of these figures) so it didn't fail at that part of the job. No comically large wheels and use of "imagination" - she's right there.
The colours are kind of off, and the number of paints apps are on the low side and the quality of them is a bit rough, but for a Hasbro release I'm willing to let that part of slide because at least you can touch these figures up,
I'm even willing to overlook the rough finishes on some of the parts, and the soft plastics used to make functional sharp point safe again. I'm even willing to overlook the horribly small slash effects and the fact they're no longer translucent purple like on the prototype.
But man oh man does this figure suck at it's primary job, namely posing.
Understandably there's no ankles but I don't get why range of motion on the toe is so limited tilting the foot forward.
The knee joints seems to made of the flimsiest plastic every, on par with the stuff used in the Lightning collection, but I guess because it's even thinner the bending is so bad the knees cannot support the weight of the upper body if you angle the legs out to the side. Also, because of the single knee joint design, you barely get 90 degrees out of the joint. Furthermore, due to the terrible tolerances and the knee joints ability to spin the lower leg, Arcee has a terrible case of noodle legs.
The groin area features the floating underpants that is supposed to push upward to allow for greater range of motion.. Getting her to sit down is possible, but it's a tight squeeze due to a very small clearance. Other leg positions are much easier due to lack of impediments.
Overall you'll have fun getting the legs into a dynamic looking pose, and when you do, have even more fun trying to get the damn thing to stay up right.
Thigh twist is functional. Floating underwear limits the waist rotation, understandable. Ab joint... we're talking Mezco levels of WTF here. Thanks to some design choices, she can only bend backwards because of course putting Arcee into an ass up or Superman flying position is why I got this thing.
Shoulders are surprisingly robust for a Hasbro figure, featuring a ball joint along with a butterfly joint embedded deep inside the torso socket. It's enough to cross the arms. Elbows, like the knees, are single jointed and limited to basically 90 degrees of rotation. along with forearm pivoting. There is a separate forearm rotation joint and the standard Legends style wrists where a stem embeds into the wrist for rotation, and a hinge on the heel of the palm allows for pivoting.
The head joint is a double ended ball joint, which would be fantastic for posing except the design of the neck doesn't allow one to take advantage of potential range of motion that such as system offers.
So overall, a company that can produce transforming action figures relatively competently apparently can fail this hard at making a non transforming action figure, even though they have a history of doing so.
Maybe I'm just unlucky with this particular figure, but based on previous experience I'm gonna guess this is a wide spread issue.
Sigh... you literally had one job to do.